June 8, 2025 Reflection

“In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spriit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.” (Acts 2:17-18)

It’s not a coincidence that the anniversary of the United Church of Canada falls on Pentecost Sunday. On the day we remember that the Holy Spirit was poured out on Christ’s disciples and they and we were given the power to prophesy and to dream, to be the Body of Christ in the world, to be the church.

The first Christian Pentecost occurred 50 days after Jesus’ resurrection. For Jews and remember most of the first people to follow Jesus were Jews, Pentecost was initially the celebration of both the harvest, and the giving of the Torah, the commandments, on Mount Sinai. Jesus’ followers had gathered for the festival and were wondering what they were going to do without their leader, and their hope. After Jesus’ resurrection, and before he ascended to heaven, Jesus promised his followers that “…not many days from now,” they would be baptized by the Holy Spirit. (Acts 1:5)   But he was a bit vague on details, and so they waited for something, anything, to happen. They waited, in prayer and song and sharing, and some fear. And they waited.

And then, it happened. “Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit…” (Acts 2:2-4) They all began to speak, in all their different languages and dialects, and yet, they all understood each other. Soon the good news of God’s amazing, wonderful, miraculous power for life was spilling out of them, in all the languages of the earth, so that all who gathered around could hear and understand each other, no matter where they came from.

Fire and wind are both common and vivid descriptions for God’s presence in the Hebrew Bible, signs of the Holy Spirit at work. We have the story of Moses, when he was stopped in his tracks by a bush that was burning but not consumed, and God spoke to him from the fire.

The very first verses of the Bible describe God’s creative action through a wind: “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”

The Hebrew word for “wind” is also the word for “breath” and “spirit.” The great life-giving wind of creation is nothing less than God’s own breath, God’s very spirit, breathing every part of creation into life.

“When Breath Becomes Air” is a book that has always stuck with me because of its powerful title. It was written by a young neurosurgeon named Dr. Paul Kalanithi. When he was diagnosed with Stage IV metastatic lung cancer, the doctor began to track his journey through his illness, seeking to know what made life worth living. Since reading that book, I’ve always been struck with the difference between breath and air – the difference between living and just being alive, maybe between sacred and not, between spirit and air. The breath of God is about that; about life, about the richness of life, the meaning and purpose of life, about life imbued with the sacred, about the belovedness of the one who breathes. The breath of God is not just air stirring the trees, it is LIFE moving over creation.

The words wind, Spirit and breath, share a common root in Latin: spirare which means to breathe. There are several other words with the same root: respiration (breathing), and expiration (breathing out), expire (breathing out for the last time), inspire, breathing in something of creation.  But my favourite is conspire which means, to breathe together. So, a conspiracy is when a group of people breathe together, of the same spirit, the same goal, the same mission, the same identity. 

Writer Barbara Brown Taylor imagines that as Jesus breathed his last breath on earth, as he expired on the cross, his last breath did not become air, but was so full of passion and love, conviction and life, that it remained breath and spun out into the world. And for the 50 days after Easter, it gathered strength and it grew bigger and bigger, and more and more powerful, until the day of Pentecost, when that breath blew into the disciples, making them part of God’s very breath, inviting them, inviting us, to breathe the Spirit together. To conspire. This new breath gave them and gives us a new hope, brought and brings new life to a dispirited band of disciples.

It offers a hope beyond all reason and a peace that the world cannot give. It continues to make abundant life possible in the absence of Jesus’ physical presence. When the disciples take in that breath, God’s own breath, the living Jesus’ last breath, they join the holy conspiracy to transform and heal and recreate the world through the living Body of Christ that is the church. And we too are drawn into that conspiracy.

There’s just one problem: we’re not in charge of the conspiracy. The mighty wind that comes blowing through the disciples? Luke says it was a rush of a violent wind. A wind that will knock us right off our feet, if we let it. A wind that will set our carefully ordered life and meticulously laid plans all a swirl around us.

In truth we both long for the Holy Spirit, for that energy of new life, of new hope, of transformation, of playfulness, of unpredictability. And we aren’t always thrilled when it shows up, because it is not in our control. Sometimes, welcoming the Spirit at work in our lives involves chaos and surprise. When we live according to the Spirit, we live counter to the values of the world. Because we don’t act in our own interests, but in the interests of God’s dream for Creation. Living in the Spirit means, sometimes, that we must let go of what we most cherish,

which looks ridiculous in a society centered on the self and based on acquiring more and more. Living in the Spirit is often counter-intuitive in a hyper-capitalist world; indeed, the onlookers accused the first at Pentecost of being drunk.

That’s why I think on Pentecost the gift came and comes not to one disciple at a time, but to the disciples all together. They and we receive it together, because it is a gift of power to the entire community. When one is doubting, wondering, afraid to welcome Spirit in, the rest of the faith community is breathing it in for us, welcoming the power in for us, receiving the healing and transformation for us, and then breathing it into the one in need. 

I believe that in worship the Holy Spirit swoops in and out among us, knitting us together through the songs we sing, the prayers we pray, the breaths we breathe together. I suspect it’s one of the reasons we show up here on Sunday mornings, to breathe in that Spirit, for ourselves, for others, for the world. To breathe in a different spirit than the prevailing spirits of our world: spirits of hatred and violence, fear and death, revenge and consumption.

We come to breathe the breath of life, to take it in so deeply that it can sustain us until we meet again. We come to remind ourselves that the great conspiracy that we have joined, through Christ, is real. That God’s great dream, to bring the kingdom of justice and peace and abundance for all, is real, and is giving us life, even now. We’re not drunk or crazy. When we hear, as we do increasingly, from Elon Musk and the Christian nationalist movement (which is an oxymoron by the way) that the problem with the world is the vulnerability of empathy, with the courage of the great conspiracy, we can call horse pucky. We can call that out for the life-denying nonsense that it is, and instead share the empathy and grace of God throughout the world.

            I know that I come to you in a time that might feel chaotic, and that you are in some disarray and grief and fatigue. Both Brenda and Nancy have been close friends of yours and mine. I first met Nancy when we were at seminary together, some 35 years ago, and a year or two later Brenda came along. I knew them before their names were one breath, BrendaandNancy. Brenda’s death indeed knocked the wind, the breath out of us. And Nancy’s retirement, while much deserved and fitting, leaves you in another state of mourning and disarray. And Carla has gone on sabbatical.

            You are in what we call a liminal time. Limen is a Latin word that means threshold. A liminal time is when you’re neither in, nor out of a space. You’re suspended between back and forth, maybe between breath and air, between loss and curiosity about what next. My work with you over the next year is to hold you in that liminal space and, to coax you out of it. To both nurture and nudge, comfort and cajole. To encourage you to trust in the Spirit of God that brings life, even in the valley of shadows. To love you and with the Holy Spirit, to lure you into God’s future for you.

            You, we, are going to be OK. The Holy Spirit is with us all, giving us the power to prophesy and dream dreams. We will be blessed and carried along the way, conspirators in Christ, for God.

Thanks be to God.

Amen