Easter ends and the season of Pentecost begins with the singing of an old and much beloved hymn:
Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire
And lighten with celestial fire;
Thou the anointing Spirit art
Who dost thy seven-fold gifts impart.
Thy blessed unction from above
Is comfort, life, and fire of love.
Enable with perpetual light
The dullness of our blinded sight.
Finally, we pray:
Teach us to know the Father, Son,
And thee, of both, to be but One;
That through the ages all along
This may be our endless song!
Praise to thy eternal merit,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Pentecost ought to be kept with one of those "sound and light" shows that take place at famous places - at ruins or restored buildings - in many parts of the world. Pentecost should begin - once people have assembled in the churches - with the sound of thunder, with an electronically produced show of lightning, with a mighty roar of hurricane-force wind, all orchestrated by computer to reproduce the scene of the Day of Pentecost, as Luke reports it. Then we should begin our hymn of invocation:
Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire
And lighten with celestial fire ...
Thy blessed unction from above
Is comfort, life, andfire of love ...
That through the ages all along
This may be our endless song!
Praise to thy eternal merit,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ...
And perhaps we might learn how to celebrate the long season of Pentecost, and to live as children of God and servants of the Christ, to know the Man, to hear and comprehend his message, and to continue his mission of preaching, teaching, and baptizing in his name throughout the world.
Pentecost - a Promise Kept
Pentecost is the festival of a promise made by the Christ before his death and fulfilled after his resurrection and ascension, as Luke tells the story. John puts the giving of the Spirit to the disciples on the night of his resurrection, but Jesus’ promise seems to suggest more of the resurrection-ascension picture painted by Saint Luke, doesn’t it? "But when the Counselor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, ... he will bear witness of me ... it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go away, I will send him to you." It is Luke who gives us the more satisfying description and story of how that happened, is it not? But the promise to send the Spirit is articulated by John; Pentecost is the celebration of a promise kept by the risen Christ.
Jesus knew that his disciples could not make it on their own after his death; even the resurrection would not be enough to sustain them in the faith. When his final departure from them took place, wouldn’t they be likely to sense his absence far more than his presence? Death has a way of making us aware of separation, of distance between loved ones and ourselves that cannot simply be bridged by thoughts or hopes - or, sometimes, even prayers. Memories of the good times and happy experiences tend to be blotted out by the blackness of death and the tomb; we find ourselves cold and alone, "sorrowful unto death." And so, Christ promised the disciples, "I will send the counselor to you." And he did.
"I Sing the Body Electric" by Ray Bradbury is the story of a family - father, two sons and a sister - attempting to fill the terrible void in their lives after the death of wife and mother. Housekeepers, nurses, and relatives proved to be unsatisfactory substitutes for mother, especially. They all knew that their mother wouldn’t, couldn’t, come back to them, but if only their grandmothers were alive! - one or the other of them. That’s where Fantoccini Limited came into the story through a pamphlet the father had obtained: "We shadow forth ... the answer to all your most grievous problems. One model (of grandmothers) only, upon which a thousand variations can be added ..." Fantoccini had perfected the world’s first perfect - electric - robot. "Father" took the children to the factory, saw a demonstration, and placed an order for their "grandmother."
Grandmother arrived - in a packing crate, wrapped like a mummy - and when she was unwrapped, wound up, she came to life: "Grandma’s nostils flared! She might snort up steam, snuff out fire." She did bring them comfort; she did replace the mother who could not return. They had a happy home again - until the day when Agatha, the daughter, ran off in a huff toward a busy street, with Grandma in pursuit. Grandma pushed Agatha out of the path of a car and was hit herself - and thrown on the roadway; she had to be dead. Things were worse than ever, especially for Agatha, who cried: "O Mom, dead, O Mom and now Grandma dead, she promised always, always, to love, promised to be different, promised, promised and now look ... I hate her, I hate Mom, I hate her, I hate them!" She could not be comforted.
But Grandma was not dead; she was able to adjust a few circuits and she was "alive and well" again in what was more resurrection than resuscitation. And she said to Agatha and her brothers, reaffirming her promise, "Do you understand, I shall always, always be here?" And she was until the youngest went away to college and no one needed her any longer. That sounds much like the promise made by another - the Man, Jesus Christ - long ago, doesn’t it? - "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Pentecost is the festival of that promise made - and kept - by Jesus Christ to his disciples and to his church.
Disciples Are Witnesses
Before he died, Jesus turned his limited ministry in what we like to call the Holy Land into a world-wide mission that his disciples and followers were to engage in after his departure from the earth. They were - and we are - to be witnesses for Christ. And they - and we - needed the Spirit for that mission, too - to enlarge their vision so as to comprehend the common condition of people all over the world - alienated from God and each other, trapped in sin and unbelief, and doomed without Christ.
Last Sunday morning, before my wife and I went to our church, I happened to see part of the television program produced by and featuring Rex Humbard. In his sermon-explanation of the scope of his ministry, he told how his message was being sent to various countries throughout the world. "Here’s how it would sound to you," he said, "if you were in China" - and he played a short segment of a tape done in Chinese (Mandarin - ?). He explained, "We are using 91 languages (and the message is) going all over the earth. It will reach two-thirds of the world through radio, television, and short-wave radio." Whatever you might think about his type of evangelism, worship, or theology, you have to admit that somehow or other - and he would say, "through the Spirit" - he has caught a vision of what Jesus said when he declared, "you also are witnesses," because he is attempting to use every resource available to tell the world about Jesus Christ. And we in the more theologically orthodox churches might put down his methodology and his fundamentalism, but his witnessing to the world puts most of our denominational efforts to shame.
A line in a poem reminds us, "There are some whom a flame, ardent, unquenchable fires ..." In various ways, God seems to have touched innumerable people now, as he did after the resurrection of Christ, with the fire of the Holy Spirit and turned them into effective witnesses for Christ. But so many of us have not even been singed a little bit, let alone set ablaze by that holy flame sent into the world by Father and Son for our "advantage" in faith and mission. It is almost as if we haven’t heard Christ say, "You are my witnesses" - as if the Spirit were not operating any longer in our world.
"The Ghost World" is the title of one of the chapters in Loren Eiseley’s autobiography, All the Strange Hours. He relates how he awakened one night, after what "had seemed a mild cold," conscious that:
I was running a fever and babbling a lecture to some unseen audience. Slowly, as my consciousness steadied, I grew aware of something strange. Outside, lightning bolts sporadically split the dark. I could see through the bedroom window a torrential rain in progress. After each stroke of lightning I waited for the following thunder. There was none. I was deaf ... I was alone with that knowledge in the dark.1
He continues:
"Mabel," I said to my sleeping wife. "Say something. For God’s sake, say something." The lightning flickered again. I saw my wife start up. Her lips moved. I heard nothing, nothing at all. I arose and lit the lamp and stared at her.
Fearful that he had inherited his mother’s "stone-deafness," he writes:
I spoke to my wife, tugging futilely at my ears. "It’s gone," I said desperately. "I can’t hear you, I can’t hear anything." We sat in the little kitchen (for they had gotten out of bed), while she wrote me a note. "We’ll find another doctor in the morning."2
They did. And he learned that the cold had closed his eustachian tubes temporarily; he would get his hearing back in six months or so, with treatment.
Eiseley went deaf in the fall of the year; he didn’t regain his hearing until March:
The months of winter passed, along with bitter disappointment. I wrote in silence, dreaming of digging days under the badlands sun. I wrote only to entertain myself, to keep the shadow back of me. Finally, while waiting for supper one late March evening, a soft sputtering purr seemed to
emanate from somewhere near the stove. "Mabel," I shouted, leaping up, "the gas flame, is it going? The gas flame. I heard it! I heard it!"3
He had indeed - and he was on his way to recovery of his hearing - and resumption of his career as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Without regaining his hearing, he might never have been heard of again.
Our problem - if we are to be Jesus’ witnesses - is that we have to hear the Word and that sometimes we are deaf. It is that same Spirit who came with the sound of rushing wind, thunder, and with lightning, who opens our ears - our hearts and minds - to the Word of Christ - and makes us witnesses.
The Spirit and the World
The Des Moines Register carried an article in March, 1982, about an event that had happened in February, 1981, titled, "Did He Get Off or Get Rehabilitated?" It was a rather familiar story about a drunken driver who smashed into another car, hospitalizing a pregnant woman who, six hours after the accident, gave birth to a stillborn child. The woman also suffered a broken arm, a broken right leg, nerve damage to her left leg and a pelvis broken in four places. The twenty-two-year-old driver of the car that hit her was subsequently convicted of his second offense of drunken driving and "driving while his license was suspended." He had also been convicted of speeding five times in the past five years, "and once each of driving improperly, failing to have his vehicle under control and operating a vehicle without the owner’s consent." He had been in four other accidents and had his license suspended three times. After a year of "complicated legal procedures, he was sentenced to serve seven days in jail." To the woman, her husband, and her mother, this seemed to be a travesty of justice.
The woman who lost her baby and nearly died herself said: "They suspended his driver’s license. What good does that do? When he hit us his driver’s license was suspended. I laughed when I heard he was supposed to pay restitution. He doesn’t have any money. It’s all turned out into a big joke. I’m to the point where I’ve been made to feel I ought to apologize to him for getting in his way."
Doesn’t that sound a bit like cheap grace? We are freely forgiven of our sins by God in Christ, no matter how grievous they may be - and we need do nothing, can do nothing, to merit God’s forgiveness. But we should change - and that’s where the work of the Holy Spirit comes in again "to convince the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment" - and to change our hearts and minds and lives. The defense attorney in the above case says "the case is a prime example of how the system of justice is supposed to work." He says, "I know Clarence’s driving record is far from good. And this is a perfect case that would make your blood boil if you didn’t understand Clarence. But do you punish or rehabilitate? And in this case Clarence has done a miraculous job of improving himself. It’s incredible what he’s done working with Alcoholics Anonymous. In the past year he has completely turned himself around." The judge who sentenced the man defended his actions on the basis of a similar argument. They would both say that the man was convinced, as well as convicted legally, and that was what brought about the change in his life.
In the Campo Verano, Rome’s "active" cemetery, there’s a kind of table that is covered with crosses that light up electrically with the proper coin. Every grave in the cemetery is located on that table-map, so that - electronically - families and friends may "light a candle" for their loved ones, much as they do in Roman Catholic churches. Whether or not we put on any technological exhibitions in our churches to usher in the celebration of the Day of Pentecost doesn’t really matter, because we still can sing,
Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire,
And lighten with celestial fire; ...
knowing that the Spirit knows all of us and seeks to "turn us on" to Christ, to give us faith by turning us from sin toward God that we might truly be his witnesses in the world until Christ comes again. Amen.