Pentecost: fifty days

 

Coming up the Day of Pentecost this Sunday. In Jewish tradition Pentecost was the fiftieth day after Passover. In Christian lore, the story in the Book of Acts (see it below, scroll down), Pentecost marks the coming of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus' disciples. Pentecost is sometimes called "the birthday of the church." 

The lectionary (list of readings) for the day offers several choices, options: choice of Collect for the Day, choice of OT/NT readings, choice of Gospel readings. I selected from the options to post below (scroll down) and possibly comment on. Parish rectors and/or preachers will make their actual selections: being neither anymore, as a fully retired parish priest, I do not know what we will hear in our local parish.

++++++

A preferred breakfast this morning: fried catfish from the deli at the Sweet Bay Publix. Now that they offer fried catfish I no longer have to mourn its demise at the Piggly Wiggly deli and at the defunct Winn-Dixie deli now Aldi's. Twice now the Publix deli was out of catfish in the deli counter when I got there, but the attendant said, "wait, we'll cook it for you right now, it only takes six minutes," and they did. Something at Publix about the attitude toward customers, that you don't experience at every store. I appreciate them. They must have a very good employee training program.

Fried catfish I love, but we never ate it at home when I was growing up, nor did we ever have it among our wholesale or retail offerings in my father's seafood business my years working there. I never knew why, nor, actually, did I ever wonder why. I do remember watching in other fish-houses as catfish were skinned and either filleted or packed whole for sale, but I never ate fried catfish until well into adulthood. The "first Time" that I remember was a Friday night eat all you want catfish restaurant in Sherman, Texas, where we were taken by a beloved, now long dead, family friend, and I became a fried catfish lover for life. 

+++++++++

Today to Bill's Grocery Outlet up the street (I can see it right now from where I'm sitting in my home office study den window here in 7H) for two little squatty quarts of milk. Instead of a tall quart or half-gallon, we buy those little squatty quarts because they fit in the back of the refrigerator where the temp is coldest, instead of having to stand on a door shelf where it's exposed to heat every Time the door is opened. 

While at Bill's I may buy a package of liver sausage as well, the slices, for favorite sandwiches. The package includes four slices and makes two sandwiches for me. For my sandwich, two slices Pepperidge Farm very thin whole wheat bread, thick smears of mayonnaise, two slices liverwurst and close it up. Mug of hot & black to sip with. Once in a while I may add a slice of cheese, but not usually, for the same reason I don't put a cracker under or hot sauce or catsup over a raw oyster: I don't want nothin' between the oyster and my taste buds, nomesane; same with the liverwurst, no cheese to interfere with the occasional special treat. 

Unless we go out to the TAFB Commissary, I don't see the liverwurst anywhere but Bill's and Piggly Wiggly, and I'm thinking that it must be a social class thing, nomesane? If you don't know what I'm saying, forget I mentioned it.

This season for the first Time, we had and enjoyed cara cara oranges. They are sweet, and at the first of the season were very juicy, nowadays they've been refrigerated in storage overlong and are not as juicy, but we enjoyed discovering them a month or two ago.

++++++++++ 

Daughter and husband flying today, from Tallahassee to Atlanta, then this evening from Atlanta to London, overnight in the black sky high over the Atlantic Ocean then arriving in London early tomorrow morning. I'm counting on text notifications as usual to keep my anxiety and BP from going off the charts. My beloved daughters, I like them to be in sight, where I can see them. Now that they're all of age, where they are is their choice not mine. BTW, if you aren't there yet, if you children are still at home, be warned: the anxiety doesn't fade in the least as they age and disappear from your sight into lives of their own. It's the life of a parent. 

Somebody once described a child as "someone who moves through your life on their way to becoming an adult person." They never belong to us, they're never ours, they're a charge, a responsibility, life's greatest gift and privilege, a parent's fiercest love. 

+++++++

Reading the below Bible selections for next Sunday, a couple of questions arise in my mind. One about the spirit of the Lord, one about God's peace.

Sundays in the liturgy for Holy Communion, after the Bread is broken we sing an Agnus Dei. In the Rite Two service (10:30 AM) it goes, "Jesus, Lamb of God, have mercy on us. Jesus, bearer of our sins, have mercy on us. Jesus, redeemer, redeemer of the world, give us your peace," and even after my half-life as a parish priest I'm still asking, "what is this peace that we sing and pray for and apparently don't get because we're still singing, praying, and longing?" 

It has many relevancies, one being the standard Jewish greeting "Shalom," that Jesus the Risen Lord would have given the disciples as he entered the room where they were gathered that evening of Easter Day. The room was locked and he entered anyway, and he ate a piece of fish, and he wasn't recognizable at first - - all being ignitions for theological exploration; but my question is specifically about his "Shalom," the Hebrew greeting "Peace!" William Alexander Percy's poem turned hymn reads, "the peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod," a jolting, sobering thought. Midway through Sunday worship everyone stands and "exchanges the Peace" with others in the room: what are we wishing on us when the Celebrant says, "the peace of the Lord be always with you," and then we turn to those around us and wish them "God's peace" - - what is it? How does one know when one has it? 

Everybody thinks they know, and every answer is different. My closest might have been as I helped serve Holy Communion during our age of spirit-filled worship, the Charismatic Renewal or Neo-Pentecostal movement of our church for a couple of decades late in the twentieth century. It was a good Time. The peace of God was a consuming spiritual feeling. When I first experienced it, at a mid-week worship service at an Episcopal parish in Northern Virginia while I was in theological seminary there, I, being a lifelong stodgy Episcopalian, was very much taken aback. Not long after, my Pennsylvania bishop sent me to a Renewal Conference in North Carolina and when I left I "was one." 

Again, it was a good and blessed Time, I brought some of it along with me when we relocated to Trinity, Apalachicola in 1984, including much new music, hymns, spiritual songs, and sung settings of the Mass. Over the next decades it disappeared, and I missed it very much. Nowadays I reckon I'm back to stodgy.   

My other concern and question is closely related: it's Pentecost and "the season after Pentecost," what's this spirit of God, spirit of the Lord, Holy Spirit business all about? Again, it turns out to be something that everybody knows the answer to and no two answers are the same. 

The sense of it begins in Genesis 1 when "the spirit ר֣וּחַ ruach, spirit, wind, breath, mind) of ELOHIM was hovering over the waters. And then at Genesis 2:7 when God breathed into adam the earthling וְר֣וּחַ neshamah, the puff, breath, blast, spirit, soul, intellect, inspiration of life. The spirit of YHWH, spirit of ELOHIM is mentioned here and there throughout the Old Testament, and then in the New Testament: it never seems to mean a divine person distinct from YHWH ELOHIM God as Christian theology has developed it and enshrined it in creed, doctrine and dogma; rather, it means the presence of God's own self in and around us. David was filled with it; and King Saul, who was driven insane by it and its being taken from him. 

I don't pick up a sense of the Holy Spirit as a separate person until the "great commission" in Matthew 28, the latter day addition to Matthew in which the Risen Christ commissions his disciples to baptize all nations in the Name of the Trinity. My seminary theology professor called the Holy Spirit "the love between God the Father and God the Son," which has less a sense of Trinity than of Binity until one's theological apprehension can attribute divine personhood to agape love itself.

So, Who or What is the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is whoever or whatever moved over the waters in the Creation Story in Genesis One. The Holy Spirit is whoever or whatever puffed life, and was the puff of breath itself, into us earthlings in the Creation Story in Genesis Two. The Holy Spirit was whoever or whatever came down on Jesus as a dove at his baptism. The Holy Spirit is whoever or whatever fills us and makes us specifically human in the image of God. The Holy Spirit is whoever or whatever Jesus promised to send to us to take his place when he was no longer physically present on earth as one of us earthlings. The Holy Spirit is God's presence in and around us throughout our lives.

At all events, here are the Pentecost readings that appeal to me.  

RSF&PTL

T90  

The Collect

Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

or this

O God, who on this day taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Acts 2:1-21

When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. And 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 and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs-- in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

`In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit 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. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day.

Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.' "

Numbers 11:24-30

Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord; and he gathered seventy elders of the people, and placed them all around the tent. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again.

Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp. And a young man ran and told Moses, "Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp." And Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, "My lord Moses, stop them!" But Moses said to him, "Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!" And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp.

The Gospel

John 20:19-23

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

or

John 7:37-39

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.