Pentecost Eve

Tomorrow is Pentecost, which means today is Pentecost Eve.  My holiday combining side wants to ask what treats we'll leave out for the Holy Spirit.  My cynical side says that most of us don't want to invite the Holy Spirit into our lives for fear of all that will need to change.

I've often thought that the imagery we use for Pentecost makes it hard for us--wind and fire are change agents to be sure, but few of us welcome their intrusion into our lives.  I'll spend this Pentecost Eve thinking of a different set of metaphors.  A few years ago, I wrote an article for Gather magazine that imagined God as quilt group, Holy Trinity as quilt group, and I said this about the Holy Spirit:  "The Holy Spirit is a quilt group member, too. The Spirit is the one who comes to us with support and information about the quilt shows that the Spirit calls us to enter. The Holy Spirit, an encourager, believes in our creative powers, even when we’re less sure ourselves."

Next Sunday I'll be preaching for the first time at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Trinity Sunday.  Let me remember to return to that article as I prepare my sermon.

But before next Sunday comes tomorrow, Pentecost.  And today is a good day to return to the Pentecost narrative, the end of Luke, the beginning of Acts.  On the eve of Pentecost, those believers didn't know what was about to happen. I imagine that they felt at loose ends. Christ was with them, then crucified, then with them again, then gone. What now?

Many of us may feel like those disciples--we've experienced a time of exhausting change, from the pandemic, from political shifts, from a war in Europe, from collapses of various sorts.  It's no wonder that we have no patience for this story about wind and fire and upheaval.  We've had quite enough of that.  

Maybe we have been feeling that we're in a post-Ascension, pre-Pentecost time. Maybe one mission has come to an end, and we're not sure what to do next. Maybe we're still recovering from a time of grief and loss. Maybe our favorite leader has left. Maybe we're casting about for a project that could set our hearts on fire.

Pentecost promises us that we won't be adrift forever. At some point the Holy Spirit will come, brimming with suggestions and opportunities, and we'll be able to do more than we ever dreamed possible.