It’s amazing! It’s as if you’ve been running around a foreign country and you’ve finally bumped into people who are speaking your language.
On the day of Pentecost the Spirit reversed the confusion of the Tower of Babel into coherent speech for a diverse multitude.
The Spirit gives us utterance in different ways, expressions in different gifts. The Spirit gives us understanding and inspiration in different ways and by different means.
How is the experience of the gathered disciples and their hearers on the day of Pentecost, two thousand years ago, to make a difference to us now?
Will we, gathered or scattered, hear, each in our own heart language, the word of God? Will we be inspired? Will we act - apparently crazy -dancing and singing and praising God? Will we - apparently sober - go out and do the things Jesus commanded us to do?
Will we visit the sick, pray with the despairing, speak out for justice, reach out to the lonely? Will we listen to each other in solemn assembly, seeking the guidance of the Spirit in our decisions?
Will we have reason to? And how will we encounter the Spirit in our own life and times?
On the border now they talk of encounters with migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, and the desperate wanderers who lose their way. Encounters. Better perhaps than simply saying arrests, as many have entertained angels unawares. This week I encountered a man who asked directions to the bus station. I gave them to him. Then I thought, too late, that I could have given him a ride in the heat of the day.
There is a story in the book of Genesis. In the heat of the day, while he was sitting in the door of his tent, Abraham encountered three men, strangers to him, who came to him at the Oaks of Mamre, and he offered them hospitality. The hospitality of his tent, his household, his family.
Sometimes all someone asks of us is directions. Sometimes we are offered the chance to do much more. If we have eyes to see. The three strangers were indeed grateful for the hospitality they received and in turn gave a blessing only they could give. Your wife, they said, will at last bear to you the child you both have sought. And that child - through its descendants - will become the host of the world.
We do not meet God in the person of angels, dressed as strangers who wander through the desert. (Do we?) We do not meet Jesus in the flesh. (Though sometimes we wonder.)
The Holy Spirit is the God we encounter. We have not seen the Father, and Jesus, since his Ascension, has left us in the care of the Comforter, the Advocate, the Teacher; the one who comes alongside us, and yet remains unseen. Unseen, that is, except through permeance.
Permeating through all of our encounters with each other, and, all unawares, with angels. Pervading too all our days, ordinary and especially significant.
Look through the prayer book and you will see the Spirit landing upon the baptized, inhabiting the confirmed, blessing the married, consoling the bereaved and accompanying the sick even unto the death bed. Look again and you will see the Spirit invoked upon the ordained, and called upon to bless new ministries and sacred places.
Listen as we celebrate Eucharist, or say our daily prayers. You will hear the Spirit speaking. For the Spirit is here present among us, and through that invisible permeating influence God is here.
Hear the Word. Touch the cup. Taste the bread. Say “peace” to your neighbor. Come Holy Spirit. Come to us. Amen.
This meditation, based on a sermon given on the Day of Pentecost, appeared on the Arizona Daily Star website June 4th 2023 under the title "Encounters with the Spirit are all around us" (https://tucson.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/encounters-with-the-spirit-are-all-around-us/article_a00ae510-ff02-11ed-a83c-2788b4905516.html)
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