Pentecost

As we approach the edges of this pandemic, I find myself recalling how it was just a few months ago. To be honest, the lifting of restrictions, the return of familiar activities, is a bit disorienting. I’ve become quite comfortable hiding behind my mask, in this rectangle. So, in this transition I find myself reflecting on the near past as a way to locate myself in the present. Standing between these worlds, these realities and looking back to survey where we’ve been, I feel a bit like Ezekiel in today’s reading, peering across the valley of recent history now scattered with the bones of lifeless structures, bodiless spaces. Those empty classrooms, echoing sanctuaries, dusty altars will slowly be reacquainted with their previous occupants, with their previous uses. And slowly, my body will be drawn out from behind this screen and reminded of what it is like to brush against another.

But for now, we stand in between, surveying our structures in their bony states. What does it say about our lives that so much continued without the fullness of bodies? What does it say about school that we claim a year of learning without the physical presence of one another? What does it say about industries who thrived in a time of disconnect? What does it say about church if we don’t feel the hungry ache for a shared table?

As we consider leaving behind the asphyxiating existence of this pandemic, I wonder if we will hear the prophetic invitations of these bones. 

A year ago, George Floyd begged for air. I can’t breathe. His cry for breath against the knee of government force was not the first, nor, sadly, the last. But for some reason the country, and the world, seemed to listen to him a little more closely than those that came before. Why? Is it because at this time last year we were all paying close attention to our own lungs, anxious that if we couldn’t catch a full breath we might die? Is it because being more acquainted with the vulnerability of our own bodies we were able to see it in others? Or is it because after three months of obscuring numbers and graphs charting deaths we needed to hold onto a face, we needed to know one of the numbers lost? Or perhaps, simply, George Floyd’s death was enough? I don’t know, but I am grateful that something, in that moment, I’m grateful that lost breath, that stolen life, spoke to us and moved us to open ourselves up to hope and dream of something more. I’m grateful that we saw the absence of breath and were moved to work for a world where all people are allowed to breathe. I’m grateful that we saw a body pressed against the pavement, and moved our feet across miles of pavement, a gathering of bodies bringing life to skeletal streets. We saw the bones of oppression and we responded with action. 

I guess I’m wondering if the other breathless moments and lifeless spaces of this pandemic might also lead to reflective transformation. As we return to familiar routines can we, will we peer back and consider the skeletal structures that arrange our lives? Will we mark the articulate systems that maintain a semblance of order, but have little space for living breathing bodies?

Can these bones live? O Lord God, you know. 

There is a lot of work to do to ready these bones for life, for breath. These bones scattered by individualizing forces of sterile institutions must come back together. These faces broken apart into their own rectangles must return to one another. These bodies learning, praying, eating, breathing in isolation must find each other again. We must return to the work of community. 

And these bones, once together, they need flesh. These faces need laughter. These ears need song. These bodies need dance. We need to be wrapped in the sinews of sensuality, in the fleshiness of presence, in the skin of movement and embrace. We must return to tending to one another, allowing the inherent vulnerability of our bodies to create moments of giving and receiving. 

And when we have come together, when we have embraced an embodied existence, as on the day of Pentecost…

Into this space, the Holy Spirit moves, breathing through the gathered, through us. A sound like the rush of a violent wind, tongues as of fire resting. 

The Holy Spirit works through anticipating subjects, speaking a healing and transforming grace that reaches further than we can comprehend. Upon this crowd, the spirit pours dreams and visions of righteousness enacted. Into this space the spirit sends gospel tongues of belonging. This is not a generalizing force that dismisses the specific gifts and needs of each person. No, the Spirit breathes a diverse array of fiery tongues, resting on each individual, celebrating the complexity of difference. Here, the Spirit looks upon a divided world and sighs a sensual embrace of love that draws us together. 

The Spirit feels the ache of lifeless bones, hears the gasps of hope, and hums the fiery rhythm of life-giving dance, moving the crowd to an intoxicating sway of hopeful justice. They’re dancing! At nine o’clock in the morning. 

So, I guess my question is, are we ready to dance? Are we ready for the Holy Spirit to fill us? 

As this pandemic lays bare the dry bones of our lives, as a year without physical presence points to the lifeless systems that have existed for far too long, as the pandemic threatens our own physicality and draws us to more deeply consider ongoing threats to marginalized bodies, as communion tables sit empty speaking to a larger hunger for justice, will we let the spirit move? Will we desire the presence of one another? Will we embrace the belonging of shared vulnerabilities? When we return to the table, will we voraciously enact an eschatological dream of justice?

Dear ones, in this Pentecostal shift, may we mark the lifeless bones, may we return to the embrace of one another, may we be open to the breath of the Holy Spirit.

May we allow fiery tongues to rest upon us and speak of righteous grace.

May we sway in celebration of one another’s testifying presence. 

May this living body be moved.

Amen.