I've heard so many interpretations of Pentecost, even just this year. It's about the birthday of the church! It's about multiculturalism! It's about change! It's about speaking! It's about hearing! It's about spreading the gospel! It's about (oh yeah) the Holy Spirit!
And, okay, maybe it's about all of that.
1 When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them. 4 They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak.
5 There were pious Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd gathered. They were mystified because everyone heard them speaking in their native languages.And then the story goes on to say how some people rejoiced, and some people called them drunks, and then Peter got up and preached a sermon, quoted a bunch of scripture, and called people to change their lives, be baptized, and live a new life in the community of believers.
I've always liked Pentecost; it's the Sunday of red paraments and red dresses (when I can remember to wear one), talk of wind and fire and words, and, if you're lucky, maybe even some birthday cake. But Pentecost has also sometimes made me anxious, especially if I'm paying any attention. It's the Sunday when I can't help but remember that famous Annie Dillard passage about crash helmets and signal flares.* It's the Sunday we ask for the Holy Spirit, even as we remember what affect the Holy Spirit had on all those people on that long-ago day.
Wind. Fire. Speaking in new languages. Seeming hopelessly drunk--at least from a distance. Chaos.
When I was about twelve years old, I went through confirmation class at my United Methodist Church. The Sunday of confirmation, when each member of our class stood before the congregation and confirmed the vows made on her or his behalf at baptism, was Pentecost Sunday. I wore a red dress. I knelt at the rail. Several people laid heavy hands on my head, and I wondered, kneeling there with my eyes closed, what would happen if I opened my eyes to find everyone's head on fire, all of us staggering around in fear and wonder at God, at last, in our midst. I almost wanted it to happen.
I've spent enough years living with faith communities that live with the Bible to know that stories in scripture can have layers upon layers of resonance, meanings upon meanings that are true. I'm pretty sure Pentecost is about birth and multiculturalism and change and speaking and hearing and all those other things I heard this year. But I think the layer that hangs me up the most is this one: Pentecost is about power.
For as long as I can remember, I have both craved God's power and feared it. But those words don't get the weights quite right. I have wanted God's power, yes, somewhere deep inside of me, someplace that has kept me coming back to faith for many years. But what has been far more overwhelming is my terror, my quaking fear that my timid requests for God will be met by Job's whirlwind, by the Lord of the universe, by the power that, of a morning, can set heads aflame.
My kids don't know yet that God is fearful. They'll learn. But it has been much more important to me, and to my husband, and to the good folks at church, to tell them that God loves them. (We'll lay aside, for the moment, how this is itself a fearful truth.) We tell them that God loves them, that God made them, that God called them good, that God wants them to be loved, and to love.
Even so, I think my kids understand power more than I do, somehow. They live closer to fear and to anger, to the visceral response and to the roaring temper. They throw themselves on the floor (something I haven't done in far too long). They scream--for fun, for fear, for frustration. They positively explode with all their huge, kid feelings. They overflow.
And I have to be careful, because my impulse, every time, is to shush them, to teach them to settle and reason, like I do. To keep them calm. To make them less like God and more like me.
I've been so irritable the last few days, so short with my kids and myself. I am weary of their outbursts, of their needs, of their noise, of their child-ish-ness. I can come up with a litany of reasons why, but instead, maybe I should just start to pay more attention. When the kids burst forth with excitement, anger, frustration--with power--maybe I can watch for tiny flames on their heads. Maybe I can feel the wind off of their dancing backs. Maybe I can hear their strange, loud language speaking good, saving news for my weary soul.
*Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? … Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return.”—Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), pp. 40-41.
