When you send forth your Spirit, we are renewed!  We are renewed!  – Psalm 104

Children of the Spirit!

It’s easy to be discouraged when we get caught in a pattern of “doom scrolling” through the 24/7 news cycle, shaking our heads at the latest political news and finding our limbic brain hijacked by what we see and read there.  For political party strategists of every stripe, “reactionary mode” is exactly where they’d like us to stay—at least long enough to motivate us to “click” the donation button before we move on.  I’m trying to limit my intake of news beyond a certain time each day, lest my dream life assume the same “gloom and doom” character that dominates our civic landscape. 

As we get ready to celebrate Pentecost Sunday, I wonder if our ancestors in the faith might have something to teach us about how to deal with all the eruptions and disruptions we experience around us?  After all, the first generation of Jewish Christians lived with all the hard realities of Empire.  It was not an easy existence with the ever present threat of violence hanging in the air, the crushing weight of Roman taxes, the uncertainty about the future, the contempt for both their Jewish roots and their emerging faith centered in Jesus as Messiah.  He, their teacher and now risen Lord, had offered them a Way to be in the world; a Way that did not look to the Empire for authentication but was rather an antidote to Empirical might; a Way that welcomed and included those who were sidelined, devalued, and disenfranchised; a Way that opened the door to community with others—including (most radically) non-Jewish neighbors. 

In Luke’s gospel the risen Christ spends 40 days among the disciple community preparing them for what comes next— the outpouring of the promised Holy Spirit.  During those days Jesus teaches them why everything he told them while he was with them had to be fulfilled…his suffering, his death, his rising.  All of it was a prelude so that the life-changing message and power of forgiveness would be poised to make its way around the world.  “You-all are the first to hear it, the first to see it, and you’ll be the first to tell it,” he told them.  “I’ve chosen you to be my witnesses, in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Definitely a commencement vibe to his speech, don’t you agree?)

The overriding spirit characterizing his waiting community was that of JOY.  In the midst of all the challenges they faced, all the demands of Empire, all their existential struggles, they refused to be DIS-couraged—for their risen Lord was in their midst—first in the flesh and now through the Spirit.  I think it’s time for us to seize that JOY and claim it for ourselves!