Day of Pentecost (Year 2, NL)

From Paul’s letter, we can infer that the Corinthians tended toward the same bias from which many of us suffer: the belief that there is little collective wisdom in the church.

California is in a severe drought. Normally it rains in the time from mid-October to March, but for the past few years it has been bone dry. Some say we may only have a year of water left. We are thirsty.

It is clear in Acts 2 that a party is taking place—that dreams and visions are not meant to be dreamt alone.

I learned many Bible stories by watching movies in Sunday school. They were those old-fashioned movies, shown on a reel-to-reel projector, that tried to portray the stories as some Cecil B. DeMille wannabe imagined they took place. They were seldom more than a few steps grander than the local Christmas pageant; most of the disciples basically wore fancy bathrobes.

The Pentecost movie was dramatic.

We may experience division in our cries to God, hearing only what’s loud right next to us. But God hears us as one human family, crying out for blessing.

Painter Sawai Chinnawong saturates the outpouring of the Spirit with the colors Thai art traditionally associates with the holy.

It’s been seven years, and I cannot access Jesus' word of peace. The tears still sting and slosh over my pail of remorse.

Back in the dark ages of the 20^th century, I remember an ad for the Yellow Pages that urged, “Let your fingers do the walking.” Now that texting has become the preferred means of communication, it seems our fingers actually do the talking.

I’ve been thinking about the complexity of communication with God, especially the challenge of praying at times when words are hard to come by. In response to such a dilemma, Paul essentially tells the Romans to let the Spirit do the talking.

Sometimes when I set out to preach from the Revised Common Lectionary I feel like calling someone from the Consultation on Common Texts to get the scoop on why the group settled on a particular set of pericopes. This week, Isaiah’s marriage metaphor and Jesus’ miraculous transformation of water into wedding wine are an obvious match. The rationale for including 1 Corinthians 12:1-11’s discussion of spiritual gifts is less clear.

With every cycle of our respiratory systems, we are sustained by the same intimate inspiration God exhaled into Adam’s muddy lungs. That breath permeates every cell of our being, nose to toes, invigorating our bodies and minds and souls until it is ready to be released, silently, from the same nostrils through which it came.

This is as ordinary as oxygen and carbon dioxide, and as extraordinary as spirit and miracle.

Prayer is not something we do first and foremost on our own. We pray with other Christians.

It's commonly suggested that the Pentecost story is a reversal of the chaotic separation of the Tower of Babel. That point gets debated. What isn't debatable is that people remain separated in abundant ways.

The Spirit's power is the power to bear witness.