Day of Pentecost (Year 3, NL)

What is the point of prayer? The question is writ large in the texts from both the Hebrew scripture and the Gospel for this Sunday. The terrain is fraught with places to trip and fall.

Those who heard the disciples preach on Pentecost comprehended the message in their own language. But that was only the beginning.

In Acts comes Luke’s imaginative way to build upon ancient stories. The tongues of fire are no longer seen from afar on top of God’s mountain. And the multiplicity of languages becomes God’s vehicle for bringing salvation to the entire world.

Pentecost offers a vision for Europe: not one megastate or one system for everything, but a model of diversity as peace.

Learning a language requires us to focus our attention on something outside ourselves. It's a lot like learning to pray.

Ellen Davis is full of surprises. Some are delightful, others raise questions for further study, and still others throw up stumbling blocks.

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.

On Shrove Tuesday 2010, I ate my last piece of golden, delicious sausage while listening to “When the Saints Go Marching In.” A Lenten practice of consuming no meat unfolded, followed by a turkey-less Thanksgiving, and an Advent with rice and beans.

There were two reasons for my going cold turkey as a vegetarian: survival in an interfaith marriage to a devout Hindu, and a spiritual exploration of what it might mean to practice nonviolence and environmental sustainability as a Christian vegetarian.

Growing in prayer is not simply acquiring a set of special spiritual skills. It is growing into Christian humanity.

In two pages, you go from a simple devotional habit to being sucked into the vortex of global power plays. You must be reading Brueggemann.

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.

It's easy to love Mr. C. It's not as easy to love Mrs. M., and it’s stone-cold not easy to love that guy down the street.

In the Bible, forgiveness involves repayment of what is owed. One way to pay down the debt is through charity to the poor.

Deo gratias. That’s what the sign in my office says. It’s not fancy, just two words laser-printed on office paper and tacked up over the computer monitor so I can read it dozens of times a day. 

The phrase—which means “Thanks be to God”—is the traditional Benedictine greeting that monks offer visitors.

Growing up, I watched Saturday morning television cartoons in which a character was making a decision. On one shoulder an angel hovered, saying, "Do the right thing!" But on the other shoulder perched a devil urging the character to do the wrong thing. You already know what happened: as the angel looked increasingly anxious, the cartoon character chose to do the wrong thing.

Paul's Galatians didn't watch TV cartoons, but they probably had a similar model of decision making.