Pentecost (Year A) | May 31, 2020 | The Rev. Dr. Luk De Volder
Today is Pentecost and with that is all going on and many things going into overdrive in this emotional phase of the pandemic, allow these words of the divine to steep in your soul:
Receive the Holy Spirit, I am breathing the breath of life into you.
I promise you a to be with you. Not leave you orphaned. Abide with you.
The Spirit will be in you.
I am coming to you.
I am in my Father, you in me, I in you.
As we tend to feel troubled to breath, it is so important we connect with the breath of life, the primal energy, the beginning of our being.
Jesus Breathed over them. This is the Gospel, right after we all witnessed the excruciating scream of Mr. George Floyd: “I can’t breathe” as he gasped for justice. Of course, his cry echoes the howl of an entire people, hurting, oppressed, abused. Pentecost is calling today: Let my people breathe!
When the times and the world are in upheaval - and we certainly are getting our share - we can catch our breath by going back to basics, back to the beginning, and connect with the basic moves that help us to walk and regain perspective. And so let us connect with basics, at least with one of them this morning, our weekly day of rest, as the Lord, our God, calls us to do:
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. (Exodus 20:8-11)
It is so basic that we take rest, support ourselves. But the commandment, this basic spiritual step, extends this call wider than just for ourselves. The simple step of taking rest to catch our breath is also granted to the people around us, even the strangers in our town. We are called to provide rest for others. The perspective that the sabbath-commandment offers today, is that we are called to offer space to rest to everyone around us. And yet, in our country, with many Bible loving people around us, it remains acceptable that a man with a $20 dollar bill can’t find the peace of mind to complete his shopping, - because he is black.
As I am often sensitive to the concern that social and political agendas should not compromise the Biblical message, today I am concerned that I would compromise the Biblical message, by not addressing this social situation. If the fourth commandment of the sabbath rest is already giving that basic social mandate to grant each other the support of a day of rest, how much more are we called to apply to first and second commandment, the commandments of love. And all these commandments are given for regular times. Add the pandemic to it, and we are called even more to apply these commandments, and offer more leniency, more compassion, more understanding. Allowing each other to breathe!
The commandment of sabbath rest poignantly shows that something so basic as rest, time to catch your breath, should be part of our common practice, our common care. Not compromised by politics, nor privilege, let alone that there might be room for supremacy.
Instead of defining our common life as a space where we lobby for self-interest, legitimately can live at the expense of others, we are called to legislate support for each other, we are called to redefine our civic space as standing on common ground. As utopian such a change may seem, it is also one that is purely basic, breath-giving.
If the past did ever provide a license to instantly inflict a death sentence, particularly based on skin-color, the present gives us the perspective that this license was illicit and ill-spirited, that this spirit of supremacy is destructive, certainly to the people undergoing this violent oppression. The present shows us this racist dominance is in fact destructive to everyone involved. Because the same distortion permeates all other parts of our interactions, our self-image, our ideas about our potential. The present urges us to turn this around and to create breathing space, space for life, for dignity for every color of skin, starting with our sisters and brothers who are African American.
I realize, of course, that I am preaching to the choir. So in addition to our list of civil-rights actions we seek to renew, what else can we do in these Corona-virus times?
In these Covid-19 times, while grounded and locked-down, we feel displaced, at times even misplaced. As we pant from the pressure of all these changes, we gasp for normal. Like expatriates we feel “un-homed”, as the dutch verb would state it. Imagine being African American right now. While the virus lock-down is new for us, they have been living this expatriate life at home for a long long time.
So how do we change the mindset, the spirit? It clearly is one of the hardest things. When we can go back to basics, even further, back to the beginning, as Jesus did for the disciples in the Gospel today, who are overmastered by the amount of change. Their whole lives, their worship, their families, their understanding of God and the world, it all was overhauled. They were expatriates while being at home, hunkered down in the nation’s capital. It is there that the Lord calls them even further to basics, back to the beginning: The Holy Spirit, the breath of life, this energy of life we all have in us and that we have forgotten about. In this oppression and persecution, Jesus brings them back to the basic beginning: Let my people breathe.
It is time we all go back to this beginning so that we can begin anew. Let us give each other time to breath, breathing space, and rediscover the common open all including space, for everyone to live. So as we pray for George Floyd and all who can’t breath, we pray for the Spirit of renewal:
The Spirit is our helper the Helper:
I am breathing the breath of life into you.
I promise you a to be with you. Not leave you orphaned. Abide with you.
The Spirit will be in you.
I am coming to you.
I am in my Father, you in me, I in you.