June 3, 2001
© 2001 Grant M. Gallup
PRINCIPAL SERVICE:
Acts 2:1-11 While the day of Pentecost was running its course
Joel 2:28-32 Your sons and daughters shall prophesy
Psalm 104:25-37 In wisdom you have made them all
or 33:12-15,18-22 The Lord watches all the inhabitants of the earth
I Corinthians 12:4-13 Varieties of gifts but the same Spirit
John 20:19-23 He breathed on them
or John 14:8-17 Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father."
One word kept coming to me each day this past week--the week of nine days (they gave us the name Novena) that begins with the Ascension Day and ends today, and that word is SOLIDARITY. It's not a word that's very popular in the U.S.A. today, but it used to be heard a lot, especially in the trade union movement (remember that?). Solidarity--remember the song, "Solidarity Forever"? The working people used to sing it from memory. I went to a public meeting once where young union leaders needed a song sheet to get the words right. Solidarity Forever expressed the intention of people to stand by each other solidly in the common struggle for a decent wage, and decent working conditions, and for social justice. It meant that if the people who worked in a Hormel meat packing plant in Minnesota went on strike, then members of the teachers' union in Chicago would stand by them in solidarity, in more than sympathy, but in agreement and in support. When I went to Nicaragua in 1985, people in Chicago asked me "why?" and I who hate humidity, who hate mosquitoes, and in whose soul their chills a Christina Rosetti Bleak Midwinter, asked myself "Why?" Witness for Peace had the one word answer we would learn to give: Solidarity. To stand as one with those whom the politicies of the U.S. were murdering, to be with them in their place, to be in solid witness with them against oppression, and for their inclusion in the human commuity.
The Day of Pentecost is Solidarity Sunday. We need to find ways to express this more fully, more openly, more courageously. We need to find ways to be Pentecostalists in solidarity, more energetically, in more fiery and stormy ways that will spread Fire in the Earth.
The Day of Pentecost begins with solidarity in the church--something we are far from knowing now. Luke's account in the Acts says that Pentecost doesn't happen until "the disciples were all together in one place." The unity of the church itself is the prerequisite for the momentous event which follows. The disciples are together: then it happens, the rush of mighty winds of change fills the house where they are sitting. Now sitting is not the usual picture we have of the church militant. Standing, yes: it's not as militant as marching, but twill serve. We stand to give special respect to the gospel lesson, and we sit to be receptive and attentive to lectio divina and to preaching. In some churches, there's more calisthenics at the liturgy--and some pentecostalists are called holy rollers for their exertion and breath-taking aerobics. But Luke says his pentecostalism sits down. Sitting, as we do in Quaker meetings, to wait upon the Spirit. (Early Quakers, however, were not so named for sitting quietly and pinching the bridges of their noses with heads bowed. They quaked, as in earth-quake.) We sit to be instructed, to learn of our commonality, to share a meal, to chat over a coffee table, to exchange, to watch and wait. Then comes the pentecostal gift of solidarity, the wind of change.
The second feature is the fire. We are accustomed to wanting our religion air-conditioned to coolness. Your home thermostat doubtless has the decal that says "between 68 and 72 degrees is comfort range". Holy Spirit does not confine herself to "comfort range", but gets incendiary, like Managua in May, hot. The same gigantic temperatures that can melt down a Chernobyl and burn into the earth's core can melt the earth away. The fire of Pentecost will not submit itself to our controls, for it is the burning energy of God's own life and God who is in charge distributes the energy so that it comes to rest (not to attack) each receptive learner. What results is communication, not censorship; speech, not silence; courage, not timorousness. Even in a Quaker meeting, the Spirit leads to testimony, to inspired utterance. The technology of your Select President George W. Bush's renewed Star Wars initiative will not save. The Psalmist sings, "A government is not saved by a great army, nor a warrior delivered by great strength; no one can trust a horse to save him." Nor a burro. Ronald Reagan was crowned the Great Communicator by a managed media, which cannot tell the truth itself, and which now wisely avoids to report that he is gone away into Alzheimer's, a pitiful ikon of their own confusion.
But the Holy Spirit is the Great Communicator, and you shall not take the name of God the Holy Spirit quite so frivolously. It is the Spirit that fills the disciples and connects people from every nation under heaven. The pentecostal language is not the tongue of angels, nor the Double Dutch of glossalalia which St. Saulos/Paulos so adroitly put in its place as a minor gift, in his letter to the Corinthian "crazy-matics". The languages of Pentecost are identified as Persian, Greek, Egyptian, and Arabic--human speech, but diverse, not imperialist. Some Libyans that day heard Judeans making sense, some Italians heard the same gospel as Ethiopians. The miracle of Pentecost was not cacophany ("ka ka sounds") but the mutual understanding of human language and culture by people from other human cultures, with other languages. The Blessed Pneuma started it: has the Church picked up that Fireball and run with it? Most American believers make not much effort to learn the language of others. Millions of students in Russia study English, and something like 25,000 students in the U.S. study Russian. I've taught English in Nicaragua for a dozen years, and folks are glad to learn the language of a world empire, so they can cope with it. But the children of the empire couldn't ask for papel higenico in Latin America, or even in Spanish Harlem.
Pentecost is about drinking of the same Spirit, listening to the same gospel, speaking and singing the same Joy. Communication is both the means and the gift of solidarity, and it begins with listening. Listen to other people, other cultures, other voices. Solidarity means that there are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit. That's what Saulos/Paulos told the Corinthians, who thought the main thing was their own ecstasy--and he put it far below the first gift, Wisdom. Wisdom preaching: telling about God's life in us, what he called "perfect teaching." Saulos/Paulos says he was once himself a crazy-matic, caught up to the Seventh Heaven in ecstasy, but says he cannot (indeed, should not) talk about it, but about gifts that can be shared in solidarity. He says that yes, there is a kind of Private Trip religion that is authentic, but it's best kept to oneself. If it can't somehow be translated into Common Prayer, Common Good, then in solidarity sub-ordinate it; that is, order it below. There can be no priority for show-boating, and no race or class or gender distinctions in Christ.
Philip asks, "Rabbi Yeshua, please show us the Father and we shall be satisfied." And Yeshua replies, "Philip, I've been with you such a long time and you haven't yet figured out my solidarity with the Father-Mother of us all?" Jesus claimed for his own teaching that it was in soidarity with God's own Wisdom. "I will pray the Father-Mother who will give you another Counsellor" who is the Teacher, an instructor in the Wisdom that Paul so highly values, the facilitator that Luke sees in the fiery gifts of Pentecost, come to walk in solidarity beside us.
John declares the world cannot receive such a Spirit. By "world" John means the world as it organizes itself against God, as it organizes itself against the human community, the world as it continues to organize itself against itself, the world of obfuscation, of self-seeking, nationalism, denominationalism, the world of Me First, the world of Me and Mine. This "world" cannot receive the Spirit of Truth.
Because the Spirit of Truth is the Spirit of Solidarity, of One Human community, One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church: One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, One God and Father-Mother of us all. Solidarity for ever. Amen.
GRANT GALLUP
CASA AVE MARIA
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA C.A.
gallup@tmx.com.ni
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