Day of Pentecost, Year A

    Empowerment Intended for Me, For Us!

The Holy Spirit is God’s transforming gift to our living – changing anger into concern, loneliness into shared delight, and frustration into vision.

This week's lectionary Bible passages:

Acts 2: 1-21; Numbers 11:24-30; Psalm 104:24-34; John 20:19-23

“The power of the Holy Spirit – God's gift to us on Pentecost – is meant to be shared with the powerless.” 

Norman Kansfield

“The unpredictability of the Spirit in these passages humbles us, and reminds us that the Spirit cannot be constrained by our expectations or our theologies."

Valerie Bridgeman Davis

"The Holy Spirit is a source of creativity and renewal for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender leaders and communities who may be tired or discouraged in their work for justice."

Mona West

“These passages lead us to the amazing power of the Holy Spirit.”

Linda Thomas

	What are the ways by which the “miracle of the tongue” and the “miracle of the ear” can transform our own interactions with others now?

Numbers 11:24-30 really upsets religious hierarchies and authorities because God proves that the Spirit does not have to be in the confines of acceptable religious boundaries. Like religious leaders of today, those leaders in the text didn’t get that. They wanted to stop what happened. Joshua perhaps tries to reserve authority for Moses alone among the ancient Israelites, but Moses’ response is instructive for allies of and members in LGBT communities.  Moses expresses the longing that all God’s people would be prophets and that the Spirit would rest on everyone. Both the shaking of conformity and the desire that God would work in these new ways seem like good news to people struggling inside restrictive and toxic structures.
 
Today, we see the Spirit breaking through institutions and structures that expresses Moses’ longing that Spirit rest on all God’s people.  For example, the Spirit works not just within the church, but also outside of the church and in advance of the church's best efforts.  In our current national context there are states (such as Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Hawaii to name a few) which have advanced further than the church relative to the rights and privileges of LGBT people.

According to Numbers 11:14, the whole reason that God’s spirit is shared with the elders is because Moses “is not able to carry these people alone for they are too heavy for me.”  These are important words for LGBT people in leadership.  So often we burn out as leaders in our communities because of the life and death nature of our work.  We need to be reminded that gift of God’s Spirit is about shared leadership.

	Where do you see the Spirit of God breaking through in liberating ways even in structures and organizations that work against LGBT equality and God’s justice?

Psalm 104:24-34, 35b-13 testifies that God, in wisdom, created everyone and everything in the earth – a variety that is vast and teeming beyond number!  In this declaration, the psalmist asserts a truth that informs communities on the edge of dominant theology.  We cannot know how varied and how expansive God’s creative love is expressed in creation, including in varied human expressions of creation. This psalm suggests we move beyond unilateral thinking about God’s creativity.  Human sexuality may be included in that conversation.
 
This psalm can say some very rough things: "Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more." (These hard words from verse 35 seem to have been intentionally omitted from today's reading.)  Yet Psalm 104 also says some of the most delightful (and playful) things: for example, the sea contains both ships and Leviathan -- "that you formed just so it could have fun in the sea" (verse 26).

It is important for those guiding LGBT communities and churches to note that “God’s spirit is creative and renewing.”  This is good news for LGBT people in leadership who may be feeling burn out. It is also good news for LGBT communities and churches that have experienced upheaval.

	If Psalm 104 encourages us to include our sexuality in conversations about God’s creative love, what difference might it make in how we live and respond to others?

Fear has kept many a person behind closed doors, in closets, and under wraps. John 20:19-23 has a hint of the anti-Semitic tone in the gospels (“for fear of the Jews”). Having made note of this bias in the text, we want to focus on the reality that the only remedy for fear is peace.  This peace is breathed in and through us by Jesus, who grants the Spirit and forgives sin.
 
Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost are all rolled into one event for the author of the gospel of John.  Jesus, in this account, describes our mission in the following important way; “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained" (verse 23).  This suggests that we really have to carefully understand for what we are praying when, in the prayer of our Savior, we say: "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us."

The disciples’ fear keeps them behind locked doors. This is a vivid description of “the closet”  for LGBT people.  The good news of this text is that Jesus is able to break through our closets and breathe peace.

John 7:37-39 led us to reflect that people long for a spiritual life that is vibrant and satisfying, and that will continue to meet our need for strength. People in solidarity and LGBT communities are often left feeling empty in religious settings where judgment and pain are served up in the name of Jesus. At Pentecost, we are reminded that Jesus, not structures or rituals, is the source of a spiritual life that sustains.  Moreover, we must remember that the Spirit cannot be contained or kept within ourselves only, but overflows out of us, sometimes even in spite of us. It is haunting to note that verse 39 reads, “as yet there was no Spirit.”  It is hard to imagine a world, a life, without the Spirit.

	What are the “locked doors” in each of our lives that we might wish Jesus would pass through?