Pandentecost

Pentecost Sunday (8th Sunday in Easter), Year B
Texts: Acts 2:1-21; 24-34, 35b; Romans 8:22-27; John 15:26-27,4b-15

14 months ago, when we first all retreated into our homes, I remember thinking how this pandemic was like a time of Lent. There were things we had to give up or from which we must fast for a while—shopping in grocery stores, eating in restaurants, shaking hands with strangers—but which we would eventually take up again. I remember thinking that the time without would make us that much more grateful for the things we would someday have back.

As the lockdown was extended from two weeks to four, then to six, and then again, as Lent gave way to Holy Week and Easter, I remember thinking how this pandemic was like a death. Our old lives have passed away; there is nothing left of them. Our old way of being is gone, lost forever. The way we’ve always done it, the only way we’ve ever known, is dead. What will rise in its place? Now that what is old has died, what new thing is springing forth in God, waiting for us to notice?

Reflecting on how things have changed over this last year, it’s begun to occur to me that this pandemic is also like Pentecost. On the first Pentecost, the believers were gathered together in one place. When the Holy Spirit arrived, the doors and windows were flung wide and they poured out into the streets. This pandemic Pentecost—Pandentecost? Pentademic?—is kind of the opposite: it drove us from the streets into our own little places. But as I’ve watched how the Church has responded in this year, I see the movement of the Spirit.

In the Beforetime, like most congregations, we were gathered together in one place; now we’ve been driven out of that place—out of our building—and forced to actually engage with the world. What we are doing now—worshiping together online—was once only the territory of televangelists and niche microcommunities. This medium allows us to not only remain connected with members of our congregation in their homes whether those homes are across town or across the country, it also means being able to connect with new people who have never even seen our building, let alone walked into it.

In a world where people are becoming less likely to set foot in a church building at all, this is an important point. For years, the Church has been either ignoring or grudgingly acknowledging the new digital reality in which we now live. The pandemic has helped us to embrace that reality and to recognize the gifts and the benefits this new digital reality has to offer: gifts and benefits that we have, until now, dismissed as irrelevant, unnecessary, or extravagant. It appears that the pandemic has brought to light how wrong we were in our assessments.

According to St. John, as Jesus prepared to leave his friends, he told them that this wrongness is exactly what Jesus left to show us. “It is to your advantage that I go away,” he said. I promise you; this sounds just as ludicrous to us as it did to the first ones to hear it. How could Jesus’ going away be a good thing? Isn’t it his return that we’re all waiting for? But, St. John insists, Jesus’ leaving was not only good, it was essential to his work of helping us to know and see God. “If I do not go away,” Jesus continues, “the Advocate will not come to you… and when She comes, She will prove the world wrong about sin, righteousness and judgment.”

 Not unlike the priests and Pharisees of Judea, the Church has become accustomed to finding God in the places we’ve been taught to look. For many of us, that’s inside a church building, or among a group of people who call themselves “Christians” or “Lutherans.” Now, we’ve all had to look for God somewhere else, outside of our sanctuaries and and potlucks and Vacation Bible Schools. God is in those places, sure, but I think that the Advocate has been using this time to show us how wrong we are to think that those are the only places where God can be found.

As it happens, the place were we now find ourselves is exactly where scores of people have already been looking for—and finding—God. Although church attendance and religious affiliation have been steadily declining, people are not less spiritual—they’re simply less likely to look for God in the places we do. Millions of people are looking for God in nature, in affinity groups built around common interests, in SoulCycle and Crossfit gymns and yoga studios. They’ve been seeking good news and hope of salvation in blog posts and podcasts, listening to columnists and pundits and politicians.

What’s more, people have been finding God in these places. Not everywhere or all the time, but people are connecting with God out here in the streets of Jerusalem in ways that many church folks never imagined. The Church has characterized such people as areligious, amoral, atheistic; but now this Pandentecost has given us the opportunity to learn their language, or at least to start to, and to begin to understand how much we all have to learn from each other.

The learning curve over this last year has been crazy for all of us. We’ve learned Zoom and social distancing, we’ve learned how to keep in touch when we can’t touch one another, we’ve even learned which songs besides “Happy Birthday to You” are 20 seconds long as we’ve timed washing our hands. We’ve learned which jobs are considered “essential” and which are not. I, personally, have learned more about cinematography and video editing than I ever could have imagined.

But perhaps one of the most important lessons we’ve learned is how much we still have to learn. For better or worse, the doors and windows have been thrown open and we have been driven out. Now it’s time for us to learn what it means to be Church in this digital, post-COVID world. I know we’re tired, and we all just want to get back to normal, but friends, just as on that long-ago morning in Jerusalem, there is no normal to return to. Our comfort is not in returning to where we came from, but in looking to what is ahead.

And, for this task, we have been given an Advocate, a Comforter, a Sustainer, who will lead the way and guide us into all truth. The Pentecost morning we read about today began in chaos and confusion, and look where God brought us from there. That story gives me hope for what lies ahead of us now. In the midst of this global catastrophe, God has shown us that we do have the capacity and the capability to try something new, to go out into the streets ourselves and start speaking strange new languages that we’ve never before had to learn. Just imagine where God will take us from here.

“Veni Sancti Spiritus,” by Adam Kossowski. Mosaic at the Roman Catholic Church of St Aloysius, London. From Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.