PENTECOST AND COMMUNITY

A week has passed since we celebrated Pentecost Sunday. The church was awash in red appropriately. It is the tradition that this is the Church's birthday celebration. Yet we often celebrate at different times such important days so I hope you will grant me that latitude. The gift of the Spirit as the New Testament witnesses is not always at the same occasion. In fact the lectionary passages for Pentecost this year reflected that difference. John's Gospel tells of gentler arrival of the Spirit some time earlier.

I think it is important to think of those times when the Spirit seems truly apparent in a group. Sometimes it is Sunday morning in worship. The fiery tongues do land among us and we are equipped to preach to the masses who understand many different languages. Sometimes the Spirit seems to waffle through a committee struggling to solve the insoluble. Insight, agreement, new ways enwrap the whole. At times the nature of our surroundings pull us from various points on the circumference into a common center and we know the oneness only God's Spirit can bring.

In most cases however the Spirit arrives to make community, a community dedicated to knowing God. Enriched by the unseen yet truly felt movement the Holy Spirit seems to draw us in ways of gentleness, joy, oneness. When it happens we know and are changed. God's Spirit like God of course is beyond our control, but are there ways we can be available, are there communities we can form, are there attitudes and behaviors we can adopt, so when God chooses to be present in the moving way of the Spirit we will be caught in the glory?

A blog is in a way a community. Right now this blog seems to be more a community of one which limits the voice of the Spirit. How can it become a way for God's Spirit to meet with us, guide us, and make us whole? That is my desire. So I pray "Come Holy Spirit, come!"

How can this blog be a community through which the Spirit of Pentecost can blow?