Tag Archives: Pentecost

Ascending in a Cloud

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The Ascension is often thought of as a matter of Jesus going away from us. After rising from the dead, he spends fifty days with the disciples before going off in the setting sun, leaving us on our own to do the best we can. At least there’s Christmas to look forward to.

This suggests that the Ascension is a non-event. We expect more from Jesus, so let’s try again. Before ascending, Jesus promises that He will send the Holy Spirit to them. He won’t leave them orphans. We don’t have to wait until Christmas for a special treat after all; a special treat is coming in just a few days: ten days in Luke’s time scheme.

Then, what about the cloud that whisks Jesus away? Doesn’t that mean he’s gone? The German Bible scholar Gerhard Lohfink reminds us that a cloud covered the tabernacle while leading the Israelites through the desert. When it was time for the Israelites to move on, the cloud moved. When God wanted the Israelites to stay put, the cloud stayed put. All this is to say that the cloud was a sign of God’s presence. The cloud preserves the mystery. Nobody can see God. But the cloud makes it clear that God is very near to the Israelites, especially when they need God the most. (Lohfink: Between heaven and Earth, p. 162) And then there’s the cloud that filled the temple when Solomon dedicated it. Maybe God was as invisible as ever, but God sure was present. More recently for the disciples, a cloud covered them during the Transfiguration. Again, profound mystery in the midst of God’s amazingly close presence. So the cloud here means Jesus isn’t leaving after all.

Thinking Jesus is leaving them, the disciples are looking up at the rising cloud while two men in white ask them why they are doing that, suggesting they are looking in the wrong direction. The men in white tell them that Jesus will come in the same way they saw him go. (Acts 1: 11) That is, the men in white are redirecting the disciples back to the earth where, as Jesus had said, they will be his witnesses in Judea, Samaria , and the ends of the earth when the Holy Spirit comes. Not up in the sky, but on the earth, where Jesus will be more closely present than ever while they are doing that witnessing. At the end of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus specifies that their witnessing is about repentance and the forgiveness of sins. (Lk. 24: 47) This goes to say that if we look up at the sky looking for Jesus, we will find Jesus directing his attention—and ours—back to the earth.

In Ephesians, Paul prays that his readers will come to know the riches of the glorious inheritance of the saints that they will receive, riches of witnessing and forgiving. Paul goes on to wax eloquently about God’s power in raising Jesus to God’s right hand “in the heavenly places” from which Christ rules everything on the earth. (Eph. 1: 20) That is, Christ’s rising to the heights brings his forgiving love right back to the earth where he exercises his forgiving love among us, closer to us than we are to ourselves. When Paul writes of heavenly riches and of Christ, a crucified human who was raised from the dead and who now rules among us from such heights, his words sound like a dense cloud. It is hard to picture all this and that is the point. Paul’s words are a cloud like the cloud that covered the tabernacle in the desert and filled the temple. This cloud of words is a sign that the God whom we cannot see or comprehend is very close to us with unfathomable forgiving love. The cloud is all around us all the time. We just need to be alert to this guiding presence we can never understand. This is what the collect for this feast means when it says that Christ ascended so that he might fill all things.

Triumphant Loser

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The Ascension is a feast of triumph where Jesus rises to Heaven to take his seat at the right hand of his heavenly Abba. There is much rejoicing in our celebration of this feast but it’s hard to pin down what the celebration is all about. Towards the beginning of his great Epistle to the Ephesians, Paul celebrates this triumph of Jesus which has brought him “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.” (Eph. 1: 21) That’s pretty high up, about as high as anyone, even God Incarnate, can go. However, before this outburst of triumph, Paul prays that our hearts may be enlightened to perceive the hope to which we are called and “what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.” (Eph. 1: 18) So what is this hope and what are the riches that Paul would have us understand and embrace?

With combativeness programmed into us before we’re old enough to know it’s happened, our first instinct is to see the triumph of Christ along the lines of the underdog winning against the stronger team, or an amazing come-from-behind victory. But such victories, satisfying as they are for the victors (and correspondingly humiliating for the losers) are still variations on the same old same old, that is, combats with winners and losers.

What we have a hard time seeing is that Jesus, for all the triumph, is still the loser. Yes, Jesus is above every authority and power, but it is as the vanquished one, the loser, that Jesus holds this high position. It isn’t that Jesus defeated Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate in the end; Jesus lost to them. If he had won, it would have been the same old same old, which would have made losers of us all. Rather, Jesus put himself at the mercy of all that he created with his heavenly Abba and the Holy Spirit. But if any of us should jump to claim the victory over the Divine Victim, what have we really gained? Perhaps something like a stone instead of bread.

We will soon see, at Pentecost, that the Holy Spirit gives the disciples power to witness to the truth of Jesus’ death and resurrected life. The truth of Jesus’ death that they proclaim is that, although innocent, Jesus was put to death by the Roman authorities under pressure from the Jewish leaders. But Jesus’ heavenly Abba raised Jesus from the dead with the offer of forgiveness and salvation to his persecutors. The triumph of Jesus is a triumph of innocent weakness, not a triumph of might and strength in the world’s understanding of strength. Jesus accepted loss so that all of us might win in the end.

We see this triumph through losing in the stoning of Stephen in Acts 7. Stephen berates the Jewish leaders for always persecuting the just ones such as Moses and the prophets. There is no sense of the forgiveness in his harangue that fills the other apostles’ proclamation of the truth of Jesus’ death. But then Stephen sees the heavens open to reveal the Son of Man at the right hand of God. Suddenly, Stephen is no longer an accuser but one who forgives before he dies, just like the risen victim he sees in glory. That is the victory of Christ that becomes the victory of Stephen. Forgiveness even unto death is the victory celebrated in the Ascension of Christ. This is the victory that earns life-giving bread instead of a stone. There is nothing higher than that!

The Holy Spirit as a Divine Person who Inspires and Fosters Love

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White_Doves_at_the_Blue_Mosque_(5778806606)The Holy Spirit is the most obscure of the three Persons of the Trinity, not that the other Persons aren’t mysterious as well. One reason is that the Son is said to show the Father, and the Holy Spirit is said to show the Son, but that leaves nobody to show the Holy Spirit. So obscure is the Holy Spirit that it is difficult to think of the Holy Spirit as a Person at all. It is not uncommon to hear the Holy Spirit referred to as “it,” although both masculine and feminine pronouns also fall far short of the Holy Spirit’s personhood.

It is easier to sense some personhood for the Father and the Son because their relationship is defined by filiation, that is, the Father begetting the Son has a personal analogy in human experience. But the Holy Spirit’s relationship to the other Divine Persons is through spiration, that is breathing. We think of breath as a human function rather than a person in his or her own right. The Holy Spirit is often called the “Bond of Love” between the Father and the Son. This is a beautiful phrase but again, it doesn’t give the Holy Spirit a personality. If we say two people are bonded in love, we think of the bond as something between the two people, not a third person.

Since it is a sure thing that the Holy Spirit is a Person, however obscure, and however mysterious, then perhaps we can take these rather impersonal images and analogies and personalize them.

The Holy Spirit as breath, the Person spirated, or breathed, by the Father and the Son is associated with inspiration. The Holy Spirits’s inspiration in its gentler form is symbolized by a dove in scripture, most importantly at Jesus’ baptism, where the image accompanies the heavenly voice acclaiming Jesus as the Son of the heavenly Abba. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit appears as flames of fire inspiring the disciples to preach in the languages of the pilgrims from foreign countries. In all this, we have, again, impersonal images, except insofar as birds can show some elements of personality. In all this, however, we can see the Holy Spirit revealed as a Divine Person who inspires and energizes. In fact, the Holy Spirit inspires by distributing various gifts to various people, enhancing both the individuality of people and our connectedness as we exchange these inspired gifts to each other. Through this exchange of gifts, we can inspire others with our insights and enthusiasms. We can think of the inspiring teachers and preachers who have energized us to spread that same enthusiasm and inspiration to others. This is what the Holy Spirit does.

The Holy Spirit as the bond of love between the Father and the Son can also be understood in a personal way. That is, the Holy Spirit is a Person who actively encourages love between other people. Humans can act as such a bond of love. Friar Lawrence plays such a role in Romeo and Juliette. In South Pacific, Bloody Mary encourages the love between Col. Talbot and the Polynesian woman in the song “Happy Talk,” while Col. Talbot himself struggles with his racist heritage in “Carefully Taught.” As these go-betweens try to help lovers overcome obstacles (scandals), so the Holy Spirit encourages all of us to overcome all obstacles to loving relationships.

In the Upper Room, Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into the apostles and then commissions them to spread forgiveness to other people. (Jn. 20: 23) (I don’t think Jesus wants us to retain the sins of others.) Here we have the Holy Spirit as the Person who inspires, encourages, forgives, and reconciles. In all of these acts, the Holy Spirit remains hidden, showing other people to us and us to other people. At the same time, the Holy Spirit shows us the Son in other people and shows the Son in us to others. If we wish to really honor and celebrate the Holy Spirit, we, too, will go and inspire, encourage, forgive, and reconcile others.

The Holy Spirit’s Fiery Desire

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outsideSupper1What is the Holy Spirit? Wrong question.  The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity, not an ït.” Our difficulty in thinking of the Holy Spirit as a person is a symptom of our cultural problem of really seeing other persons as persons.

“Many terms and images are given for the Holy Spirit: a roaring wind, tongues of fire, breath, gift, counselor, consoler, teacher, guide, and the bond of love, to list a few. Some of the terms are personal, some not. This only adds to the confusion unless we get beneath the impersonal images to realize that breath requires a breather, a person’s temperament can be fiery, and a bond of love can’t really love unless that bond is a person who actually loves. Teaching and guiding, though done with personal agency, can be mechanical if they are only conveying information and or getting us from one place to another.

The Holy Spirit adds to our difficulty simply by being so shy. Jesus shows us the Father, the Holy Spirit shows us Jesus. Who shows us the Holy Spirit? Look behind you and the Holy Spirit is still behind you. Look deeply in yourself and the Holy Spirit is deeper yet. If we want to know the Holy Spirit, we have to be as shy, as hidden as this Person. Most of us think it important to be more assertive than that.

Perhaps the Holy Spirit is hidden in much the same way as mimetic desire is hidden. (See Human See, Human Want.) Our imitation of other peoples ‘desires occurs below our conscious awareness. The Holy Spirit does the same. Is there a connection between the two? As our teacher and guide, the Holy Spirit conveys the Desire of God.  More than that, the Holy Spirit is the Desire of God. What is this Desire of God? The image of a fiery wind burning all of God’s people without consuming us gives us a hint of God’s fundamental Desire: that we all may be one as the Father and the Son are one. (There is the Holy Spirit hiding again! The Spirit is just as much one with the Father and the Son as the other two Persons of the Trinity.)

Let us try thinking of the Holy Spirit as the Gatherer with fiery arms of Love. Mimetic desire unites us with other people whether we like it or not, or will it or not. Mimetic desire deepens our lives when we share desires in mutually enriching ways, but when mimetic desire falls into conflict, it unites us to that person in the bad sense of being stuck together.  The Holy Spirit weaves through the swirl of other peoples’ desire with God’s Desire, teaching us and guiding us with fiery love how to fill all these desires between us with tongues of fire that deepen our communion with others beyond what words can say.

Two Ways of Gathering

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A strange gathering of devout Jews from every nation took place a little over two thousand years ago in Jerusalem. These Jews were bewildered to hear a group of Galileans speaking in each of their languages. A new and exciting gift of understanding was unfolding in their midst. In their perplexity some thought the Galileans were drunk.

Peter explains this strange gathering by telling his fellow Israelites about a very different gathering that had taken place just a few weeks earlier where everybody conspired to crucify an innocent man. The Pharisees, Sadducees and the Roman authorities, constantly at loggerheads about just about everything, suddenly and miraculously came to an agreement to put Jesus to death.

Peter goes on to say that this man was “handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” and killed “by the hands of those outside the law.” That Jesus was killed unjustly, by those outside the law, indicates that God’s plan and foreknowledge should not be equated with God’s will. To the contrary, Peter insists that the execution of Jesus was contrary to God’s will. Peter’s next announcement was even more startling: “God raised him up, having freed him from death.” The risen victim, “sitting at the right hand of God” has poured out the Holy Spirit that everybody was seeing and hearing. In declaring that the crucified and risen Jesus was the Messiah, Peter was claiming that a radically new understanding of life was being given through the Holy Spirit.

Quotations from the psalms that accompany the apostolic preaching indicate that the story of people at enmity making peace by agreeing to persecute a person is then blamed for the discord in the community is actually an old story. The opening verses of Psalm two express this old story succinctly: “Why did the Gentiles rage . . . . the rulers have gathered together against the Lord and against his Messiah.” Children do the same thing on the playground every day.

What was truly strange about the gathering by the Holy Spirit was that people were being gathered without creating a victim. Instead, the victim of just a few weeks past has risen from the dead to gather God’s people in a radically new way based on sharing God’s love for every person.

 Tools for Peace explores how Benedictine spirituality helps us live in the gathering in the risen forgiving victim.