Easter VI

What are we working toward, in this time-between?

Our city is making decisions, even now, about the sort of place we want to 'recover' into. Having many things go on hiatus - often even our sense of what the normal is or ought to be - can reveal much about what we might leave behind, collectively, and what we might build together, if motivated by good things, moving toward some sort of common vision.

Toward the end of the Easter season, the Church deliberately re-enters the liminal space of the early followers of Jesus. There are spiritual gifts to receive in a liminal time of waiting, planning, praying, discerning, and building. This Thursday is the feast of the Ascension, telling the story of the resurrected Jesus re-entering the fuller reality of the divine, holy One whom he calls The Father. Some Gospels tell this, and the Book of the Acts of the Apostles gives the story in detail. Acts also places it in an interesting context, for the Ascension itself is in some ways merely the framing for the real beginning of Acts: everyone gathers together, continually praying, and waiting for the powerful gift of the Holy Spirit as promised to them by Jesus.

The Church year moves to the commemoration of the gift of the Spirit on the feast of Pentecost - this year falling on May 23. This Spirit, Jesus has told the early community, will lead them into all truth. And, this Spirit will give you power to speak and to act, as witnesses of this divine vision, this divine action in the world.

Pray for the Spirit that will lead you into all truth. Sounds like a good thing.

This week's brief reading from Acts tells of an episode taking place after the Spirit has come to the disciples who had been praying for this gift, and it tells of the surprising gift of the Spirit coming to those outside the early markers of the community. The Spirit came even to 'them.' And, this Spirit brought the ability to praise God in common, to keep commandments, to be baptized into the death and resurrection of the Lord, and to contribute to the life of the community with renewed vision. The whole story is linked to the earlier story of Peter's vision stretching his own mind of the permissable and possible in terms of what to eat -- which is essentially 'how to become and remain righteous.'

How shall we be changed by common vision, by the Spirit falling impartially upon all, not divided by sect or background or custom?

First, every day, join with the whole earth - the whole cosmos - and 'sing a new song' to the Lord, as the Psalmist exhorts both humans and little hills, seas and rivers and all their creatures. Orient ourselves again in a liminal time toward the author of our being, and the shared divine presence all around. Then, keep the commandments we have been given, as Jesus exhorts his followers in the reading from John's Gospel: this commandment is primarily about seeking to become and incarnate the sort of self-giving love that truly renews the face of all creation (no one has greater love than this, we are told!).

Jesus tells them: I give you this word, this commandment, not so you feel guilty when you have a hard time loving and proclaiming self-giving love, but I give you this commandment to love one another so that my everlasting joy may find a home within you. Our participation in this joy-of-God is even necessary in order for this Joy to become complete ('full') in the world.

This joy is not mere happiness that waxes and wanes as we read the headlines and worry about the world around and within us. This joy grows like a vine from soil that cannot be impoverished or exhausted. Living in this joy - keeping this commandment - reveals the shortcomings of ourselves and our brothers and sisters, but paradoxically allows us to live with it, and to envision a changed, broadened world where this joy is complete.

And, this vision is made complete when we are able to listen to all those who seek this way of truth -- when we are able to listen to those who may not previously have brought the word given to them by God because we have been kept separate and apart by custom, law, tradition, riches, poverty.

The Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, falls on all who seek it, who pray and wait. All who seek will find. The gift is real, is powerful, is completing, and is meant for the transformation of communal vision and power in this world.