As I said on Sunday morning, you may have missed the fact that it is Pentecost, and that's easy to do. The news cycle moves very quickly these days, especially this last week. This last week, in case you missed it, people went to space, cities burned down, and there was still a global pandemic claiming thousands of lives.
Did I say this last week? I meant in the last 24 hours.
The news moves fast right now, and an awful lot of my colleagues who have online services right now were bemoaning the fact that they recorded well in advance, and the news cycle had moved too quickly for what they wanted to talk about to still be topical. Yes, that's what's happening in our world right now; what you wanted to talk about on Monday may no longer be relevant on Thursday.
But there are two ways of looking at things - You can either try to keep up with things as they come out, and be perfectly up to date, or you can go the other way, and talk about things that are classics, that never go out of style. Pentecost is that second one. I know the liturgical colour is red, but Pentecost is evergreen. It never goes out of style, and never goes out of fashion, all the more right now given that we need the coming of the Holy Spirit, the comforter, more than we ever have.
But I get ahead of myself. Let me start from scratch. A long long time ago, people built a tower for themselves, with bricks for stone and bitumen for mortar. They built this tower with its base on the earth, and its top in the heaven. And the idea was that if you built a tower big enough and tall enough, you could touch the face of God. Now, you and I both know that if you build a tower up to the heavens, you won't see the living God up there as a man on a cloud. Most of us have flown in planes far above that height, and all you see up there is sky and clouds, and it's all good. If you watched Falcon 9 take to the skies yesterday, then you will know that they went far higher than any of us reading this ever had, so the problem wasn't height, per se. The problem was the desire to get to God through one's own force of will.
This is a story as old as time, really. The story of people who want to get to God by sheer force of will. If you've seen the Disney version of Hercules, you'll get the idea that Hercules' horse was Pegasus, made out of a cloud. However, the real owner of the horse in the myths was Bellerophon, who took the horse up to mount Olympus, to get to the gods by his own will. And this is something, this hubris, was what Zeus could not abide. So Zeus sent a small horsefly to bite Pegasus, who reared up, and Bellerophon fell off, and fell all the way down, to die.
There is a sharp and distinct contrast between the time of Babel and the time of Pentecost. Because at Babel, that was people trying their best to get to the face of God, building and constructing to get there. But Pentecost is the complete opposite. The languages of the people were confused, confounded and scattered, as were the people, to make it far more difficult for them to try to get to God's face through sheer force of will. So, they would never build that tower above the clouds to find God there. But in Pentecost, instead of being confounded, the languages of the people are heard and understood. Because this is not a story of people trying to find God through sheer force of will, rather, this is a story of God coming to his people directly, to remain with them forever.
That's a pretty big difference. In fact, it is a complete reversal of the initial story, climbing to God vs God descending to you. And that gets to the heart of what makes a Christian a Christian. We don't believe that we are people who do such a great job that God just has to pay attention to us. We don't believe that we climb any kind of mountain, build any kind of tower, mount any kind of moral quest, to touch the face of God. How do any of us encounter God? We encounter Him when he comes to us. That's a large, but very simply understood difference. From one direction to another.
And that's great news for a Pentecost in which you're essentially under house arrest. It's great news for us as Christians who are trapped where we are, who can't get to church or to take the sacraments. What does it mean for us to be Christians who are alone? Well, the answer is that we can't be alone. When Jesus is about to ascend to heaven, he lets his disciples know that he will not leave them alone. H will not abandon them, quite the opposite. He will send the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Helper, the Paraclete to the disciples, who will not just live with them, but who will live in them. As a Christian, especially now, you get to celebrate that God comes to you. In the manger, at the cross, in the sacrament of the altar, yes, all that, but also through the Holy Spirit, who lives in you.
As I said on Sunday, this is God showing that he is smarter that you tend to give him credit for sometimes. If we believed that there was a particular place you had to go to encounter God, and that he would only be present there, then we would be pitied now, of course, because you can't get there right now. But we believe that Paul, under house arrest, was every bit a Christian, every bit as sanctified as any of the disciples who were in the Temple day and night. You don't have to go anywhere to find God, but God has to go and find you.
And that's the difference in the Christian faith. It's a relationship in which God comes to you. And that's a grander story than a story in which you are trying to find him. It's a grander story which has far more romance, far more interest than you keeping the odd rule every once in a while. It's the story of the fire of God descending on people of earth. What a wonderful story! And that's the story that you, alone, need to hear more than ever. There is no such thing as alone as a Christian. There's no such thing as not able to get to where God is, as a Christian. In your baptism, the same spirit that rested on Eldad and Medad, or on the disciples, descended to you as well. And that same spirit lives with you today, when you need Him the most.
Joyous Pentecost indeed.
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