The fires of justice
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Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
May 31, 2020—Pentecost
Acts 2:1-21; John 7:37-39
On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit came rushing like a powerful wind; filling the house, filling the disciples. It crackled the air, dancing like fire above their heads. Jesus had promised it would come, and here it was (here it is!): a sign of the continuing presence of God, moving within and between us. So that Jesus is still with us, his power and his way still alive within us, still at work: leading us out of fear and into love.
The Spirit will accompany us on that journey, but the pathway is also marked by a miracle, a sign. And the sign that announces the arrival of the Holy Spirit is one that speaks powerfully to our time. Because it is the gift of understanding. It is the gift of hearing others speak about the kingdom of God in their language, and you somehow, miraculously, understand.
This would be a miracle indeed! Because we are, so often, tragically unable to hear and understand each other’s language. Even when we are all speaking English. Even then. Because we belong to different groups with their own norms and experiences. Because so often the gap between those groups feels unbridgeable. We’re not sure how, or it’s easier not to. Less challenging. More comfortable, to stay over here and only talk to people who speak our language.
But the Spirit blows in, without regard to our comfort and ease. The Spirit blows in, reminding us that Jesus preaches a world in which people do not “know (and stay in) their place;” a world in which the outcasts are brought into the center, and the lowly are raised up and the high and mighty are brought down; a world in which his disciples are constantly being sent out. A world, in other words, in which none of us will be left in peace. Not what we would call peace, anyway!
The Spirit blows in, slipping past the locked doors of our fears, to breathe the peace of Christ into us. The Spirit invites us to exchange our fear for the kind of love that goes out courageously, plunging headlong into the work of forgiveness and reconciliation. We will be ready, because His love will cast out our fear. His unfailing love for us, despite how fallible we are, heals and strengthens us. And then his love within us, with which we are able to love others.
Which is the kind of love that opens us up, as we see in the Acts story, so that we can learn each other’s language. It’s the kind of love that births our ability to understand what God’s deeds of power sound like in another person’s language, what God’s justice, God’s mercy, God’s kingdom sound like in another person’s language.
This is holy work across every kind of language barrier. But because we are Christians; because we worship the God of the Sermon on the Mount, the God of the Cross, the God of the Magnificat; then we must begin to imagine that the greatest miracle of Pentecost would be for those who speak the language of the powerful to begin to understand the language of the poor and the powerless.
This has been a particularly striking week to grapple with such an idea. A week in which the devastating struggle of centuries, decades, years has once again been brought into stark relief. A week in which the lament of our black brothers and sisters is so loud that we cannot shut it out, and it yearns for us to hear and understand. To listen and to keep listening, no matter how painful it is. No matter how foreign and unbelievable it might sound. No matter how desperately we want it not to be true, want to twist it, somehow, into something less awful. Less awful for those who are speaking. Less awful for those who are listening.
The lament goes on. It is deep and it is long. It begins with the song of the Hebrews enslaved in Egypt, who cried out to God to save them from a despot who killed their children. It takes up the theme of those who went searching for the grain that God commanded the landowners to leave at the corners of their fields, and found themselves going away hungry. It catches the thread of lepers who are misunderstood and feared, and Samaritans who are despised. And it weaves in the unbearable refrain of the pieta, of Mary with her slain son laid across her lap.
The lament is deep and long. And those who aren’t singing the song might well feel afraid. Because profound pain is unsettling. Because prolonged injustice means that pain will intermingle with rage. And those who stand apart from, against that song, have reason to fear.
But we are Christians. And we know that the remedy for fear is not strength or opposition. It is love. Which means that the lament does not need to terrify anyone, so long as they are willing to join the song. To stand alongside the suffering and the oppressed, which is to stand alongside God. Letting the Spirit teach us the song, so that we begin to understand all its aching pain, all its holy rage against injustice, all its longing for God’s kingdom.
I don’t want to underplay this. It requires the full force of the Spirit’s power for us to even begin to understand each other. There is so much being said that is hard to understand. There is so much happening that is easy to misunderstand or misinterpret. Actions may speak louder than words, but I might still not get the full import of what actions are saying. Not without the Holy Spirit giving me the love to cast out my instinctive fear. Not without the gift of understanding, to let me stop and listen to context and history and perspective and values. What is the suffering that underlies those actions? How many other ways did they try to get me to understand? And in the case of something like the protests in Minneapolis/St. Paul, how much property damage would it actually take to compete with the outrage of a man who lost his life?
I will not suggest that the cars and buildings that burned in the Twin Cities are the flames of the Holy Spirit (not least because there’s growing concern that some were lit by folks who were separate from the main protest, and their motives aren’t clear). But the rage against injustice that burned at the heart of the protest? The passionate desire to be heard and understood? The fervent call for change, for a healing of the system, for an overhaul that will be the salvation of everyone, even the mighty who are humbled? That sounds like the presence of the Spirit to me. Amplifying the lament. Giving us all ears to hear. Transforming our fear into love, so that we might all join the song.
Let us then dare to pray: Come, O Holy Spirit, come. Come as the wind and cleanse; come as the fire and burn; grant us the gift and responsibility of understanding, by which you will convert and consecrate our lives to our great good and your great glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.