Mass readings for Pentecost:
Acts 2.1-11 Psalm 104.1, 24, 29-31, 34 1 Corinthians 12.3-7, 12-13 John 20.19-23
When we think of Pentecost, we naturally focus on the dramatic coming of the Holy Spirit to the Church. We have a vivid description of the tongues of fire touching each of the disciples. Jesus in the gospels speaks of the Spirit as more like a wind. In the Genesis creation story, the Spirit is also represented as a wind, and we understood this to be the life-giving breath of God.
What might be confusing is that while we have this fiery event of Pentecost, we know that the Holy Spirit has been manifested before this. Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit on the disciples after his resurrection; and the Spirit moved across the waters at the dawn of creation; the third person of the trinity has always been here. Jesus talks of the Spirit’s free movement in the world like wind, going where it will.
But while the Spirit has always been here, he did not “rest upon us” – the contact and connection to the divine was not always there. Rather, the experience of him was intermittent. Those who witnessed Moses’ ministry saw the Spirit’s movement in the life of the great prophet; and as the Israelites crouched around the base of Mt. Sinai, they had evidence of him in the mysterious phenomena they witnessed; and this terrified them.
One gets the sense that humanity simply couldn’t handle it. So, while a very few could from time to time tap into the animating Spirit of creation, whether through Hebrew prophets or pagan shamans, it was exceptional that human beings as a community had regular contact, let alone an ongoing connection. Which for most was fine, because the mystery was terrifying.
And then that changed.
The Church became the temple of the Holy Spirit; corporately the body of Christ with the Holy Spirit indwelling; and individually, as men and women, to be offering our bodies as a home for the Spirit. And where the Spirit dwells, there is contact with the divine and a connection; like an electrical current that invisibly moves through a circuit, flowing from the power source, God, to the outlets and switches of a house.
We who gather here are that temple. We make that house.
Yet the Spirit is someone that can be refused; like a light switch, we can turn off and darken a space even as the electricity continues to be present.
We live in a time when many have switched off and become disconnected, not just to the Church, but to God. The evidence is everywhere that we have a society, to borrow a phrase from St. Paul’s letter today, that is “of the flesh,” that seeks connection and communion in the carnal world. They are even proud of this.
The switching off of the Church in people’s lives, I will admit, is one thing, the switching off to God another; but they are related. The Church as an institution meant to nourish holiness through word and sacrament is often badly managed despite the presence of a lot of good people. It can become confused, but also misled by both the well-intentioned and by the malevolent. In its recurring mistake of conforming to the world, being “of the flesh” and looking to serve the world according to the world’s terms and not as Christ wills, it has been led into scandal. For many, the Church has lost credibility. Some then have left to search for divine connection elsewhere; but many more simply switched off entirely.
And what they “switch off” is not what they say they dismiss in doing so: a heavenly Santa Claus that no thinking person could possibly believe in; a corrupt institution of superstition and hypocrisy.
No, what they unwittingly cut themselves off from is authentic truth and love, and a sense of meaning to life. They come to be agnostic, like Pontius Pilate who asks, “what is truth?” and doesn’t stay for an answer.
You can get along quite some time on the world’s version of these things. Truth is whatever works for you. Love is a feeling that validates desire. Life’s meaning is in whatever goal you set for yourself.
However, when there is no longer a sense of an overarching, transcendent truth and love and purpose, then society shatters into a billion pieces, as many pieces as there are people each pursuing his own particular prize in life; yet ultimately afflicted by the depressing realization that without a unifying “something” then nothing matters. There is no absolute to strive after, no ideal that isn’t just one’s personal invention. There is nothing good or bad, virtuous or evil; there’s just what is and one’s opinions about it. It’s not even the moral relativism that Pope Benedict XVI complained about – it’s nihilism, the belief that there is no point to anything.
Look at recent examples of popular entertainment. We have movies set in something called the multiverse. Most of these are silly super hero movies, but a recent release with the title Everything, Everywhere, All at Once is aimed at a more mature audience. The lead character is a middle-aged woman.
The movie is getting great reviews, being praised by all the right people.
It, like a lot of science fiction and super hero stories, is set in something called the multiverse. This is an idea that comes from physics and it’s the theory that instead of there being simply a universe, that is, the one we’re in, there are countless numbers of universes created by the Big Bang. All these separate universes account for all the possibilities inherent in the conditions that existed at the very beginning.
So, there are universes where there is no intelligent life; others where there is. There is our universe, and other universes very similar to ours right down to having other versions of you and I. So, if you ever wondered what your life would have been like had you hadn’t taken your first job but instead went backpacking around the world, there would be a universe where that’s exactly what you did.
Now, the reason physicists came up with this idea is that the creation of a universe that has us, as we are right now, in it, is highly unlikely. It’s like someone rolled dice a thousand times and each time it came up “7”. And yet, here we are. So, this theory says that instead of us beating the odds (by some mysterious providential force?), every possible outcome from the Big Bang has actually occurred, right down to what the universe is like according to the choice you made for breakfast today: toast and coffee get one universe; yogurt and orange juice another.
It sounds stupid. In theory, it could be the case, but it’s stupid. You just have to watch one of these movies and I think you’ll agree.
As one astute critic has pointed out, if the multiverse is the truth of things, this makes life meaningless. It doesn’t matter what you do, the decisions you make, the worrying over moral choices, the wondering about the paths not taken, because all choices are made, all paths are taken, and your life and mine, in this existence in this universe is just a playing out of one of a countless number of scenarios.
But right now, there are a whole lot of people who just think that it’s cool, it’s neat, it’s mind-blowing; and it gives them the illusion of freedom: nothing matters, I can do what I want because there is nothing at stake. Me and my soul are not unique, just a random permutation, part of some cosmic logarithm.
And this is what we’re feeding our young people, this is the story that we’re telling ourselves. And while we find humour in its ridiculousness, that is but the sugar that covers the bitterness of this poison.
And it so mirrors what is happening in our society. In this universe anyway, we see more and more people living as if they were in their own little universe. There may or may not be a multiverse on the cosmic level, but there sure seems to be one in this world. Look at how we are increasingly pressured by this group and that, individuals with their hyper-personal pronouns that only apply uniquely to them, how they demand we conform to their version of reality. In the fevered imagination of too many people, for them this is their universe and you and I just happen to live in it.
This is a refusal of connection; an assault on community; a denial of reality. And I think it’s a defense. A feeble attempt to assert control over others by those who feel weak, isolated, vulnerable, threatened, and are fearful toward life, unable to contemplate the very real suffering that accompanies growing up into properly realized persons. And it doesn’t help that there are so many professionals, therapists, educators, pastors and politicians ready to feed this illusion.
Now if we go back two thousand years to that gathering in Jerusalem, we don’t have people thinking like that. Suffering with the hard facts of life was something they accepted as the starting condition of their lives. Set against them weren’t the first-world problems of an affluent, exceedingly comfortable existence where one lives in constant anxiety over whether someone might say something upsetting. Rather, they faced the brutal might of the Roman Empire, and were told by the elites that the tides of history could not be stemmed, the fates were beyond appeal, that these things indicated plainly that the efforts of a few hundred followers of a preacher from Nazareth to change things were pitifully inadequate and doomed. Each one of them was of no importance, so how could a collection of nobodies add up to anything?
But the Holy Spirit comes to them, and makes them something: both as individuals and as a community. With the power of truth and love in their lives, and in the company of others so blessed, they could endure suffering, overcome their fears and go out into the world proclaiming the gospel.
The Holy Spirit tells us we’re not alone. It tells us that we are each beloved of God as a unique creation; it binds us to others; we are not isolated, but connected to Christ and all his adopted brothers and sisters.
So, as we face the challenges of today, be certain that your switch is on; fearlessly receive that fire that is the power of Holy Spirit so that it might work in us, and enable us to do God’s work in the world.
Amen.