“All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.” Acts 2:4
As I sit outside this morning and greet one of my favorite days in the entire year—Pentecost Sunday—the mockingbird at the top of a pine won’t quit singing. It seems frenzied, ecstatic, as if it has a manifesto to proclaim in every single bird song possible. From its throat, I’ve heard cardinal, towhee, chickadee, wren, titmouse, blue jay, and various other birds I can’t identify. And in that bird, the Holy Spirit and Pentecost come alive, for here is a common bird speaking in multiple languages.
My first real, personal experience with the Holy Spirit was in a breeze, not in a bird. I recall as a young teenager sitting alone on the front stoop of my family home and listening to the wind brush hickory branches together with a clack-clack and watching the autumn leaves being carried gently to the ground. The Spirit-wind blew across my face and ruffled my hair with an intimate blessing, telling me that out of eight children, I was noticed and I was loved. I have been a fervent believer of the Spirit ever since then, and it is often the Spirit that I go to in prayer.
Yesterday, I posted a favorite picture of a Pentecost Sunday at one of my former churches. I loved bringing bubbles into worship and allowing them to be blown inside, where they willed, as a symbol of the freedom and movement of the Spirit. My hope was that each one of us would be moved to open our hearts and our ears wider, to become braver and more creative, to step out of the religious boxes that so often squelch our spirits instead of setting them on fire, in an attempt to carry out our mandate to bring the Heaven of God to earth here and now.
We need the Heaven of God here and now more than anytime I can remember in my 61 years. We need the Spirit to move us past suspecting, harming, cheating, and killing people because of their color; we need the Spirit to give us welcoming hearts to immigrants; we need the Spirit to gentle our words so that we can speak in the language those different from us long to hear; we need the Spirit to embolden our loving actions; we need the Spirit to remind us that while each of us is God’s beloved child, so is every other human being; we need to Spirit to get our heads out of the sand and to move us to ask ourselves what difference, however small, we can make to bless another’s life; we need the Spirit to recreate us because we are in desperate need of remembering in whose image we have been made. But we have to ask. We have to desire that re-creation. We have to be willing to change.
No, there will be no bubbles in a church that I lead this year. I am not even preaching on this, one of my favorite, Sundays. Yet I know that the Spirit is still singing. It’s in that pine and it won’t quit proclaiming that the time is now. The time is now. The time is now. May we hear its call and invite it to blow in, and through, us. Now.
This devotional was originally posted on Reverend Rosemary McMahan’s personal Facebook page. She was invited to contribute to this blog by the NAP Peacemaking Task Force.