This Sunday's Gospel Lesson
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the authorities, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." -John 20:19-23
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Prologue: the beginning of the church
The Jewish day of Pentecost celebrated the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai. The story in the book of Exodus of the giving of the law is marked by characteristic Baal imagery: God appears on top of a mountain, with thunder, lightning, cloud, and earthquake. Exodus 19:19 says that when Moses talked to God, "God would answer him in thunder." So in Acts 2 God arrives in "a sound like the rush of a violent wind," and fire appears, not on the top of a holy mountain, but on the top of each believer’s head.
–Gail Ramshaw
Treasures Old and New: Images in the Lectionary p.423
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On This Week's Prompts for Personal Meditation
You make the winds your messengers and flames of fire your servants. Psalm 104:4
In his study of mysticism, The Idea of the Holy, Rudolf Otto describes both a sense of awe and a sense of dread when encountering the numinous. Like wind and fire in nature provoking situations of danger or comfort, wind and fire in scripture symbolize Divine Presence evoking awe, terror, and fascination.
In mystical progression, Pentecost is the analogue for the union of the soul with God. I think it is impossible to approach Pentecost without a sense of dread. The conferring of the Holy Spirit is the same motion as the commissioning as Apostles. We are “sent” with the Good News to the “ends of the earth” as bearers of Good News. But Good News is real change, and change is dangerous, and often not received well, as tradition illustrates.
I love the mystical poetry I found relating to union of the soul with the Divine: the Jewish Liturgical rhapsody on holy fire (meditation one), and Mechtild and Catherine of Sienna's hymns to divine union (meditations two and three) and finally, Mychal Judge's famous prayer sending us out into the world (the Last Word).
The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest its voice, but thou knowest not whence it cometh and whether it goeth; so is every one that is born of the spirit. Where are you sent?
Blessings of wind and fire,
-Suzanne
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Meditation One
celestial fire
Now an angel of the Lord appeared to
Moses in a blazing fire –
a fire that devours fire;
a fire that burns in things dry and moist;
a fire that glows amid snow and ice;
a fire that is like a crouching lion;
a fire that reveals itself in many forms;
a fire that is, and never expires;
a fire that shines and roars;
a fire that blazes and sparkles;
a fire that flies in a storm wind;
a fire that burns without wood;
a fire that renews itself every day;
a fire that is not fanned by fire;
a fire that billows like palm branches;
a fire whose sparks are flashes of lightning;
a fire black as a raven;
a fire, curled, like the colours of the rainbows!
-Eleazar Ben Kaller c 6th to 10th century liturgical poet
translated by T Carmi The Element Book of Mystical Verse
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Let us go forth
into the world,
rejoicing in the power
of Holy Spirit,
Alleluia, Alleluia
-Dismissal after the Eucharist
The Dove Descending
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The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
-T.S.Eliot 1888-1956
Little Gidding, IV Four Quartets
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| Pentecost, French Miniaturist, Ingeborg Psalter, c.1195 |
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Meditation Two
union of desires
And God said to the soul:
I desired you before the world began.
I desire you now
As you desire me
And where the desires of two come together
There love is perfected.
-Mechtild of Magdeburg 1207-1297
(trans.by Oliver Davies)
How God comes to the soul:
I descend on my love
As dew on a flower.
-Mechtild of Magdeburg
(trans. by Oliver Davies)
There the soul dwells –
like the fish in the sea
and the sea in the fish.
-Catherine of Siena c 1347 (?1333)-1380
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Meditation Three
going forth
Effortlessly,
Love flows from God into man,
Like a bird
Who rivers the air
Without moving her wings.
Thus we move in His world,
One in body and soul,
Though outwardly separate in form.
As the Source strikes the note,
Humanity sings--
The Holy Spirit is our harpist,
And all strings
Which are touched in Love
Must sound.
- Mechtild of Magdeburg 1207-1297
trans. Jane Hirshfield
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The Last Word
a prayer for going forth
Lord
Take me where you want me to go,
Let me meet who you want me to meet
Tell me what you want me to say,
and keep me out of your way.
-The Rev. Mychal Judge O.F.M.
d. 9/11/2001
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O God, who on this day taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in your holy comfort; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Collect for Pentecost
American Book of Common Prayer
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| Pentecost, Unknown Illustrator of the Petites Heures de Jean de Berry, 14th century |
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