The Season of Pentecost Pride

While we would all probably agree that the natural seasons (wet, dry, summer, winter) are due to the movement of the tilted-axis-Earth around the Sun, I wonder if we might also agree that these seasons are a way by which our planet maintains the homeostasis needed for growth in healthy ways.

At the end of every program year in the Church (usually near the Sunday of Pentecost), religious leaders have traditionally bemoaned the upcoming lack of attendance during the summertime holiday (brought by the public school’s three-month-long hiatus from classes). How to keep people engaged and invested in the life of ministry to which we’ve all been called at our baptism?—this seems to be the question asked by many a pastor.

And, yet, as I consider the multiple seasons in the church (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, etc.) as a way by which we maintain the homeostasis needed for growth in healthy ways, another question appears: How does the season of Pentecost (much longer than Advent, Lent, or even Eastertide) actually provide the opportunity for the growth needed not just by us or the Church—but for our hurting world today?

Pentecost, the anniversary of Christ’s Spirit creating a new kind of faith community intended to unify people on a whole new level, is celebrated on June 8th, after the 50 days of Easter. (And of course Easter isn’t just about being happy that when we die there is something more in store). Easter is the season in which the Church can help us deepen our understanding of how subtle spiritual transformation is occurring around us all the time, and help teach us how to let God have access to healing (resurrection) in new ways through our own “letting go.”

And just as we remember Jesus’ shift into a more subtle spiritual vibration on Ascension Day (which was commemorated May 29th), we’re invited to consider how to listen and tune our own spiritual “frequencies” during the long months of Pentecost (which last all the way till Advent begins on Sunday, November 30 in 2025).

Just as Jesus’ ascension into heaven doesn’t create an absence of his presence with us, our spotty attendance at church during summer doesn’t imply an absence of spiritual learning and transformation. In fact, it may be the hiatus which allows the time for risking and trying new ways of bringing our own unique Christ presence into the world. We need time for wonder, for quiet, for play and for exploring our hopes and fears and repairing relationships. If we aren’t taking the time to process our thoughts and feelings, we distance ourselves from what fully human and authentic lives in Christ can be.

The renowned author and teacher, Walter Brueggemann, in one of his many prayers, describes the divine as the Life-giver “who stalks the earth with new life.” This Easter prayer written 26 years ago reminds me of how far the world has continued to unravel (the poem was written in 1999, when NATO’s attacks in the Kosovo conflict and corporate “downsizing” were the most significant public outcries in the U.S.). Our world continues to unravel to create room for the New Justice we are called in our baptisms to listen for and to help create. We are invited in the heat of summer and early fall to tune our own spiritual frequencies toward risking and creating as Pentecost People filled with the Pride of Purpose. The poem continues…

“You life-giver,

You are a strange anomaly among us, for everywhere are signs of death:

Benjamin taken in his youth,

our tax dollars at work in Serbia,

endless diagnoses among our friends,

people made redundant in all our euphemisms of “down-sizing,”

too much money and too little health care,

your church here and there nearly consumed with anxiety for itself.

And yet you appear here and there, now and then:

You say “Fear not,” and we are comforted,

You say “Peace I give you,” and we are less restless,

You say “Go and sin no more,” and we glimpse a new innocence,

you say and we listen,

you act and we are healed,

you…and us,

you and life,

you and newness,

you for us,

you with us,

you,

you,

you…and we are dazzled by our gratitude.

Claim your Pentecost Pride this month. As actors and believers in the New Justice that God is creating, our work includes witnessing the false hierarchies our society has been built on for so long, releasing the systems that need to fall—and this is difficult and messy and requires new skills we haven’t yet discovered. May this summer create the fallow space needed by us all to keenly listen for the new balance and homeostasis we are seeking to create together, in ways both seen and unseen, planned and unplanned, in worship together and alone. Amen.