Devotional Extra 5-20-13

Martha Wright and her husband Paul Boos were good friends in Wheeling. Paul's death in his early 40s was an unexpected shock after a brief illness, leaving Martha with their two young children, Alice and Thomas, now in their young adulthood. She had prepared this devotional to be printed elsewhere, and I asked her permission to include it in Johnson Memorial's devotional series. Thanks, Martha.
Jack Lipphardt, Senior Pastor
JMUMC

Today is Whit Monday, a day marked by a wide variety of pretty raucous traditions in some cultures—when I looked it up, there was everything from parades to throwing competitions to cheese rolling to mark the day. We won’t be engaging in anything quite like that. For us, this is just the day after Pentecost, the beginning of what the liturgical calendar calls, with a stunning lack of imagination, “the time after Pentecost,” or “ordinary time.” As a child, I equated Ordinary time with summer, when indeed being in church seemed very ordinary—as in especially boring. What it really means is not “seasonal time,” which would be the festival times such as Lent to Easter and Advent to Christmas. It is marked by ordinal numbers as in, second Sunday after Pentecost.

What are we to make of the “day after” Pentecost. It presents no tidy image. Years ago, it was popular in some congregations to identify us as “Easter” people. It was printed on bulletins and put on the sign out front. I was never comfortable with the term. Easter people. It meant, I think, that we were really, really excited about redemption and grace. And just plain frozen in joy and awe before that empty tomb. Wow! I suppose we could have been “Christmas” people--people who are just really, really excited about God coming to be with us as a human, just like he promised. We could live in a nativity snow globe of adoration, with that baby in the manger and his sweet mother, beneath that amazing star.

But in fact, we do not live in perpetual adoration, or joy, or awe. Life just doesn't work that way.

In the first Chapter of the book of Acts, Jesus tells the apostles, right before the Ascension, that they were to go wait for Pentecost. They wanted to know what it meant. They ask: Are you going to restore the kingdom of Israel? Is it time?

He answers: You don’t get to know the time. Timing is the Father’s business. What you’ll get is the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes on you, you will be able to be my witnesses…even to the ends of the world. Then away he goes. And the apostles don’t know quite what to do. And the angels ask them, ‘what are you doing standing around looking at an empty sky?” So they go to the upper room and they have a committee meeting and they figure they better put in a replacement for Judas and Matthias gets the job. Frankly, to me, this never sounded like really important work, but, reportedly, it was what they did while waiting for whatever this Pentecost experience was going to be. And then Pentecost happens, which is truly, truly awesome—and then life goes on. It is the “Monday after Pentecost,” in a way that doesn't mark any “ordinary time” for the apostles, because they have to build a church in their society, which is hostile and persecutes them and even kills them. They are “the time after Pentecost” people, because now after the Nativity, and the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection, and the Ascension, all of time is the “time after Pentecost.” We are all, in fact, “the time after Pentecost” people--which is pretty clunky as a slogan, lacks a clear visual and marks no particular spot to stand on. Instead, we have a job—to be witnesses. And because we are human, we do in fact, not always get it right, because we are distracted by “the world’s guesses and opinions” and we do respond to our own “mental or emotional footwork.” But the Holy Spirit accompanies us and when we work to get our “feet on firm spiritual ground,” then we can, with the Spirit, “pass it on,” sharing the everyday mystery of God’s relentless, amazing love. That’s our job. Get moving. It’s Monday.

Martha Wright