Pentecost 2020

Pentecost Mobile at St. Alban's, Simsbury

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

Grace Church, Hartford

Pentecost 2020

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

In our Gospel today, Jesus comes to the disciples and tells them, “Peace be with you.” This is such an important message that he says it twice. The disciples were hiding in an upper room. They were hiding out of fear - locked away from the world (this might sound familiar to us in  our current circumstances?). 

It was not peaceful in that room. No doubt it was filled with anxiety and worry. Nor is it quiet in our lives or in the world right now.

So Jesus comes into a room filled with fear and anxiety. What does he do? Just tell them to stop worrying? Offer platitudes? Or an abundance of data to counter their fear? No. Jesus didn't try to argue them out of their fear. He just calmly stated that God’s peace was present with them in that room. 

Jesus’ statement about peace is a fitting one for Pentecost, as we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit. I think we often expect the Holy Spirit to show up in our lives as if it were Pentecost. With great fanfare and in a way we understand. It would be great. It would be so helpful, if there were flames and a rushing wind. We certainly would not miss that. And then if the messages were spoken clearly and articulated, in our language, just for us, just what we needed to hear, we would be all set. But it does not usually happen that way. More often it is like Jesus quietly arriving in the midst of our anxiety to proclaim the truth of God’s peace. 

C.S. Lewis writes of this same kind of experience in A Grief Observed. He writes, “When I lay these questions [of why his wife died or why he is suffering] before God I get no answer.  But a rather special sort of ‘No answer.’ It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze.  As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, ‘Peace, child; you don’t understand.’”

In the midst of fear, anxiety and uncertainty in our own lives, our own communities, in our world, at this present time, we, like the disciples, like Lewis, are given the gift of peace that we may not fully understand, but it is God's peace. It is bigger than all of us, bigger than the things of the world, bigger than our fear.  

It is not a peace of easy answers or simple solutions. It is the peace that comes from letting go. The peace that comes when we stop trying to figure everything out, when we stop needing to get it right all the time. It is the peace that comes when we choose trust over fear. When we chose love over indifference. When we chose possibility over certainty. 

That is what Jesus came to offer the disciples, and that is what Jesus offers all of us. A gift of peace. It is not a gift that will always come easily to us. It is a gift that asks something of us in return. It asks us to be open to receive it. We have to be willing to let go of all that stands in our way, all that can keep us separated from God and from each other. We have to be willing to admit it is not about us, about our desires or our achievements. We have to be willing to trust that it is not even about our vision for our lives or for the world. It is about God's vision, God's dream, and how we might make that into a reality.

It is about a world where everyone, every single person, has the opportunity to know that peace of God that surpasses understanding. Where everyone knows the gift that comes from grounding ourselves in the knowledge that we are beloved of God. It is about a world where everyone can know the peace that comes when we truly are willing to let go, to live into our daily prayer that God's will be done. 

The world may seem frantic and harried. There are times when it can seem like the fear is going to get the best of us. But it need not. We have a choice. We have an invitation, an opportunity to experience the beautiful gift of knowing the peace of God in our hearts. It is my prayer on this feast of Pentecost that each of us would be on the lookout for the ways that Jesus is quietly showing up in the midst of our lives, in the midst of challenges, in the midst of our fear and anxiety. Jesus is showing up to offer us the gift of peace. May we always be open and ready to receive that beautiful gift. Amen.