pentecost-2020-monroe.md

May 31, The Day of Pentecost – Monroe

Whitsunday: white clothes of Pentecost.

In the BCP the collect for this day is titled: The Day of Pentecost: Whitsunday

I first heard about the source of “Whit” in “Whitsunday” when my youngest children were being born.

Several different interpretations have been offered through the years. The title goes back many centuries. The first explanation I heard was that it had to do with the nasty weather in Britain in the months of March and April. Looking back many centuries before that, the custom was that Baptisms were most appropriately done on Easter. They usually included some form of taking your old clothes off and putting new clothes – after you had been dunked in water. By the middle ages baptisms were usually of infants, who might be unhappy with being dunked into the frigid water in the font. It might even be dangerous.

Since the next most advantageous time for baptism was the end of the Easter season – Pentecost – baptisms in Britain were often delayed for 50 days until the Feast of Pentecost. Now the norm, again, going back millenia, had been that when you came out of the water, having shed your old clothes and been washed in the water of baptism, you would be dressed in white garments. White – thus “White-Sunday” or “Whitsunday.”

Apparently there’s a competing explanation that attributes the “Whit” of “Whitsunday” to a form of the word “wit” – as in e.g. “the wit and wisdom of Mark Twain”. 500 years ago the word “wit” meant “knowledge.” Now, what happens on Pentecost? The knowledge and wisdom of the Holy Spirit is spread upon the newly formed church – the fuel that has run the church ever since. link here

Transition

Life is marked by change. Transitions are inherent in being alive. If you’re not changing you’re dead.

There was a transition for Jesus from Palm Sunday to Good Friday. There was a transition from Good Friday to Easter – Crucifixion to Resurrection. Ascension-tide – we’ve been in that since the feast of Ascension – marks another transition. Pentecost marks the time – well, the time for Christians that is “the rest of the story.” Pentecost and after is everything that happens after the infusion of the Spirit into the Church – all who would be followers of Jesus.

I thought about a memorable scene in episode 1 of the TV series “This is us.”

When Dr. K gave us the “sourest lemon” speech that Kate, Kevin, and Randall still quote.

  • “I like to think that one day you’ll be an old man like me talking a young man’s ear off explaining to him how you took the sourest lemon that life has to offer and turned it into something resembling lemonade. If you can do that, then maybe you will still be taking three babies home from this hospital, just maybe not the way you planned.”
  • He forged their family with just two sentences.

It’s a foundational scene. In these few words much of the foundation of everything that follows is established. It’s established on a gift. That there is a gift is totally unexpected. The gift is life. Pentecost. This is us. It’s important.

Owen’s baptism:

In some ways much of my adult life has been formed by the feast of Pentecost. Clearly one of the most important events for me was the birth of my first born. Easter that year was Sunday, April 10, 1977. He was born May 11.

I was learning about what was expected of a Christian in those days and I had been taught that Easter was the appropriate time for baptism. I didn’t really understand what baptism was or what it meant.

  • As an aside, I’d like to say that now that I’m older, I still don’t understand what baptism is or what it means. I know a lot of things about it – I’ve taught classes on it – but there is far more that I don’t know than that I do know. In fact it seems appropriate that the ancient church called it a mysterium.

It seems clear to me that the notion that the sacraments – baptism in particular – ought only be celebrated when we know what they mean – is ludicrous. Being born into new life in the power of the Spirit – that is a great mystery.

And it is Pentecost.

My oldest, Owen, was born a month too late to be baptized on Easter. A Pentecost baptism was the next best. So that’s what we did.

For various reasons, as it turned out, all the rest of my children were baptized on Pentecost. It started out as a kind of lemonade made from sour lemons. And it ended up being foundational, life-giving, all-important.

  • By the time of my 2nd son, Julian I was determined that he would be baptized by the most appropriate method – dunking. He did training as a 4-month old by swimming in the bathtub. He was thrust under the waters of baptism and in some ways his was the most perfect. But it’s not really about the technique – is it – it’s about the Spirit.
  • Miriam was next. She would follow in the footsteps of her big brother. She was older because she was born in the fall. We had to find the right size and shape of tub for her.
  • By the time Lydia was set to be baptized on Pentecost, I was rector – I had more of a say in how things were going to go. But what I wanted was to make such a case before the congregation that they would recognize that this was the way to do baptism.
  • The last, Emma. By then the pattern was established. And by then the congregation was beginning to get it – adults were coming to me asking, Would you do that for me?
  • Ultimately the pattern established back when I was young would be celebrated in its fullest form with the baptism by immersion of a child in Honolulu. I was older. The child was a miracle in hundreds of different ways. We baptized him in a tub. And it poured down rain on us, just as we were getting into the water.
  • Isaiah: https://photos.app.goo.gl/mAR3uUaAuPx8BPuB6

Pentecost

From Leonard Bernstein’s Mass

  • For the Word created mud and got it going,
    it filled our empty brains with blood and set it flowing,
    and for thousands of regimes
    it’s endured all our follies and fancy schemes.
    It’s been tough, and yet it seems to be growing!
    O you people of power,
    your hour is now.
    You may plan to rule forever, but you never do somehow!
    So we wait in silent treason until reason is restored,
    and we wait for the season of the Word of the Lord.

The gift of the Spirit got it going in the beginning. The Pentecostal fire has been burning for so long – but we still desperately need the heat and energy. If Pentecost brings us “wit and wisdom” – all too often it’s in short supply. We need Pentecost. If it’s new life and a fresh clean white start – bring it on, for we need it.

Pentecost is vital in the life of the church. It’s promise is vital for the world we live in. And each of us lives because He lives in us.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

Notes

lectionary

  • Acts 2
  • 1 CO 12: one body from many, gifts of the Holy Spirit
  • John 20 or John 7

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