BREATHING SPIRIT INTO A COUNTRY

Falcon 9 Launch, NASA Kennedy, FL.

PENTECOST SUNDAY 2020

This Pentecost Sunday in the year 2020 finds the world in the midst of a deadly pandemic and this country in the throes of a nationwide protest over the televised death of a handcuffed man who suffocated under the knee of a law officer.  People are reacting in the spirit of humanity at its best and worst and many are voicing their reactions.  The month began with people protesting that they couldn’t go to the gym or get a haircut and is ending with a maned rocket launched into outer space and street rioting because they can’t stop some bad actors from killing them.  Sadly, the protests turned to riots because bad actors had also inserted themselves there as well.  Our senior pastor’s message today included the observation that unlike animals, we human beings are the only creatures that have the super power of restraint, the ability not to do something that we’re capable of doing. 

I found two tweets today that succinctly organized my frame of mind on this Pentecost Sunday:

“Jesus breathed upon his disciplines, and in that breath, he gave them the Spirit of courage and mission to bring healing to a broken world. [John 20:22] Pentecost is one way to reflect that the power of God is greater than the power that took away the breath of George Floyd.” –Francis X. Pray

“I know your pain, your rage, your sense of despair and hopelessness. Justice has, indeed, been denied for far too long. Rioting, looting, and burning is not the way. Organize. Demonstrate. Sit-in. Stand-up. Vote. Be constructive, not destructive.”  --John Lewis

Immediately after God put his spirit on every human being at Pentecost, the apostle Peter addressed a crowd in Acts 2 by quoting the prophet Joel:

“God says,

I will pour out my Spirit on all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy,

your young men will see visions,

your old men will dream dreams.

I will show wonders in the heaven above

and signs on the earth below,

blood and fire and billows of smoke.”

NASA astronaut Doug Hurley shouted just before ignition of the Falcon 9 rocket yesterday, “Let’s light this candle”.  A bystander was quoted as saying “We’ve been bombarded with gloom and doom for the last six, eight weeks and this is awesome.  It brings a lot of people together.” 

Little did these men realize that more than a candle would be lit up last night in major cities all across the country and the senseless murder of one man would bring a whole lot of people together for a release, the unrestrained ability to unite and turn a wrong into a right.  

And all the while, a deadly virus still silently moves among us.