Ordering Our Chaos: The Feast of Pentecost, Commonly Called Whitsunday (May 28, 2023)

Send forth thy Spirit, O Lord: And renew the face of the earth. Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of thy faithful people: and kindle in them the fire of thy love. Amen.

I would like to direct your attention to the Appendix of today’s Bulletin (p. 23). There is a painting you might recognize. It’s called “Convergence” by Jackson Pollack. Look at it for a second. Try to discern any meaning in it. Can you? Jackson Pollock is considered an important artist in the abstract expressionist tradition, especially known for the technique on display in “Convergence”: the drip technique where he would splash paint all over the surface of the canvas, often employing a kind of frenetic dancing as he worked. By the way, if you’re ever looking for a second job, one of his paintings, “Number 17A” sold for $200 million in 2016, proof that money can’t buy style. The painting in our bulletin is one of chaos, characteristic of most Pollock painting: lines and colors chaotically dripped onto the canvas in a seemingly random fashion. Of course, Pollock did have to make the decision of which colors to use and that he would use the drip painting technique but beyond that, the painting is entirely accidental and contingent. Pollock could have spun the pain can at a different angle using a different rotation and we’d have a very different, but still equally random, painting. It’s often been said both that “Art imitates life” and “Life imitates art.” Pollack himself, of course, exemplified this as he lived a chaotic life of which his art is a reflection. Still, I don’t actually dislike this painting. In fact, I think it provides a valuable artifact that distills the chaos most of us experience in our souls.

So, why are we looking at this? Because I think viewing the chaos of our current human condition, which “Convergence” so clearly depicts, helps us better understand the Feast of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost plays over and over again in our own lives as the Holy Spirit works in us, ordering our chaos into a reflection of divine beauty.

In Genesis 1, we’re told that the Spirit hovered over the face of the primordial waters. In the Hebrew mind, the waters were a symbol for chaos, a sign of un-creation, like in the story of Noah. The Psalmist proclaims, “the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered at thy rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils. He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters.” The story of Genesis 1, then, is a story about God ordering the chaos as he forms and shapes domains and then fills them with appropriate life. Over the first three days, he makes light, firmament, and land; the second three days, he makes heavenly bodies, birds and fish, and then land animals and humans. The point is that God is not a God of chaos, but order. Everything existed in perfect harmony in his creation.

Why does this matter? Because today we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Church, another instance of the Holy Spirit coming to order chaos. In Genesis 11, we’re told a story about humans getting together to build a temple for the worship of heavenly bodies. How does God respond? By confusing their language and scattering the people over the face of the earth, just like the waters had been scattered over the face of the earth when the flood was sent as a judgment. Chaos is the cause and result of sin. Disorder causes sin because disorder reproduces disorder. Chaos is the result of sin because all sin stems from pride. The good news for us today is that Pentecost marks the undoing of the chaos. Just as the Holy Spirit hovered over the chaos of the waters while God formed and filled the world, so he hovers over the Church, bringing disparate peoples together into one Body and ordering our souls.

The Holy Spirit enables the Church to obey the commands of God. So that our praise of God is “Not only with our lips but in our lives.” In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus reminds us: “If ye love me keep my commandments” (John 14:15). This statement is the prelude to the promise that he will send the Holy Ghost, the Comforter. What is true of the Church as a whole is true of the Christian in particular: the Holy Spirit hovers over our own lives. You might wonder, how do we assess our progress? How can we detect the Holy Spirit working in our lives? The answer is in our spiritual healing which we can detect in our lives through moral progress: sinning less.

We can trust that the Holy Spirit orders the chaos of our souls. All that disintegration we experience because of sin—our lack of self-knowledge, broken relationships with others, the unfittingness of our behavior—is going to be cured through the work of the Holy Ghost in us if we participate with him and strive for holiness.

Now often, we think that the Holy Spirit is going to knock us off our horse and give us some dramatic sign in order to do this, like what happened with St. Paul. I remember one summer when I was at Liberty, I worked for the Office of Student Housing on a team that would go to dorms and move furniture around, build new furniture, and a whole host of other tasks. One of the office employees was a Pentecostal woman. At lunch one day, we were all sitting around talking about church and someone said, “Wes, don’t you go to an Anglican church?” And this woman goes, “Anglican?? Do you even believe in the Holy Spirit??” I believe the point of her question was that, since we use a liturgy and don’t typically engage in ecstatic worship, do we actually believe that the Holy Spirit is active or do we ignore him. Of course, I told her the Holy Spirit confects a miracle on the Altar every Sunday in the Eucharist. But it’s a uniquely modern American expectation that the only or primary sign of the Holy Ghost would be a kind of ecstasy (actually, I take that back…it seemed to be the expectation of the Corinthian Church which is one of the reasons Paul had to write 1 Corinthians). Of course, there are times when the Holy Spirit reveals himself to us so clearly that it leaves us in awe. We should absolutely treasure these moments. He might knock us off our horse and we should never discount the possibility that he can. But what we find, especially for those of us who have been Christians for a significant period of time, is that he often works through the mundane and the ordinary, and the quotidian. For us Christians, all of life is transfigured into circumstances through which we see God working in us. So yes, maybe he knocks you off the horse. But maybe the Holy Spirit is working in you at your 9-5 job. Maybe around the dinner table with your family. Maybe while you sit in traffic.

And the beauty of this too is that he calls us to minister in those same mundane circumstances. I like to go sit at a few places while I work during the week. I find tat it’s an excellent opportunity to meet people and be open to the Holy Spirit giving opportunities to talk to those I wouldn’t otherwise get to. One place I go in the mornings before the Church Office is open is the Coffee Shop up the road (I call it the parish coffee shop because in England, a parish is a geographical location, not just an individual church). There’s a Presbyterian pastor who always comes in and grabs coffee on the way to his church. One time he said, “Do you work in a parish or is this your parish?” To which I quoted John Wesley to him and said, “The world is my parish!” But the point is I don’t the parish coffee shop isn’t just a place to sit and drink a latte; it’s a place where I pray for the Holy Spirit to bring me the encounters he wants me to have. Some days, I’ve gotten to talk to some really interesting people who are searching for something. Other days, I don’t really talk to anyone. But the point is being open to the Spirit wherever we are and in whatever context we inhabit. Maybe God will call you to go be a missionary to a foreign land or to go do some great work. But maybe he’s calling you to live a life of quiet faithfulness at your 9-5 job. At the family dinner table. While you sit in traffic. The point is that he is ordering you to his plan and the question is will we listen and obey?

Descend upon us, O mighty Spirit, that inspired and encouraged by thee, we may faithfully fulfill the duties of our lives and vocations, that we may carry our crosses with patience and courage and accomplish more nearly thy perfect will. Make us day by day more holy and give to us that heavenly peace which the world cannot give. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.