It’s Pentecost! And it’s chaotic. Violent winds, tongues of fire, shouting voices, bewildered crowds, a cacophony of languages, accusations of drunkenness. Then a voice pierces through the noise: “What does this mean?” It’s a great question! It’s Pentecost, one of the three major feasts of the Christian year, the feast of the Holy Spirit. What does it mean? We know about the other two feasts. We know all about Christmas and Easter, we know what they mean. Christmas is the great feast of the Incarnation, the birth of Jesus, the promise that God is with us. Easter is the resurrection of Jesus, the triumph of life over death, hope over fear, love over hate. Easter means that life wins.
This is an in-between time. The world as we knew it is no more. The new world that will replace it hasn’t happened yet. We are in-between. The Indian novelist Arundhati Roy had an article in the Financial Times on April 3 entitled “The Pandemic is a Portal”, in which she wrote: “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.” Now there are those who will push back on this idea, people who are determined to restore the old world as it was, to make things normal again, perhaps with grudging acknowledgement that this will be a “new normal”. Will we pass thro
Whenever I hear Paul’s speech to the people of Athens, I always think about fish. Maybe it’s just me. I have to admit that none of my teachers, no commentary that I have ever read on this passage ever talks about fish. But when Paul refers to the God in whom we live and move and have our being, I think fish. It makes me wonder whether fish know that water exists. Whether they even think about water at all. Fish live and move and have their being in water. Can they see water? Do they feel it? Or is water simply invisible to their fish eyes, taken for granted perhaps. The water matters of course. If you’ve ever gone fishing, you know that as soon as you take a fish out of water, it pan
So, what comes next? That’s a question a lot of people are asking these days. Are businesses going to open up again? Will schools re-open? Will I get to go to classes in September? When can I go back to work? Is there going to be work for me? When can I leave home, who will I be able to visit? There are a lot of questions about what comes next these days, as we think about moving into the next phase of this pandemic, the ‘new normal’, as some people are starting to call it. No one really knows what it will look like. And as we tentatively take steps to re-open, no one really knows whether the virus will stay under control or come storming back. That’s a big question mark! We don’t k
“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” What does it mean to have abundant life, and how do we get there? Well that’s the million dollar question isn’t it? How can I be happy? What does it mean for human beings to flourish? How can we have greater well-being, more life satisfaction, what does it mean to live better, to live more fully? Abundance encompasses all of these notions about what it means to live a good life. It’s bigger than just happiness. One way or another, it’s what all of us want. And it’s also what our faith is all about. Two weeks ago, we read that John concludes his gospel by telling us that whole point of writing it was so that you may come to belie