Romans 8:22-27

Pentecost - Year B

What are you awaiting that you cannot see? Just over the rainbow horizon is what? What's on the tip of your tongue and yet still deeper than words will hold?

One such is the inarticulate yearning for this thing called heaven to become one with this thing called earth.

Another such is this thing called, "love one another."

It is worth the continual wrestling with articulation of the not yet. As we sense it drawing near we are energized to aid its arrival.

As we sense it fading, as we experience an increasing inability to call forth a desired word, find ourselves having gone into the woods on a dark night.

In our weakness, in our lack of hope, we trust and rejoice in being interceded for. In our strength, our hope beyond seeing, we trust and rejoice in interceding for.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/june2003.html

 

 

If we hope (25) the Spirit helps us in our weakness (26).

If we await what is not seen (what a weak position) we find the strength of hope that moves through the heart and comes out in care for self and others.

As the beloved says, "When I am without hope, hope still lives in me." Who can explain this mystery that goes around and around.

Let us continue interceding as we have been interceded for.
Or is that, intercede for us as we intercede for others.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/june2003.html

 

 

Presuming that Jesus did give his friends a spirit holy (John 20:22) we know hear of another receiving of said spirit 50 days later (Acts) and years later (Romans). This raises a question about the presence of a spiritual reception decades and centuries and millennia later.

Too often we pass by the present (in all of its confusion) by perceiving the past as settled (not still repeating itself in differing guise). At other times we get so caught up in making meaning of the present that we lose track of the many threads that have brought us to this moment.

Whether it is creation or ourselves (go ahead and try to distinguish them) groaning for a new beginning -

Whether we are in a current state of hope or hopelessness -

Whether patience or anxiety seems to be our lot -

Whether we are sighingly weak or comfortably isolated -

Whether we are saints or non-saints -

Intercession is made on our behalf. Join it, test it, rejoice in it, share it, do not let it go for nothing.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/june2006.html

 

 

In our own languages we hear "them" speaking about G*D's deeds of power, with sighs too deep for words, according to the will of G*D.

Sometimes the poor and oppressed only have sighs with which to communicate.

When we try to speak of G*D it often seems like trying to communicate in a foreign language. There is something miraculous about the translation process that parallels our experience with the otherness of G*D. We marvel as much with unexpectedly hearing our native tongue as with what we hear. The very medium is as mysterious as the message.

This otherness turns out to be as close as our breath. So close our breath is taken away. All that is left is a sigh brooding over the face of the deep, calling deep to deep. This sigh becomes our new language that gives us a prophetic perspective. Ahh, yes, the violence of chaos is not countered by the chaos of violence. Ahh, yes, insides touch outsides and around goes yin and yang. Ahh, yes, it is not our past that determines us, but our dreams. Ahh, yes, the language of hope transforms the determinism of anger.

To speak with kindness is an expression of G*D's presence. To pause, to rise on expectant toes, is to accord the presence of G*D a new reality heretofore unexpressed.

May you pause long enough to be able to hear the sighs of the world as key signs of the presence of G*D. May you pause long enough for kindness to rise within you. It may take longer than a count to ten.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/june2006.html

 

 

There are many things yet to be learned but they are beyond our current bearing of them. Until we can come to grips with this basic understanding of more to be learned - bones remain dry, labor pains continue, and we remain trapped in our current-sized room repeating ourselves in a single language to one another.

A needed breath of new creation, a new spirit, is needed as catalyst to transform what we don't know into an important category of life and renewal for us. Without this we are dusty dust, groaning groaners, sorrowing sorrowers.

Continuing the oneness image of I in you and you in them, the new comes to the old, unbidden. Consider this as a definition of Glory as well as an expression of Grace.

- - -

step out in faith with fear and trembling
a new vision comes beyond what we know

cast a new vision beyond what is yet known
fear and trembling become solid enough to stand on

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html

 

Pentecost often comes down to wearing red clothes and having red balloons. Brother Paul sees Pentecost type events in terms of labor, with all the blood and pain that is associated thereto. In these terms you can hear wannabe Pentecostalists opting for c-sections and epidurals – anything to avoid the pain of a new thing (that is not a comment about safety needs).

Our joyful expectancy, when push comes to shove, becomes a secondary consideration in the face of what it would mean to actually begin living as though all folks are part of and can get the wonder of G*D. Much easier just to sit and wait or simply keep talking to ourselves in our safe little place with our personal ecstatic experience.

Imagine the room Jesus' Friends were occupying as a dilated cervix and we are being pushed along to an unanticipatable new world. Wind and fire, pain and blood, birthing a new life through the old – seeing all in the midst of the partial – Pentecost.

Bonus read: D. H. Lawrence "New Heaven and Earth". Enjoy your death and rebirth, Pentecost as a condensed Easter Triduum.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html

 

 

With birthing images galore we might hear verse 26 as: “...the Spirit helps us in our gestation periods.”

In the midst of all the busy-ness of life it is sometimes difficult to see ourselves as still gestating, not yet ready for birthing. Our innate narcissism and sense of privilege doesn’t know when we are out of our league, inarticulate, waiting, growing. And so a sense of preveniency is good to have to wrap around and remind ourselves that we are being interceded for by many friends, ancestors, descendants, and all of a still-laboring creation.

Pentecost is another name for yet another birth opportunity flooded with the blood of birthing and one last great push and whoosh of breath exhaled. Let’s see if this next birthing can have us rebuilding alongside one another and call it G*D at work or, more simply, expectant hope.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/05/romans-822-27.html