We are now in the season after Pentecost, the season of the Spirit, that enigmatic third person of the Trinity. In Luke the Spirit shows up fifty days after the Resurrection. In John the Spirit shows up Easter evening. But in truth the Spirit is forever on the move. For Israel in the first century the Spirit had grown silent during the brutal occupation of Rome. At Jesus’ resurrection the Spirit for the early Jewish Christians returns empowering their communities for the way ahead. John names the Spirit the Advocate. So for us the modern day spirit-filled, we are to live lives of passionate advocacy.
The theme of this year’s General Convention is Ubuntu, which is a Zulu word that means I in you and you in me. It is a word that calls for intentional community, that we live not for ourselves, but that we live for the good of the whole, something quite counter cultural in the west. Ubuntu is the life of the Spirit, that we become advocates for our brother and sister; that our well being is intimately connected to the well being of the other. We become Advocates for the voiceless of our world, advocates for mercy and compassion; advocates for peace and nonviolence; advocates for justice and dignity. Pentecost, the coming of the Spirit is the very revelation of our vocation, what we are made for: that we live as the community of faith as the Advocate, the incarnation of the Spirit, given to a world in want of saving breath.
This is the same Spirit that moved over the deep in the very beginning, the life force, both matter and energy, wind from the stars, that creates and recreates our world to the tune of an ancient and sacred song. In the Spirit we are co creators with God, we in God and God in us, reconciling the world into the gracious commonweal, that God imagines; we the bearers of God’s imaginative Spirit that lives so that all may live in the new creation that comes as a song in the wind in every act of advocacy for the least of us. We saw in the flesh this Sunday past what the Spirit can do: The Kuot family now has a home all their own through the power of the Spirit…they in us and we in them… Spirit alive and real. The Spirit is no ghost, but flesh and blood, bringing dignity to the beloved of God’s world, and we have proof, do we not?
