Between yesterday and today, the daily readings in A Year with Thomas Merton have moved from Easter to Pentecost.
Yesterday's reading focused on how he longs for the clarity of Easter every day, how much Merton wishes the Risen Christ was truly the one we talked about every day. Made me think of some Church of Christ people I got mixed up with in high school who said it was wrong to celebrate Easter because we should celebrate the resurrection every Sunday. Sounds right in theory. But then we wind up rarely talking about it at all.
Personally, like Merton, I adore the beauty of Easter Sunday. I have acquired a taste for it over the years. But also like Merton, it leaves me wanting more. Merton writes,
"This is a wine without intoxication, a joy that has no poison in it. It is life without death. Tasting it for a moment, we are briefly able to see and love all things according to their truth, to possess them in their substance hidden in God, beyond all sense. For desire clings to the vesture and accident of things, but charity possesses them in the simple depths of God."
Beauty often moves between the shadows and light of mystery. I think that's the way it's supposed to be. We catch glimpses of God's back as we hide in the cleft of the rock, and even that overwhelms us.
And then comes Pentecost.
The reading in A Year with Thomas Merton for today shifts from the mystery of Easter to the restored order of Pentecost.
One day the disciples were in a room. The world was still in the centuries-old aftermath of Babel, scattered by language and the inability to express the Gospel to the ends of the earth.
And then comes Pentecost.
One day the disciples were in a room. The Spirit fell upon them. A recovery from the storm of Babel into the still air of a tender message of redemption. This is a "wine without intoxication" even though the people who first heard the apostles thought they were drunk. But no. Filled with the Spirit.
When we wonder about the mission of the church, too often we are responding to Babel. We get caught up in the worldly business of organizations infused with our own anxieties rooted in all the "what ifs" that begin to sound like chaos rather than faith. But the mission of the church needs to be reminded of Pentecost, and that may be the one we need to talk about every Sunday.
Pentecost is the day when the mission of the church was made clear, both in purpose and language. Everyone is supposed to hear the good news, even if they look, think, and believe different from me. The xenophobia encouraged by 24-hour news channels and talk radio is not a posture Christians should entertain when Pentecost is recent in our memory. Instead, we dare to dream the dreams of God who sends us out from our Sunday rooms into a world that looks chaotic, but really needs nothing more than a clear word, a dose of a redeeming Spirit. And for whatever reason, God chooses to make that dose manifest through us so that "charity possesses them in the simple depths of God."
