A
proverb I heard not long ago says this: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If
you want to go far, go together.” How might this proverb speak to our culture,
including how we understand and live as Church? What might this kind of proverb
have to do with Pentecost, which we celebrate today?
If
I were to ask us when each of us thinks the Church began, historically or
otherwise, how many of us would answer, “At Pentecost”? But then what is (or
was) Pentecost? What is Church and why?
Might
the readings we have heard today give us a clue toward the answers to these
“brainstorm”-type questions? Fifty days after Jesus had risen from the dead (which
is the meaning of the word “Pentecost,” fifty days), the Acts of the Apostles
says to us that Jesus’ apostles, if not a larger group of Jesus’ disciples,
those who had followed Jesus during his public ministry, passion, death, and
resurrection, “were all in one place together.” It was at this point, when
Jesus’ disciples “were all in one place together,” when the Holy Spirit
descended upon them “like a strong driving wind” and in “tongues of fire.”
The
rest of this account of Pentecost we hear from Acts also speaks of togetherness
among the disciples of Jesus and an even larger group of “Jews from every
nation under heaven” gathered in Jerusalem at the time. But this togetherness was
not and could not be a too-simple and artificial uniformity. The group that
witnessed to this first Pentecost, the birth of our Church, was too large and
too diverse to be so uniform. All these different people from all over the
world would witness together, but each “in their own tongues” to “the mighty
acts of God”; to the power of God’s Holy Spirit; to the birth of a Church.
Does
this not sound a lot like the Church today; like our reality here in Rochester
and at St. Kateri? “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go
together.” I do not believe that proverbs like this are meant to be a criticism
of those who “go alone” in our Church or civil society, or in our St. Kateri
Parish for that matter, as if acting together is always better than acting
alone; as if going far is always better than going fast.
The
rightful diversity within the Church will forever welcome the faithful who view
change in the Church—in decisions made at various levels of Church leadership,
the people who lead, or sometimes even the teachings that guide and result from
those in leadership—as more often good, and the faster the better. And the same
rightful diversity within the Church will necessarily welcome those with
usually the opposite view, who are wary of change or who stress caution or
consensus before allowing change; who prefer going far to going fast; going
together to going alone.
Instead
of serving as an indictment of people with either view, I think our experience
of Pentecost, in a similar way to that first Pentecost of which the Acts of the
Apostles speaks to us today, has two effects on the Church and on us as the
Church’s faithful. First, our experience of receiving the Holy Spirit, our
experience of Pentecost, puts in right order these two complementary movements
in the Church of going alone and therefore faster, and of going together and therefore
farther. Second, our experience of Pentecost purifies our intentions behind
preferring either to go alone and therefore fast, or together and therefore
far, or a bit of each preference depending on our particular circumstances of
life.
Our
experience of Pentecost, like the very first experience Jesus’ disciples had of
Pentecost, rightly orders the desire or movement in our same Church toward
going together and therefore far, versus the desire or movement toward going
alone and therefore fast. We hear of this right ordering in our readings today.
The Holy Spirit first draws all this diversity of peoples together, so that
they will be able to go far once they are sent out by the same Spirit, not in
spite of but precisely because of
their diversity. But the diversity of these earliest disciples of Jesus is a
diversity whose unity is safeguarded by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and the
same is true of the Church today. The same Holy Spirit who once drew together the
diverse peoples of the earliest Church draws us into this “one place together”
so that we may honor and celebrate together our diversity held in unity by the Holy
Spirit. We may not be “Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of
Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,
Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, both
Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs.” But we are from East
Irondequoit, West Irondequoit, elsewhere in greater Rochester, New York State,
or beyond; rich, poor, and middle class; ideologically left, right, and center;
people who prefer more pre-Vatican II liturgy or post-Vatican II liturgy, and
so on, all called to this “one place together.” We might only want to be wary
of letting in certain Canadians who study in France; they may be a little
suspect…
Only
once we have been drawn together by the Holy Spirit into the unity of “one,
holy, catholic, and apostolic Church” in this one celebration will we be able
to set out, each in the particular ways in which we are called, to proclaim the
Gospel, “glorifying [the one] God by our lives.” Only by learning by
celebrating here and now our “going together,” our being “in one place
together,” will we then be effective, if not sometimes surprisingly fast, if
and when the Holy Spirit calls us to “go alone,” each putting our individual or
unique gifts to the service of the same Gospel, remaining faithful to our unity
as Church.
In
John’s Gospel today, Jesus reinforces this point: To learn by celebrating our
“going together” is necessary if and when the Holy Spirit, who keeps us
together as one Church, calls us within this Church to “go alone”; to exercise
our more particular or unique gifts at the service of the Gospel. In the same
discourse as when Jesus promises his disciples the Holy Spirit, “another
advocate to be with [us] always,” Jesus says to his disciples, “If you love me,
you will keep my commandments… Whoever loves me will keep my word.” My sisters
and brothers, love; keeping the commandments of Jesus, first among which is to
love one another as Jesus has loved us; keeping Jesus’ word: These are not
individual actions that we accomplish without any grounding in community; as one
Church that gathers together to hear and celebrate God’s word in our Eucharist,
together. To keep Jesus’ commandments, to love, presupposes our gathering “in
one place together.” In fact, God himself is a communion, a “togetherness” of
three distinct persons (more on this next Sunday, when we will celebrate more
specifically the Most Holy Trinity).
Yet
togetherness, unity, communion does not stifle diversity, individuality,
uniqueness of spiritual and other gifts. In fact, our unity reinforces and
honors our diversity, individuality, uniqueness of gifts. Our Pentecost
experience of the Holy Spirit not only puts in right order the complementary
movements in the Church of going together and therefore farther so that we may
be able to, if necessary, go alone and therefore maybe faster, but also our
Pentecost experience of the Holy Spirit purifies these two seemingly opposite
movements, so that indeed they are complementary and will never stifle each
other. As 1 Corinthians says to us today, we remain “one body though [with] many
parts. We receive “different spiritual gifts” by “the same Spirit.” We perform
“different forms of service” by the grace of our “one Lord” and God.
By “going together,” we gain the strength and unity we
need for when we are called to “go alone.” As Church, we breathe with two
lungs. Our unity and then our diversity are inspired by the same Spirit.
Insofar we gather “in one place together” to celebrate this, we will both “go
far” and “go fast,” because our Pentecost experience empowers us to do both.
