This is the mid-week devotional for February 21, 2024.
Our Lenten series is based on the theme of “Altered by the Spirit.” Altered means to be changed, transformed. As we go through our Lenten journey, we will encounter how the Holy Spirit is always one step ahead of us, nudging us on - leading us where we need to go, altering us, changing us to conform ourselves more closely to the image of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Our theme for this week is Altered Through God’s Creativity.
For the first time in my life – and perhaps yours - I am reading the text of Pentecost – which we normally read about six weeks after Easter – here at the beginning of Lent. How topsy-turvy is that?! What does Pentecost have to say to us as we start our Lenten journey to the cross?
The creativity of the Holy Spirit is clear from our texts: the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the shapes of tongues of flames allows us to engage other peoples and cultures in a way that people feel heard and respected. Seventeen different communities are named in our text. And they are all amazed and astonished – because the Holy Spirit allows them to understand in their own language God’s deeds of power. The disciples – humble Galileans – are enabled to speak to the vast communities through the creativity and power of the Holy Spirit.
We live in a world where sometimes hearing people speaking in a foreign language or a different accent or dialect can make us feel excluded or even suspicious. We read stories in the news about fighting among communities, different nationalities. People are divided along political and cultural lines. Fatal fights break out on ordinary subway rides or at sports celebrations. It seems we take our lives in our hands when we ask a stranger for directions. Division seems to be the order of the day in our world.
The Holy Spirit seeks to change all that. Suddenly the differences between peoples of the world are not something to fear but something to celebrate. Through the creativity of the Holy Spirit, each person is listened to and each person has a voice. Our Lenten journey brings us God’s point of view, where speaking and hearing are done with mutuality and respect.
That’s the creative push of the Holy Spirit – for us to listen and respect other voices different from ours. Because God listens and respects each and everyone of us.
Instead of being suspicious of one another, we are called to celebrate our differences, recognize them as gifts from our God, a creative God who had made a diverse universe. Life that exists from single cells to creations of trillions of cells. A diverse universe, plants, animals, a vast cosmos that celebrates and reflects the creativity and diversity of God. Take a moment and look around at one another. As we look around, in many ways we see similarities - but also in many differences. But in our similarities and differences we have one important thing in common: we are each created by God – we share a common creator. Lent calls us to celebrate this and to make it our Lenten duty to uphold and protect the diversity of God’s world.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Reminds us of this Lenten mutuality:
“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied together into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality . . . Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured; this is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on Earth until we recognize the basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.”
So, as we begin this journey of Lent, let’s explore where we feel isolated or alone. Where we are afraid of others. Where we are judgmental. Who do we keep at an arm’s length? Our creative Holy Spirit wants us to let our guard down. So maybe the challenge of Lent is to invite someone you don’t know out to coffee. Speak to someone you don’t know after church. Offer a compliment or a smile to someone different from yourself. Maybe this Lent read a book about a different land or nationality or race. Learn the customs of a neighbor from a foreign land. Eat a meal of a different culture, foods whose names you’ve never heard before. Learn to say hello in another language. Pray every day for places where conflict brews, pray and act for world unity.
The creative act for us in Lent is for us to connect to each other in our differences. To celebrate each other. So, let us thank our amazingly creative God – who made us all- and brings us together so that we can proclaim the mighty deeds of God – that Christ died or all people and to make us one – so that we may find in our diversity our unity in Jesus Christ our Lord. In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.