Pentecost is a full of life feast. It abounds with tales and symbols of the mysterious, typically mischievious Spirit of God at work amongst individuals, nonhuman creatures, and nonliving parts. It’s a day on which Christians have fun the God who’s “do[ing] a brand new factor” in our midst, to echo the prophet Isaiah (43:19, NRSVUE), with extra power, creativity, and vitality than we will comprehend.
There isn’t a scarcity of how for Christians to discover collectively the that means of Pentecost and God’s presence within the Holy Spirit. On this article, I need to spotlight one empowering avenue for Pentecost formation with individuals of all ages that’s impressed by Acts 2 and Cole Arthur Riley’s “Pentecost” reflection in “Black Liturgies”: discovering your voice.
A Spirit and Individuals Who Gained’t Be Silenced
The scene in Acts 2 is vivid and astounding. The Spirit of God all of the sudden reveals up in the home the place the disciples have gathered. All of them start talking in numerous languages, and so they begin attracting a crowd of Jewish individuals from totally different occupied locations throughout the Roman Empire who’re all at present in Jerusalem. Members of the group are shocked to appreciate that they perceive what the disciples are saying, and what they hear is a message about “God’s deeds of energy” (Acts 2:11, NRSVUE).
I discover a number of sides of this story theologically putting:
1. The Spirit Provides Individuals Voices
The approaching of the divine Spirit that Jesus guarantees in Acts 1:8 goes to work among the many disciples and the broader group within the metropolis by enabling individuals to talk up. As a substitute of a voice from heaven like we witness within the gospel accounts of Jesus’s baptism and transfiguration, God chooses right here to fill all these disciples and to empower them to make use of their voices to inform the story of what God has been doing.
2. The Spirit Seeks Disempowered, Subjugated Individuals
A vital level that Riley makes in “Pentecost” is that the individuals who congregated close to the disciples “heard themselves within the sound—not the language of their oppressors or individuals who believed themselves to be nearer to the divine than others” (264). The languages that the Spirit allows the disciples to talk are usually not the official imperial languages. They’re the languages of the individuals whose lands and economies have been conquered by Rome.
What’s extra, languages include greater than phrases. As theologian Willie James Jennings factors out in his commentary on Acts, they bear the histories, cultures, relationships, and knowledge of the individuals who form them (28–30). In propelling the disciples towards the languages of different subjugated individuals, God’s Spirit embraces the very lives of those subjugated individuals in Jerusalem. As Jennings says, “Communicate a language, converse a individuals. God speaks individuals, fluently. And God, with all of the urgency that’s with the Holy Spirit, desires the disciples of [God’s] solely begotten Son to talk individuals fluently too. That is the start of a revolution that the Spirit performs” (30).
3. The Spirit Invitations Individuals to Resist Oppression
In selecting individuals’s native languages over the imperial languages, the Spirit reveals the phrase that God has for disempowered, subjugated individuals to run counter to the Roman Empire’s phrases of oppression. Riley illuminates the social and political significance of the Spirit’s motion with this assertion: “Pentecost reminds us that the Spirit of God rejects assimilation underneath the guise of ‘unity.’ This story isn’t just about range; it’s not mere tokenism; it’s language as liberation. It’s the sound of excluded voices making one thing complete once more” (264–265).
The Pentecost story is a few Spirit and individuals who gained’t be silenced. On this feast, we witness God assembly oppressed individuals the place they’re in ways in which affirm who they’re. We encounter God lifting up their voices and alluring individuals to talk up and converse out in their very own phrases. We discover God working to liberate disempowered individuals.
This work of the Spirit continues to be related and important for Christian communities as we speak. Oppressive methods are nonetheless with us, striving to deprive individuals of voices and impose language that deceives, exploits, and wounds. We want the Spirit to do what the Spirit does greatest: to shake issues up, to let extra air into the room, and to encourage individuals to reclaim their voices and their lives as bearers of God’s picture and individuals in God’s liberation story.
Formation Concepts
Listed below are 3 ways of making area for members of your communities to search out and specific their voices on Pentecost and in subsequent weeks. I exploit “voice” right here expansively to incorporate numerous means and modes of self-expression and communication—not solely oral communication. These actions will be included right into a formation lesson or function the focus of a formation gathering.
1. Listening Prayer
Cole Arthur Riley presents the next breath prayer follow on the finish of her “Pentecost” reflection. It’s a easy and highly effective prayer that you would be able to pray with a gaggle, silently or aloud, as you breathe collectively for as quick or as lengthy of a interval as you want. Please credit score Riley when utilizing or sharing.
“INHALE: I gained’t overlook myself.
EXHALE: I’ll hear for my voice.”
From “Pentecost” in “Black Liturgies” by Cole Arthur Riley (266)
2. Storytelling
Invite members to share their private tales with each other. This may be executed in many alternative methods and tailor-made to your group’s presents, wants, and pursuits. What’s vital is to make the area inclusive and protected for every individual to search out and supply their very own voice in addition to to be heard. Two assets that present useful steering on cultivating attentive sharing and listening group areas are the Episcopal Church’s “Beloved Community Story Sharing Guidebook,” which incorporates quite a few planning concepts and proposals, and Coming to the Desk’s “Touchstones” for respectful group interactions.
Some methods you may form this exercise embody:
- Sharing aloud in pairs or taking turns to share round a gaggle circle
- Taking time to write down tales down first after which giving members an opportunity to share what they’ve written
- Offering a particular immediate to encourage their tales, like . . .
- Discuss a time if you felt seen or heard by God
- Inform a narrative about one factor that provides you pleasure and why
- Discuss a time if you realized one thing about your self that was or is vital to you
- (From the Beloved Group Story Sharing Guidebook linked above, which accommodates extra prompts): “Share a narrative a few time if you felt not noted, like your voice and presence didn’t matter”
3. Talking Reality to Energy
Invite members to make use of their voices to answer a type of systemic injustice or oppression that’s impacting your wider group or native context. Listed below are a number of options to encourage your discernment:
- Become involved in an area group or coalition working for social and ecological justice and add your voices in solidarity with these of your neighbors
- Share tales, poems, or songs of resistance in opposition to oppression that reaffirm human dignity and creation’s sanctity
- In case your group or group enjoys getting inventive, contemplate talking up and talking out by making and sharing prophetic artwork; this could appear to be drawing flyers or posters, making a mural, writing and printing a zine, and way more
A Closing Notice
Discovering our voices could be a enjoyable and thrilling journey. It will also be difficult, relying on our social places and the sorts of narratives we now have obtained about who we’re and what we now have to say.
Once we as Christians, dwelling in and with the Holy Spirit, maintain area for each other, our neighbors, and ourselves to discern and converse the truths of our lives, we’re doing one thing that may change every thing. That area is a Pentecost area. That area means room for liberation.
References
Jennings, Willie James. “Acts.” Perception: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Collection. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2017.
Riley, Cole Arthur. “Pentecost.” In “Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human.” New York: Convergent, 2024. 264–66.
Featured picture is by Fotocitizen on Pixabay
