There was a man named Peter Maurin who was a friend and colleague of Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement whose cause for sainthood is ongoing. Peter Maurin was an eccentric philosopher and a little disheveled and completely impractical, and yet he was Dorothy Day’s inspiration. And one of the impractical things he said was this: We should always remember that when the Holy Spirit first came to the church, it came to a meeting, somewhere people were gathered together. And he said what that meant was that anytime anyone invites you to any meeting about anything, you should always go. Because you simply never know what the Holy Spirit might do when given a group of people in a room.
Now unfortunately we know that this is not completely true. If you have any business experience at all, you know there are meetings that you really don’t want to be at, they will be bad for your soul. I was at a meeting just a couple of weeks ago that depressed me for days. (Please, it wasn’t here at the parish, don’t even think that.) But what I think Peter Maurin was saying that attending a meeting is taking a risk, and that life without risk, without room for movement, often leaves no room for the Holy Spirit.
Jesus made an amazing claim about what life would be like after his resurrection and ascension. He said that after he was no longer physically with his disciples that they would actually be better off and incredibly fortunate, because the Spirit, he said, would give them everything they needed and more, not just to live, but to live in joy, to live as his followers, to be able to do the great things he told them needed to be done.
And the evidence that Jesus was right about the Spirit is here today in the readings, in the lives of the disciples he made that promise to. Here on Pentecost we hear what happened to them. They were transformed, and it was the Spirit that did it. They went from a period of uncertainty to a time of energy and vision, from depression, hidden indoors in a room, to a sense of mission that just couldn’t hold them back. They got started doing what they were meant to do. They didn’t miraculously become different people, they didn’t become academically brilliant or have every skill imaginable, they were still former fishermen and tax officials. But they were electrified with a sense that a new moment had come, they remembered why Jesus called them. The Spirit opened them up, gave them an ability to speak with other people that they simply did not have before, helped them remember what they really wanted and had been given the power to do.
But there is a problem with this story, and unfortunately, the problem is us. We’re humans, and we are not always ready to go forward with this Spirit, or not available to see and hear it when it comes to us. There is a closed-in-ness that is an inevitable movement in human life, maybe especially as we get older, as life kicks us around with age and loss and disappointment and responsibilities. It isn’t so much that we get tired as that we steer away from what we worry we might not have the power to do. We avoid risk, or things that look too different from what we know, or that we think and hope are someone else’s job. If we don’t lock ourselves into a room like the disciples in the gospel today we gradually find a way to draw constraints around ourselves just as effectively. We define our future by the way things seem to have turned out, not by what we believe God can and will do for us if we allow it to happen.
The point is not that we need to believe in some kind of gospel of self-fulfillment, that God wants us to convince ourselves we can do anything we imagine. This isn’t about being able to do anything, but being able to trust that with the Spirit we can do what we were called to do. That is what happened at Pentecost to these disciples. Paul says today that every individual gets some manifestation of the Spirit, some gift of the Spirit that is theirs and not someone else’s. If you think you’re an exception to this, then it’s a really good thing you came to this particular meeting today, because this is your reminder that asking for insight into what that gift is for you, now, and asking to get sent into the world strengthened by God to embrace it, is why we’re all here on the feast of the Holy Spirit.
Ordinary Christians do amazing things. Even today, they find the right words and actions that can bring peace in relationships, they find a way to change the church little by little, they stand up for immigrants, they give hope to the sick, they write books and paint pictures that inspire people, or maybe they just reach out yet again to one impossible person who needs them. We know this happens, and yet over and over we don’t feel worthy or ready or qualified.
But today and every Sunday we are all gathered in a room today like the disciples were, and we come together for the same reason, because Jesus told us one, to stick together, and two, to be ready. If you somehow think there are things that the spirit of the risen Christ isn’t strong enough to accomplish, then take the risk, go to the meeting you don’t want to go to, call the person you don’t want to call, be available for something that is completely unexpected but that in your heart is what you really need the Spirit to empower you to do.