5/30/20 “Pentecost: God’s Protest” by Nancy E. Petty

Last night, as our city erupted in the pain and grief of 400 years of racial injustice I sat trying to find something to hold on to, to ground myself in, a word from my faith, something to do. Around 7:00 pm I decided to walk downtown. There was such a strong urge in me to feel the tension, and in some way to stand in solidarity with the cries of pain.

I returned home just as the protest begin to escalate on Fayetteville St. For the next 4 hours I sat and watched on TV the unfolding of the intense anger and pain and frustration. Yes, there was violence as people broke almost every glass store front on Fayetteville St. And yet, I as I watched it all unfold it was the violence our nation has done to black people that I couldn’t stop thinking about. With each window that was broken, I saw another black brother and sister’s face killed by racism and white supremacy. 

There really are no words. Only weeping. I asked God to forgive us. To help us. To help us understand. To help us change. To help us have compassion. It is a time of deep lamenting. In the midst of my crying out, I remembered a post on Facebook I saw last week that our own David Anderson wrote. I want to read it to you.

“I see some people commenting about how other people are destroying their own communities. I wonder how this connects to the ancient biblical expressions of deep grief: rending your own garment, pulling out your own beard, covering your flesh in ashes and wailing because the grief you hold in your body is too much to contain. The patriarchs of the stories of faith destroyed their property and disfigured their bodies in the midst of deep grief. Perhaps, in our convenience driven culture, we have forgotten how to mourn. Perhaps we have forgotten how deep the well of grief can be, even after 400 years.” (David Anderson)

We are living the ancient biblical story today. The expressions of last night are expressions of deep grief: the modern day expression of rending your own garment, pulling out your own beard, doing something because the grief we are asking people to hold in their bodies is too much to contain. When you oppress and marginalized people for so long this is the story that unfolds—grief that our bodies can no longer hold. It is the story of our faith.

Today, Pentecost Sunday, the church celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit. There is a word in this story for us today. The story says that the Spirit came in the sound of a violent wind and in fire and in all different languages. The Spirit came as a disruption: disruption of the calm, disruption of our world view, disruption of just how small we have made God. You might say that Pentecost was God’s protest. God’s Spirit came at Pentecost and broke down barriers—language barriers, barriers that try to keep God locked up in religious buildings, and in rules that oppress and dehumanize people. Pentecost is God’s protest for freedom and liberation.

That spirit that came on that first Pentecost wasn’t a calm wind of the Spirit. It was a disorienting wind of the spirit. A wind spirit of chaos. A wind spirit of disorder. Today, in our nation, we are experiencing the outbreaking of the spirit. The question that comes to us this Pentecost is, “Can we imagine that the Spirit is in the chaos. As people of faith, can we try and hold a different understanding of the chaos? Can we trust that the Spirit is at work right now in our nation, in our city? And can we find ways to work with the Spirit to bring about healing and a new creation? Can we be a part of God’s protest and be Pentecost People?

I hope we can. I believe we can. I know Pullen can. We must!!!!