Pentecost Sunday

Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth. - Psalm 104:30

When you send forth your Spirit, they are created. The Spirit who came at Pentecost is the Spirit of creation - breath over the chaos, life into the clay. The renewal the psalm asks for is not improvement. It is the Spirit of God doing what the Spirit of God does in the places that have become dead.

They heard them speaking in their own language of the mighty acts of God. The gift of tongues is the gift of translation - the Spirit enabling the proclamation of God's mighty acts in the particular language of each listener. The Spirit who renews the face of the earth speaks into each person's particular language. He does not broadcast a generic message. He meets each one where they actually are.

Sister, what language does the person nearest to you need the mighty acts of God spoken in? Not the theological language, not the church language - the particular language of their life, their need, their question. The Pentecost gift is the capacity to speak that. The Spirit enables it. Your job is to open your mouth.

Send out your Spirit and renew the face of the earth. Name one relationship in your life where renewal is needed - where something has become dry or closed or dead. Bring it to the Spirit today and ask for the renewal that only the Spirit creates. Then open your mouth in that relationship this week with one true thing, in the language of that person's life.

Lord, send out your Spirit and renew the face of my life - the relationships, the practices, the corners that have become ordinary in the wrong way. And let me speak the mighty acts of God in the language of whoever needs to hear it. Alleluia. Come, Holy Spirit. Amen.