I like what Hildegard of Bingen says. Hildegard is a twelfth-century mystic, a brilliant female theologian, Benedictine abbess, artist, composer, naturalist, physician, and author. Hildegard sees the Holy Spirit in the color green. In her visions, the Spirit is the greening energy of Love that pulses throughout the universe. The Spirit is green like the lush garden of Eden and like the living green inside every life-bearing twig.[1]
If the Spirit is green, then it’s safe to say that the Spirit is with us in full force here in Boulder County this Pentecost Day. Look around you! Our high desert has been greening before our very eyes. Varying shades of green are everywhere: those ever-brown prairie grasses are green, the trees are greening, the bushes are greening, the green weeds and green leaves of flowers are pushing up everywhere, even through the hard asphalt. God’s life-energy is pulsing with the greening of creation! The brown and burning place in which I arrived last fall is gone. The dry bones are up and dancing in a swirl of life-giving green.
But what about us human beings gathered here today? Are we greening, as well? As a community, we can probably identify more with the scattered bones in Ezekiel’s valley: dusty and disjointed, skinless and immobile, anything but green. Or perhaps there’s still a bit of green hidden deep inside, like the still-empty branches on the neglected shrubs in my yard. God’s breathing, greening Love is meant for us, too, on this Pentecost. When we cry, “Our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” God promises us: “I will bring you up from your graves … I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live.” My all-time favorite theologian Rowan Williams writes that God sends us the Holy Spirit as a bridge to span the gap between human suffering and hope. The work of the Spirit is to create human beings who are capable of “confronting suffering without illusion or despair.”[2]
In our Gospel from John, Jesus explains to his disciples that they won’t be left to suffer alone when he returns to his Father. The Spirit--the Advocate, the Comforter--will come to stand with them when they look around and see death and failure, scarcity and loss. In our reading from Acts, we know that the Spirit comes to strengthen the early Church in the face of terrifying persecutions and struggles. Christians today are celebrating the birthday of a Church that is more like the struggling Church of the Apostles than ever before in our history. We are celebrating Pentecost for the second time in a way that none of us would have ever imagined just a few years ago. This year, we are together, and we are singing, so there is hope. And at the same time, we face change and after change, sacrifice, uncertainty, and new ways of doing everything. The Holy Spirit promised to us is the divine power that settles into this unsettled space and pries open a corner so that the light of hope can shine in. The Holy Spirit is what sustains us as we live between “the given and the future, between reality as it is and the truth which encompasses it.”[3] Sometimes that hope pours into us like a gale-force wind, nearly knocking us over with its power. Sometimes it dances dangerously all around us like flames. Sometimes it fills our bleeding hearts with the kind of joyful song that allows us to sing alleluia at the grave. Sometimes it carries our whole assembly forward, and sometimes it sustains us in the quiet of our own lives. Sometimes, it merely trickles like the green sap of life into hollow, empty stems.
I heard a story last night that reminded me of the Spirit’s greening power. A Native American tribe was once talking about the loss of their ancient language. Their words were literally dying, drying up before their eyes, with the deaths of their elders. When some lamented the hopelessness and annihilation that such a devastating loss could bring, the chief spoke up in protest. “Our language can never die,” he proclaimed. “The sound of our language is carried in the winds and sings on the waters. It rests within the soil and whispers from the trees. It speaks in the honking of the geese and the howling of the coyote.” (Told by Paula Palmer) Such, too, is the language of God’s greening Love. It comes pouring out of every mouth, in every tongue, bridging the gap between suffering and hope. It can never die.
Look at us, so filled with God’s greening that we are celebrating this feast day [sitting masked in the parking lot on a Sunday morning] OR [sitting around a computer screen on a Sunday morning] to protect one another. As that powerful divine love enters our deepest selves and radiates through every pore, we can’t help spreading that Love any more than a plant can keep a leaf from unfurling from its stem. The more we ask for the Spirit, the more we will give away of ourselves. The more we are filled, the more willing we will be to empty ourselves for the sake of the other.
Hildegard of Bingen, painting in green, says it best. Let us pray with her:
Spirit of fire,
Paraclete, our Comforter,
You’re the Live in alive
the Be in every creature’s being,
the Breathe in every breath on earth …
Holy Life-Giver,
Doctor of the desperate,
Healer of everyone broken past hope,
Medicine for all wounds,
Fire of love,
Joy of hearts,
fragrant Strength,
sparkling Fountain
in You we contemplate
how God goes looking for those who are lost
and reconciles those who are at odds with Him.
Break our chains!
You bring people together,
You curl clouds, sing in creeks,
and turn the lush earth green.
You teach those who listen,
breathing joy and wisdom into them.
We praise You for these gifts,
Light-giver,
Sound of joy,
Wonder of being alive,
Hope of every person,
and our strongest Good.[4]
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