If Two and Two and Fifty Make a Million

"If Two and Two and Fifty Make a Million"

Pentecost! "God-in-Jesus" version, "End of the World!" Power-Filled Presence of Jesus! Challenging, changing choice to this day: Giving up on this world? Giving Life to this world? No other "world," no other "life," coming to save
what we make of them now -- each of us spreading responses, like fire, like wind: "If two and two and fifty make a million, we'll see that day come round -- We'll see that Day come round!" (Pete Seeger)

Fiftieth Day! Jubilee Day of Easter!! All things forgiven, made new, started over! Suddenly from Heaven there came! One Tongue pouring forth Every Language! First-ever gathering, "United (Uniting?) Nations!" Broadly-Casting! Simultaneously Translating!

"To each is given manifestation of Spirit for Common Good!" Spirit of Jesus, alive in all our spirits! Jew, Greek, slave, free, male, female, young, old, included, dismissed, adopted, biological, red, brown, yellow, black, white -- all precious in Spirit-Sought Sight!

"One could trace history of church . . . ecclesiastical discussion . . . whether God's Spirit operative among Gentiles, women, people with dark skin, children, homosexuals, faithful of other religions, now even animal kingdom . . . God's Spirit blows where it will . . . mysterious wind, beyond seeing, beyond understanding . . . Always higher, lower, more powerful, more pervasive than we have yet imagined." (Gail Ramshaw)

* * * * *

Is there some other, or ether, "world" to be lived in today? Or is this alone World of the Spirit's Action? "Now and forever?" "Rapture," by any name, pretense that what happens here does not bother who's already "chosen? for some other "world?"

Just as they knew it would be: proof of their rightness spread round them like grass or sidewalks among bland custardy palaces, picnic tables of their reward. Air smelling of children and coconuts. Truth blaring from every station on dial. Missing dogs, black squelch of November, bittersweet wringing red hands?

Saddened to meet an old love without pain in gilded silent grove that lately, come to think of it, looking rather dusty, and where less and less often they feel someone watching? Angels kind but not very talkative. No wonder they gather, like exiles, straining toward faint reports crackling up from below -- war, disaster, stars plunging into the sea. God, it appears, is elsewhere even here. (Katha Pollitt)

Elsewhere even here?! Land of the "safely saved?" Inquired of yet, by Resurrection Each Morning: Why do we still seek living among the dead? Is Jesus not always Risen? Always "Not Here?" Not any one place among any one people very long? But always Going Before us? Heading out on his own? Cutting edge? Making Way Out of No Way? Calling -- Come out! Come out! Wherever! Second; Third; Irrepressible Coming? Elusive as Wind, as Fire? Defying us All- Who-Would-Limit the work of this day?