Happy Pentecost, everyone! In honor of my favorite, blazing-red holy day, today’s Moltmann Monday excerpt comes from The Spirit of Life (bold mine):
To experience the fellowship of the Spirit inevitably carries Christianity beyond itself into the greater fellowship of all God’s creatures. For the community of creation, in which all created things exist with one another, for one another and in one another is also the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Both experiences of the Spirit bring the church today into solidarity with the cosmos, which is so mortally threatened…In earlier times, contempt for life, hostility towards the body, and detachment from the world was merely an inward attitude of mind. Now it has become an everyday reality in the cynicism of the progressive destruction of nature. Discovery of the cosmic breadth of God’s Spirit leads in the opposite direction- to respect for the dignity of all created things, in which God is present through his Spirit. In the present situation this discovery is not romantic poetry or speculative vision. It is the essential premise for the survival of humanity on God’s one, unique earth.
Here’s what’s so great about Pentecost: it’s a declaration to go big. It’s a declaration that God is everywhere, that our responsibility to be light extends to everywhere. It means there are no church walls, only places where the church becomes more or less evident. It’s a declaration that new creation is going to encompass everything. In the presence of God’s Spirit, we are moved OUTWARD in such a way that we begin to see that all things are filled with the dignity of God’s holy touch. Everything matters. It all counts. Nothing will be lost. That’s where this story is going, and Pentecost is one fabulous way to get it moving in that direction. Well, of course, Easter wasn’t such a bad way to get it going, either (!)…But Pentecost lets us know that this isn’t just about Jesus but about all of us walking toward new creation together.
And when we walk toward new creation together, in the life and love of the Spirit, we have respect for the dignity of all created things, just as God intended. That’s when shalom is possible. That’s when redemption happens. That’s when love wins.
You can’t help but love celebrating a holy day like that, right?!
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