The Time of Disorder

In Sunday school yesterday, the teacher talked about times in our lives that are disorder.  We move through life, usually, with our lives in order.  I think we've come to talk about this time as normalcy.  One of the yearnings of the pandemic is / has been to return to normalcy.  Our lives are disrupted, and we enter a time of disorder.  Not routine.  Not normal.  We come through that time, hopefully, to a time of reorder.  It's what I hate to hear called "the new normal."

Jesus and his disciples had developed a time of order.  They traveled together.  Jesus preached; they learned.  Then came the crucifixion.  Disorder.  Nothing was the same, and truly, nothing would be the same again.

Pentecost is the time of reordering.  The Holy Spirit descended.  People understood each other.  The church was born.  The disciples gained the "sea legs" so to speak, and started lives lived in obedience to Jesus - following the call the master had made on their lives, empowered and gifted by the Holy Spirit. Reorder.  

In the Acts 2 passage that was the lectionary reading yesterday, Peter receives a gift of leadership - maybe that had all started on the shore of when Jesus cooked fish and asked Peter to "feed my sheep" - but anyway, it is obvious now.  Peter quotes Joel, and it sounds like an end-times passage to me.  I wondered about that.  Pentecost wasn't the end of the world.  Or was it?

When we are in a time of disorder, it can feel like the end of the world, can't it?  Whatever it may be, it can feel as if the world - our world - is ending.  Maybe something new will start, but we may not want it.  We may want only to return to what was.  Pentecost is the time when we enter reorder.  Lives are changed; worlds are begun, whether we want them or not.  And we realize the the Holy Spirit is with us, no matter what.  Worlds ending, worlds starting - God is with us.