Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 15th, 2016
“In the opening verses of the bible we read: “In the beginning God created heaven and earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the face of the earth and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” (Gen 1:2) The Hebrew word “Tohuwabohu” (formless and empty) could also be translated as “chaos and desolation”. So the world started in a state of chaos and desolation. But then something surprising is said: in that original chaos the Spirit of God is already present and creates out of chaos in a long and of painful process the cosmos, our universe governed by laws and finely tuned forces, and strikes our senses by its harmonious order and breath-taking beauty. Scientists call this process evolution; the bible sees in it God’s Spirit at work. Three chapter further on another Spirit appears on the scene, a Spirit of destruction, a spirit whose whole aims is to undo the order and harmony of God’s creation and turn it back to chaos and confusion. The bible calls that Spirit Satan in Greek “diabolos”, the one who tears things apart. This “diabolos” is remarkably successful. In a series of symbolic stories the bible describes how that evil spirit manages to pull away the human race from its creator (Gen 3) which has disastrous consequences. Violence enters family relationships (Cain and Abel, Gen 4); the harmony between man and nature is disrupted (the Flood, Gen 7); finally, the whole of human family end up in confusion (the tower of Babel, Gen 11). These are not stories of what actually happened in the past, but symbolic descriptions of the state the world is in. But the story of humanity does not end in chaos. God’s never gives up and begins a new creation in the person of Jesus. The Spirit who raises him out of the total chaos of death into new life is poured out on Pentecost on all who believe in him. Pentecost is beginning of a new creation, the birth of a new people, the Church. Pentecost tells us: Be sure that God’s Spirit is already present in any chaos, in the chaos of our own lives, in the chaos of today’s world, when familiar order of things seems to be breaking up everywhere, in the sometimes chaotic developments that are transforming the Church. There is no darkness so dark that will not be penetrated by God’s light. There is no situation so confused that it will not eventually be cleared up by God’s Spirit. God’s creative Spirit will always prove strongest than the powers of death and destruction. The first creation took billions of years to be where it is today. The new creation, too, is a slow process and it is already work in our own hearts. If we open our hearts to the Spirit, the light of the Spirit will gradually lead us into the fullness of truth and the Spirit of love transform our hearts and through us renew the face of the earth. Let us trust in the creative power of the Spirit!
Fr. Wolfgang Schonecke MAfr