Any talk whatsoever about "spirits," holy and otherwise, of necessity partakes in such vagueness as to be an occasion for the vending of wholesale nonsense. The same goes for "spirituality."

It was once told me that I was the odds-on favorite to become pastor of a much-coveted church, but my singular failing was said to be my lack of "spirituality." The search committee assumed that I could not, therefore, lead the congregation adequately. The priest deemed to have had that very quality of spirituality was eventually chosen for the position and promptly led the parish into confusion and despair. Veni, creator spiritus.

Over 40 years, I was an elector in four episcopal elections, and was in each case publicly chastised for being "political" in the process rather than relying on "the Holy Spirit" to make the choice. If a spirit did the electing in two of the cases, its choices fell short on several important counts.

So now on Sunday, May 24, 2015, there will be much ado about ... what? About an unseen but supposedly potent force that has been variously represented as a descending dove, as pillars of flame, as a mighty rushing wind, as the dispenser of essential charisms and as "just that feeling."

A case can be made that "the Holy Spirit" is a blank canvass stretched across a frame of questionable assumptions upon which anyone can paint what he or she envisions this spirit to be.

So, come Sunday, ego and industry applied to the homiletic task in tens of thousands of pulpits will in some places drive nominal talent to its limit. Arrogance unsustained by serious scholarship -- from those who have the chops but who do not give the time to do it -- may well rule the day.

For the principal liturgy this coming Sunday, the homilist and his/her audience will have five separate biblical passages with which to deal or from which to choose for emphasis. I will briefly mention each and suggest what in them might be fruitful choices for homiletic consideration:

* Ezekiel 37: 1-14, which may have been heard at the Easter Vigil, being a hopeful image of restoration and revivification. It is the story of the valley of the dry bones. The key word is "breath" or the Hebrew רזח -- meaning, roughly, "wind" or "exhalation." The prophet imagines Yahweh speaking to the bones saying that "breath" will enter and re-animate them.

The relevance to Pentecost is that the emergence of a new "breath" or "spirit" among the dispirited apostolic community gave it new post-crucifixion life. That the new breath was an emanation of the crucified one is the point.

*Psalm 104: 25-35, which is a celebration of the natural order "with its living things too great to number" including even "the Leviathan" or great sea monster. When comes verse 31, you have the connection to Pentecost: "You send forth your Spirit (the 'breath' as accounted for above), and they are created."

*Acts 2: 1-21, which is Luke's highly imaginative fantasy of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the waiting apostolic community. That it is fiction is not to be disputed. That it is really good fiction is also not in question. But to take it as reportage is always a mistake. The central image is of people of varying tribes, clans, kith and kin who speak their own peculiar languages being made to speak for all to understand and for them to hear as if others were speaking in their language. It was a wonderful vision, but, as the fractures moving toward a deeper crevasse in the Anglican Communion make plain, even Christians who speak the same language cannot understand one another.

*Romans 8:22-27, part of Paul's mediation upon the "Spirit." Assuming Paul was at Romans 8 of the same mind as he was at II Corinthians 3:17, he is fairly clear about the identity of the Spirit: "Now the Lord is the Spirit." In this passage, the Spirit is part of the inner self that "helps us in our weakness" interceding for us, even, "with sighs too deep for words." It is almost a psychological formula: what there may be of objective divinity is to be found subjectively within a person's inward being. Thence comes the more careless misuse of the idea of "spirit."

*John 15: 26-27, 16: 4b-14, which is part of the Final Discourse the evangelist John gives Jesus to speak. We encounter here the idea of the Spirit as "advocate" (παράκλητος) -- the one called to the side of. This unseen force also is the spirit of "truth" (αληθεία) -- the reality lying at the basis of appearance.

So we have 1) "breath of life," 2) life's causative power, 3) the supposed ability of cross-cultural/linguistic understanding, 4) the inner human self in communion with something greater than itself and the sum of all other human selves and 5) the one who advocates for the disclosure of what's real.

1) and 2) Without dissing Darwin, we can definitely say that some force beyond even our most hallucinogenic imaginations must have been implicit in the Big Bang and, by extension, all that has flowed from it. We can compose tone poems and hymns to it (see the psalm of the day) or commune with it in the laboratory or observatory or in the e=mc2 world. Dare we say the various deities of our various imaginations can be credited with numbering every hair and the fall of every sparrow?

3) The idea of simultaneous translation came to pass early on in the life and work of the United Nations. We can see how all that worked as U.S. and Chinese delegates could understand each other's seething anger throughout the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. The same goes for the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. We can listen to each other and get the translation, but we cannot talk to each other in good faith.     

4) "The inner workings of the Spirit" -- here is dangerous territory in which everyone becomes his or her own arbiter. "God has told me a.b.c.," says Person I. "But," says Person II., "God has spoken to me and said d.e.f." A third person angrily responds, "No, no. It's g.h.i." And so it goes. We should worry about inner voices and sighs too deep for words. Such exhalations are akin to speaking in tongues.

5) Perhaps the best bet for the homilist on the occasion of Pentecost is to pick up on the Evangelist John's image of the advocacy of truth. Seldom in the human epoch has there been such a crying need to see the core of realities behind the appearance of things. The evangelist was on to something big at 8:32 when he said "the truth will make you free." When?