PENTECOST

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: PENTECOST
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: May 31, 1998

TEXT: John 20:19-23 - Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. . . ."

See also Acts 2:1-11 - in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power.

ISSUE: The readings present us two experiences of the Holy Spirit coming upon the disciples. One from Acts tells of their ability to proclaim the Good News in all languages for all people. The other experience is when Jesus breathes on the disciples in the locked room, and sends them forth. In both instances that is an active commissioning of the disciples with an authority given. In the baptismal experience of each of us we are commissioned to proclaim the faith of Christ crucified and to share with him in his eternal priesthood. We becomes shepherds with Christ.
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Today we are celebrating one of the major feast days of the church right along with Christmas and Easter. It is the Feast of the Pentecost. We heard read one account of the Pentecostal experience from the Book of Acts, which took place on the Jewish Feast of Pentecost, and the other account which took place on Easter when Jesus encounters his disciples in the locked room on Easter evening. In each case it should be noted that something unique happens to the disciples. There is the bestowing of God's Spirit upon them for the purpose of their empowerment.
The coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples in Acts comes on the Jewish Feast of the Pentecost. It was a celebration which occurred fifty days after the Jewish Passover. It celebrated the first harvest. the first fruits of the wheat harvest were presented and celebrated. There was a great gathering of the faithful in Jerusalem at the Temple. Later, after the Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed, the emphasis of the feast changed to a celebration of Moses' going up on Mt. Sinai, the fiery mountain, to receive the Ten Commandments. Thus, Luke indicates that Jesus' band of Jewish disciples are gathered at Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish feast of Pentecost. While they are there the house in which they are gathered, a mighty rushing wind and tongues of fire rest upon them. They becomed filled with an empowering Spirit which empowers them to go out of the room and begin proclaiming the might Acts of God so that all can understand. It is Lukes powerful and wonderful way of saying that the disciples were energized to carry on the work of God in Christ Jesus.
Notice also that the event is the reversal of the story of Babel from the Old Testament book of Genesis (11:1-9). In that story people's languages were all mixed up, and they could no longer build that great temples and shrines to storm heaven and become like God. In the Pentecostal event of the disciples, God's Spirit comes down upon them in order to infiltrate, permeate, and storm the creation with love, forgiveness, and reconciliation. It's a great shift in thinking. We don't have to storm heaven, heaven in Jesus Christ by the Spirit and power of God has come to us. A whole new shift and reversal! God comes for all nations and all people. There's a renewed unity of brotherhood and sisterhood.
Luke saw in the renewed energy of the disciples a fulfillment of Joel's prophecy (2:28-32), that God would "pour his spirit on everyone; your sons and daughters will proclaim my message; your old men will have dreams, and your young mem will see visions. At that time I will pour out my spirit on even on servants, both men and women." In fact, men and women and servants did receive Jesus and become captured by his spirit.
In the Lukan pentecostal experience you have the disciples empowered by the wind and fire of God, just as Moses and the ancient prophets had been. They were commissioned as a gathered community to instill the wonders of God's love for the world. Luke is conveying in a dramatic story the vitality and energy of the early church to proclaim the Gospel of love and hope.
In John's account of the coming of the Holy Spirit, written later than Luke, the pentecost event for John is more immediate, at Easter. The disciples are gathered in a room, a lock room, in fear. The betrayers and the scattered sheep-disciples are gathered, locked in and fearful. It is as if they themselves are entombed. But the empowering Spirit of Jesus Christ comes to them, is breathed into and upon them. They are commissioned and energized to be the sons and daughters of God. Just as Jesus was honored and commissioned, as Son of God, the disciples (now apostles, i.e. the sent ones) are to be the sons and daughters of God in the world. They are commissioned, - ordained, if you will - to forgive sins. And for John, sin is not believing in Christ. Non-believers, unfaithful, are sinners. They work of the apostles is to make believers, believers in God's redeeming love, believers in the compassion and mercy of God. believers in the wonders of God. It is as if the disciples are born again, transformed, from the scattered sheep of the crucifixion into the community of united shepherds with Christ. They are to bring new members into the community, that they may be a new born living force of God in the world. They are called upon to be shepherds and display a positive and informed leadership in the presentation of the God's incarnation into the world.
The pentecostal experience was carried on by the church in the sacrament of Holy Baptism. Just as Jesus was baptized and the heavens opened and the Spirit like a dove descended upon him, he was declared to be Son of God, with whom God was pleased. People who received Christ as Lord, and became converted to Christ were educated in the ministry of Christ and were all baptized with water, immersed, and entered into the community of believers. (Thus according to John, they were no longer sinners, or non-believers.) The Spirit of God was upon them and they too were empowered to be the Sons (and Daughters of God), with whom God is well pleased. They were ordained into the ministry of unity with Christ by virtue of their baptism. They were a part of the Community of God. They confessed the faith of Christ crucified, They proclaimed his resurrection. They shared in his eternal priesthood. They became partners in and with The Good Shepherd. They trust that God's realm would be the salvation and hope for the world. They invited people, the lost, the last, the lonely, the least, the broken and hurting into that kingdom, that realm, that peace.
Today we are baptizing two children in this parish. I wonder if we really appreciate what this means. Are they two infants participating in empty ritual whose meaning and vitality is lost? Are they two children who will see the people around them in love with God? Will they see by word and example the Goodnews in Christ proclaimed by the fathers, their mothers, their sponsors, by they people who worship with them in church? Will they participate in a community of enthusiastic believers that will be acitve and vital in their training as people who know what real sacrificial love is? Will they be immersed in a community of people whose faith and trust in God is so real that they see and appreciate a sense of reaching out to other people with genuine sincerety? Will they be a part of a community church where people really know one another and share with one another? Will they be surrounded by people who know the faith as contained in the Scripture? Will they come to never remember a time when they didn't feel welcomed and enriched by being around an altar of God with people who radiate a spirituality rich in love? In our differences and in our variety of talents we have so much to offer one another, and so much to offer in the proclamation of the Gospel.
In so many of our churches today, as a result of the old Christendom model, many people see themselves as church volunteers whose great mission is to cut grass, pull weeds, and pull off an occasion strawberry festival and fund raiser so that a museum like church can be kept the way it is. The minister is seen as the shepherd and the congregation as a flock of dumb sheep. Many churches have lost their sense of all being called to be shepherds of people knowledge of the faith and truly faithful, of having a sense of servanthood and genuine concern for one another and the real needs of the world. A genuine recognition that we are all the shepherding people of God, and our children are to be raised in that kind of community so that they can become shepherds too is for some religious communities a whole new concept.
The early church had a sense of the Spirit of God acting in their lives and in their communities. They themselves felt alive and lifted up and called into service, into a living knowledge and love of the Lord. It was devotional and committed. They saw themselves as called forth, hardly static and not bound to the past. God was alive in Christ active in their history. There was a belief in all kinds of spirits in Jesus time, good and evil. But their real ultimate belief was in The Holy Spirit of God that would lift them and raise them. I pray to God that we can be renewed and reclaimed by God's Holy Spirit that we may be enlivened and equipped for ministries that are important and valuable and essential in our world today.