Sunday Homily 6-12-11, Pentecost
Readings: Acts of the Apostles 2, 1-11; Psalm 104, Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the Face of the Earth; 1 Corinthians 12, 3-13; John 20, 19-23
Intro to the readings
I would just like to draw your attention to the reading we have today from Acts of the Apostles. Luke is very clever in the way the scene is described and unless we are aware, much of what he is doing can easily be missed. We will be told that there were “pious Jews from every nation living in Jerusalem”. Even though this Feast of Weeks, Pentecost, was one of the three major Jewish pilgrimage feasts when the Jews would have traveled to Jerusalem, these Jews that Luke mentions are actually “living” in Jerusalem, not just visiting. And he goes on to list what is most likely all of the places that the Jews would have been scattered to over the many invasions they have experienced, in other words this is the “Diaspora” the scattered Jews.
It has dawned on me that to really understand a lot of the subtleties in the New Testament it would help to be Jewish! Today is Pentecost Sunday. The word pente means fifty. And so we are counting backwards and I always thought it was back to the resurrection, but in Luke’s mind it was counting back to the Feast of Passover. Passover for the Jew was “the moment” when Yahweh freed his people from slavery in Egypt. For the Christian, it is Jesus’ death and resurrection, laid right on top of this feast of Passover. Now for the counting bit, and the Jews did in fact count the days from the Passover to the next most important event, described in the Book of Exodus chapter 19 v 16ff, namely the time Moses receives the Torah, the Ten Commandments! How was that event described, we are told of the sound of thunder and God descending in the form of fire, this was the Old Covenant between God and His People. Now it is quite common in the bible to have the sound of thunder or wind used when God appears, but nowhere else do both this sound and fire appear together except at Mount Sinai and today in the room with the disciples!
Speaking about Moses, for Luke, Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise. When Jesus is baptized and receives the Holy Spirit, Luke immediately gives us this long genealogy of Jesus and Luke takes it all the way back not just to Abraham, but to Adam! Now we look in the other direction and Luke has Jews from every nation present for the gift of the Spirit.
Pentecost Sunday – Homily
If today’s gospel sounds familiar, it should, because it is a shorter version of our gospel reading from the Second Sunday of Easter. It is a similar description of the gift of the Holy Spirit, which we also have in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Today we celebrate the birthday of the Church. It is the day the church officially recognizes the coming of the Holy Spirit on the apostles from today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles.
The Holy Spirit is third person in the Trinity. That is about as much as can be said without wandering into heresy of some sort! But what we can do is talk about the effects of the Holy Spirit. We see in today’s readings that it totally transformed the disciples from fear to faith! But if we look around other places we find the Spirit descending on Jesus at his baptism and then He begins his public ministry. The big discussion in John’s gospel was that until Jesus left the Holy Spirit could not come.
If we think about Luke’s description from our first reading, he takes only four verses to describe the descent of the Holy Spirit, very brief. He is mostly interested in describing the results brought about in the disciples by that event. And I think it makes sense for us to do the same. We have been promised the Holy Spirit, we receive the Holy Spirit and so the question is – so what now, what happens, how are we different?
There was an interesting little event described in the Old Testament Book of Numbers chapter 20. The folks have been wandering in the desert for a few months, and they have arrived at a place where there is no water. God tells Moses to take a branch and strike a rock. Unfortunately Moses kind of thought it was up to him, and so when he hit the rock the first time, nothing happens, so he hits it again. He got in trouble, because it seems he was thinking that the miracle was going to happen by his efforts. For me this is a powerful lesson about God and each one of us. Remember, the gift of relationship with God is a freely given gift, and our response is really and truly free. We have many great stories from the Old Testament of how many times the people strayed from their covenant with God, and each time when they got into trouble they came crawling back. They are not too different from us. We can too easily forget that God is in charge. When we do that, forget who is in charge, we get into all kinds of trouble and fear. Then we start to worry about stuff that we have no control over. I believe that is where the disciples were in our readings today, in fear, forgetting that Jesus had told them he would be with them.
Sometimes when I look at the church today, I see the same thing happening. The church authorities seem to have forgotten about the presence of the Spirit and instead try to keep the folk in line with rules and threats. The problem is that threats only work with little kids and only for a short while. Adults will ignore threats.
I believe that the Spirit is very much present in each one of us. But He can only be present when we acknowledge that He is in charge. When we try to run things, then the messes happen! We tend to forget that Jesus did tell us he would be with us. And when we do forget, it seems that then we are in charge. It was when Paul became helpless by blindness that he was able to listen. And we know how effective he became once he allowed the spirit to work in and thru him. This weekend, as we celebrate the birthday of the church, we might we ask ourselves, who is in charge!
Picture 1: Mass Begins
Picture 2: The Team
Picture 3: Communion Volunteers, Joanne, Jackie, Mike, Nancy, Jan, Don, John, & Patricia
Picture 4: Communion with Nancy & Tony, Richard & Bernadette
Picture 5: The Kites, Doug & Julie & Emily on their 25th Anniversary