June 12, 2011: Pentecost

 

Pentecost (a)
12 June 2011
Acts 2.1-11; 1 Cor 12. 4-13; Jn 20.19-23
Fr. Patrick Allen

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Christianity, as we are often saying – or maybe it's only me – is entirely wrapped up in history.  It is about events – those "mighty works of God" whereby he has acted to redeem his people.  It is first of all about what God has done, not what we do, or even ought to do.  This was the great burden of the work of Karl Barth, the great Protestant theologian of the last century, who understood and taught that Christianity is not a religion; it is a Gospel.[i]  It is a Gospel, he said.  It is good news about God acting, about God giving, and about our receiving.  Good news about God in Christ in grace coming down to us, not about us, of our own power, by good deeds or positive attitudes, working our way up to God.  It is true that out faith requires a great deal of us – in fact, everything, our very lives, and literally so – but only as the reasonable and grateful response to God's prior act, only as the appropriate and sensible response to God's gift of himself to us.

It is about God acting, which is why the great feasts and fasts of the Church are remembrances of events in history:  Christ's Incarnation at the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary; his nativity at Christmas; his blessed passion and precious death on Good Friday; his mighty resurrection on Easter Sunday; his glorious Ascension 40 days later.  And then comes the great feast we keep today: Pentecost – the last of those great redemptive-historical events acts of God until Christ shall come again in glory to judge both the quick and the dead (an event which I understand is on backorder until at least mid-October).  

Today we recall that first Pentecost, about which we heard from St. Luke's account in Acts, with its miracle of languages – so that heard the disciples telling in their own tongues the mighty works of God – that we have evoked in our Gospel reading this morning.

I say "that first Pentecost," but of course that's not correct.  Pentecost was, and remains, a Jewish feast, with its origins in the law of Moses – you can read about it there.  Like other of the Jewish festivals, it was fitted to the agricultural cycle; it was a harvest, a "first fruits" festival.  It is called Shavuot in Hebrew, which, being translated, means "weeks," because it was timed for seven weeks – call it a week of weeks – after the Passover.  And here we are, a week of weeks, on the fiftieth day (which a Greek-speaking Jew would have called a pentecoste), after Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us and then gloriously raised from the dead.  

And, in fact, the Hebrew lunar and our Gregorian solar calendars so aligned this year that our Jewish elder brothers and sisters in the faith kept the Shavuot just this past week.

So, if the Biblical Jewish holy-days Purim and Chanukah and Sukkoth[ii] get left behind, why is it that Pentecost, Shavuot, gets assimilated into Christian worship?  

Well, obviously it is the arrival on the scene of the Holy Spirit, isn't it?  In a sense yes, and it is true that Pentecost is integral to the Christian revelation of God as a Trinity of Persons, but still we must be careful – careful not speak or think as if the Holy Spirit springs into the Divine Being at Pentecost, or even just that the Spirit's Being was then and there revealed for the first time. That would be heresy.  The Holy Spirit is eternally God, consubstantial with the Father and the Son, proceeding from the Father and the Son, and "with the Father and the Son he is worshipped in glorified."

This is the same Spirit whom Christ breathed on the disciples, as we have heard in this morning's Gospel lesson, after his Resurrection.  The same Spirit who descended on Jesus at his baptism and drove him into the wilderness to be tempted of Satan. The same Spirit who overshadowed the BVM at the Annunciation, who came mightily upon the Prophets, both to show Israel his sin and to proclaim liberty to captives, that came upon David at his anointing by Samuel, that clothed Gideon, filled Bezalel the son of Uri to be master craftsman of the Tabernacle of God, who filled Moses standing before Pharaoh – the same Holy Spirit of God who moved upon the waters, when as yet "the earth was without form and void, and darkness covered the face of the deep."  The Holy Spirit has a long pre-Pentecost history.

So, if the festival itself is not new, is not Christian in its origin, and if the flames and wind and multitude of languages of that morning in no way mark some kind of new-as-in-original descent of the Holy Spirit – what, then, is new here?  What is it about that Pentecost morning that is so essential to the Church, so integral to Christian identity, that it demands our special and repeated remembrance?

Well, as St. Paul might say, "much in every way."  But we haven't time for "much in every way."  So this morning, let us consider that one aspect of the Pentecostal "newness" has to do with the mission of the new Israel, which is the Church.

After all, what were these disciples of Jesus doing, "all together in one place," that long ago Pentecost morning?  They were there together, in obedience to the charge given them by our Lord at his Ascension ten days before – that they remain in Jerusalem and await the coming of the Holy Spirit.  And why was Jesus sending the Spirit to them?  "You shall receive power," Jesus told them, "when the Holy Spirit is come upon you.  And you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth."[iii]

And of course on that Pentecost, that festival of first fruits, we see the beginnings of that harvest:  men from every nation under heaven hearing in their own tongues the mighty works of God in Jesus Christ.

On Pentecost, the Spirit comes, fills, and constitutes the Church for the sake of mission, for bearing witness – with words, with actions, by the character of our life together, with lives surrendered – to the redeeming action of God in Jesus Christ.  

That is what the Church is for:  bearing witness to God's love revealed on the Cross of Christ, and witness to the triumph of that love in the Resurrection of Christ.  And the more fully we give ourselves to that Spirit-empowered vocation, the more fully, the more truly we become together the body of Christ in the world.  

In other words, evangelism – the showing and speaking forth of the good news of the forgiveness of sins and the hope of eternal life for "all sorts and conditions" of men and women – is not just one activity among many that happens, or maybe doesn't happen, or maybe gets relegated to some committee, in the life of the Church – it is of the essence of the Church; it is who we are.

And of course the medium must fit the message.  In fact, the medium reveals the message, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan.  The Pentecost miracle of languages is deep with significance and Biblical resonances, but we shouldn't miss the obvious, what is right there on the surface.  This miraculous, Spirit-empowered telling of the mighty works of God in Christ is accommodated, suited, fitted to those who were gathered there that morning.  Those devout men from every nation under heaven heard the message in a language they could understand, in words they recognized; they learned about Jesus in terms that made sense to them.  

Which means that the dynamic power of the Spirit is manifested in humility, in compassion, in service – in a word, in love.  Because the message is love: Jesus Christ taking on our humanity, humbling himself to death on a cross; the eternal God among us as one who serves, washing our feet, lifting us up with him in his Resurrection.

What is "new" about Pentecost?  Much in every way.  But not least this calling and this empowerment for a new mission and identity of humble, loving witness to Jesus Christ, to and for all men and all women in every place.  

It is why we are here.  It is what the Church is for.  It is why we keep this feast of Pentecost.  And it is why, in just a few moments, we will greet little Helen and young William, still dripping with the waters of their redemption with a Pentecostal charge:  with us, "confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection."

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[i] "Religion is clearly seen to be a human attempt to anticipate what God in His revelation wills to do and does do. It is the attempted replacement of the divine work by a human manufacture."  Church Dogmatics.

[ii] Esther; Jn 10.22,23 and 2 Mac 1:18; Deut. 16:13 and John 7:37-38

[iii] Ac 1.8