Pentecost Sunday
May 23, 2021
The Rev. Christine Gilson
Today is a wake-up call, a day to pay attention. Somehow we’ve limited our attention to the Holy Spirit to one Sunday a year instead of delighting in the Spirit all year long. In our tradition, which is rather restrained most of the time, we tend to shy away from what we think the Spirit brings — ecstasy, fire, demonstrations of emotion, extemporaneous speech. We hide the Spirit and the Spirit’s fervor in a box relegated to the “spiritual” and the “mystical” — but that’s for other people, thank you.
At Pentecost, we open the box just a little, and if we pay attention and are faithful, we will not close it again. Because without the Spirit, our knowledge of Jesus and the Father is also hidden, as is our knowledge of our own extraordinary gifts.
The Holy Spirit, you might say, has a lot of work to do, has as many gifts as there is diversity in the world. The Spirit compels and comforts; sends us out and gives us peace; the Spirit reveals Jesus to us in ever new ways, unfolding until the end of time.
The Spirit does not allow us to “stay put,” complacent that we are the people of Christ, on a kind of island, with no inflowing water.
In the primitive history of Genesis, the people feared being scattered and tried to remain one people, unified and isolated. The Spirit of the Lord did not allow them to stay put but sent them out to populate the earth.
The Spirit of the Lord sent the men and women “all together in one place” on the Day of Pentecost to go out into all the world, to repopulate the earth with the Good News of Jesus the Christ, the Son of God. A new creation.
In John, Jesus tells his disciples that by the Spirit they will “do greater works than these.” After the Resurrection they will be blown by the Spirit into the far corners of the earth to do the works of Jesus.
The Spirit orders chaos and give us understanding. The Spirit enables us to understand the good news in our own language. We do not have to be multi-lingual to misunderstand each other’s speech.
(To digress for an example: All of us speak different languages, based on our upbringing, our biases, or professions — it’s a wonder we understand each other at all. Let me illustrate — by a simple word: “supply.” For an HVAC person, it is the ductwork for air and heat and cool. For a plumber, it’s pipe that brings water. To a priest, it means someone who is filling in – substituting; and for teachers and students, well, we all know what school supplies are. And, some often speak of the Holy Spirit as “our supply.”
The Spirit speaks to us depending on our individual temperament. Some understand things by thinking, and the Spirit appeals to thoughts; others understand things through emotions, and the Spirit appeals to feelings. Do we need physical, sensory evidence to “prove” God’s existence. So be it, says the Spirit. Do we sense God’s presence intuitively — something we just “know?” So be it says the same Spirit.
The Spirit doesn’t just compel God’s people to go without aid or resources. Jesus says he will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit …” The original meaning of advocate is “one called to aid another,” “a pleader on one’s behalf.” The word we’ve all heard and wondered at is “Paraclete” — which in Greek means “to call to one’s aid, to comfort, to console.” For John, the Holy Spirit is the ongoing presence of Jesus — because the Spirit makes Jesus present. The Spirit keeps the truth of Jesus present to the world after Jesus departs, and comforts and consoles as Jesus does.
As always, the stories from scripture do not stop there — they are our stories. We are not allowed to “stay put.” “The church is called to scatter — not have “a unity that seeks self-preservation at all costs.” We are not allowed to build ourselves a city and a tower that will keep us safe and isolated. We are not allowed to stay together all in one place. We are not allowed to huddle in an upper room. We are compelled by the spirit to use our own extraordinary gifts to cooperate in the salvation of the world.
We are called to go out into our own part of the world — to teach the good news of Christ’s salvation to all — in their own language — the languages of hunger, of homelessness, of despair, of cynicism, of hurt, of abuse, of any kind of need. We are compelled to do greater works with the aid of the Holy Spirit and to do so with untroubled hearts and lack of fear because the peace of Jesus is with us.
As we go forth from this place may we be empowered by the ever living spirit of God to preach in our own various languages through words and especially actions, that the world may hear and believe.