Today is the feast of the Pentecost, it is also our last Sunday reading from the Book of Acts. We’re in Chapter 2 and it’s a little strange if you think about it because it’s like we finish up with the beginning, and more than that we finish up with where it all come from, the source from which everything else floods: The Apostles are gathered together in one place (of prayer) and they receive the Holy Spirit that empowers them to share the Gospel with all the Jews in Jerusalem. A lot of you wear red today, and we also have these beautiful, new altar cloths and hangings that Millie did for us, using the liturgical red that reminds us of all the themes that are connected with the feast of the Pentecost and the gift of the Holy Spirit: Red is the color of fire, strength, love, passion, joy also, and even blood, the blood of the martyrs, and we know that most of the Apostles will bear witness to Jesus at the cost of their own lives. And so today, we finish up with the beginning because Pentecost sheds a light, or rather Pentecost wield the Spirit’s power, on all what the Apostles will say and do after Jesus’s death, resurrection and ascension. We start this lesson with where the Apostles were at when it all started and I guess they weren’t in a situation very different from us: Gathered in one place, praying. For a reason I can’t remember some theologians have suggested that the disciples were gathered in the upper room, where Jesus had celebrated with them his last meal. And it would make sense, wouldn’t it? Jesus had celebrated his last meal asking his friends to share the bread and the wine in remembrance of him. And so they probably did just that: Ate the sacred meal, praying, singing psalms and indeed it wasn’t very different from what we do at church every Sunday. We worship and we remember Jesus’s words and actions. But as I was reading this lesson, I thought to myself: Well, this could as well have ended there: The disciples, remembering the good old time, when Jesus was with them, how he preaches and healed and made miracles, and how it all ended up tragically on the cross, and now the best the disciples could do would be to gather to cultivate Jesus’s memory and try to continue to live as much as they could in this godless city where the Master had been arrested and put to death. Now they also had this hope, and even this knowledge that Jesus had been raised from the dead, but they could have just waited for Jesus to come back and take them with him in his kingdom. And it would have been the end. Luckily for us, they started this little thing called evangelization, sharing the good news with others, and so we are here, still today, two thousands years later.
What could have been the end was in fact just the beginning. It was just the beginning, because we all know what happened on the day of the Pentecost: The Holy Spirit rushed into the house like a violent wind, almost like a tornado, set the Apostles on fire and filled them with power, the most obvious manifestation of this power being that, as the Spirit flings the door open, the disciples are given the ability to share the Gospel in all foreign languages they weren’t able to speak before. I like it that our lesson reminds us what the power of the Holy Spirit is all about. We hear about power in so many ways in this world, but mostly it is about the power to assert ourselves, to win over our enemies, to be better, stronger, bigger than others. But what the Spirit of God does to the disciples is to enable them to get out there, to become indeed “The Apostles”, literally “The sent ones“, and give them the boldness to share the Gospel, the good news of Jesus reconciling us to God in his death and resurrection. In our passage from John’s this morning, Jesus talks of the “Spirit of truth”: The spirit emboldens the Apostles to speak God’s truth to the world.
For us who have been reading the rest of the story of Acts, or at least parts of it both at church these past Sundays or during Bible study, we know all the things the Apostles were indeed embolden to do for the sake of the Gospel: They were given the power to believe God’s promise, to speak the truth they had learned from Jesus, to trust God’s plan, to hope for the people, to be loyal in their communities and kind to those whom they were sent to, they were given the power to heal them, to make them whole, and even to bring them back to life. When they were persecuted the Apostles were given resilience, resistance, and all of them were given the power to be transformed and to transform, the power to be conformed to Christ and to bring the people to Christ.
Indeed, we need to know that Pentecost was a Jewish festival that celebrated fifty day after Passover the harvest of the new grain. Fifty days later, it was also the feast of the new wine, which, by the way explains why some Judeans thought the Apostles were drunk! But the symbol is of course that the first grains or “first fruits” in this case are the fruits of Christ’s Resurrection, his sending of the Spirit, and the harvest are all the people who are going to be reconciled with God through Jesus’s sacrifice. The long list of people we have in our reading today represent the 12 tribes of Israel, from East to West, and it’s like the Spirit sweeps all them from right to left to bring them back to God. In fact, if you take the time to read the short Book of Joel that Peter is quoting in our passage, you will realize that it is exactly what God promises to his people, a new harvest: New grain (celebrated 50 days after Passover), new wine (fifty days later), and new oil (another 50 days after that), an image to show the restoration and reconciliation that was about to come, and that was going to set the world on fire (Moon “of blood”, red moon, smoky mist and darkness are not so much images of doom rather it is about renewal brought by God’s fire, the very spirit of God).
Now when we started our Bible study, several people asked this question: How did the disciples thought they were going to be able to do it, to bring the Gospel to Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth (which at the time, was Rome!) (Acts 1:8) when they were only fishermen, country people, simple people? Well, like Joel announced it to the Israelites, Jesus promised to his disciples several times the gift of the Holy Spirit, and so I think what happened is that they didn’t rely on themselves. They didn’t rely on themselves. They certainly knew they couldn’t do it. They relied on God to do it. In the words of Joel, God was going to send them dreams, visions and prophecies to men and women alike,young and old alike, slaves and masters alike. The thing is: They knew from the start it was never their gospel, never their mission, never their church. It was Christ’s Gospel, Christ’s mission, Christ’s church.
So what does it mean for us? Well, the message is unchanged: This is not our church. This is not our mission. This is not our Gospel. This is God’s. A lot of our churches today look like the Apostles gathering in the upper room on that day of Pentecost: We gather to be together, to make remembrance, to make memories, to share the stories we love about Jesus, to find some comfort in prayers and sacraments, and also we look for a way to survive in a world that may seem godless to us, a world filled with tragedies. But as we do that we risk to end it all there if we don’t make it a priority to do what the Apostles did on that Pentecost: Get out there and share the message.
So how do we do that? Well again, we need to do it exactly like the Apostles did: With the Holy Spirit. Sadly, as Guthrie notices in her book, it’s not that often that we pray the Holy Spirit. She asks When was the last time we prayed that Holy Spirit would embolden us to share the Gospel?Indeed, we could wonder: When was the last time that we have asked God to tell us about God’s plans and God’s dreams instead of telling God about our own plans and dreams,? When was the last time we have asked God to join in God’s mission, rather than ask God to bless our own work? When was the last time we have asked God what is hurting God’s heart, instead of telling God about the things that hurt us?
But this week someone asked a great question: When did we receive the Holy Spirit? Well, in our liturgy we receive the Holy Spirit at baptism for adoption and then at confirmation for mission. The Holy Spirit is given to us and has been given to us. The thing is, as it is with all gifts, we can receive it and never open it, or never use it. Many years ago, I was offered an expresso machine, and I found it so intimidating I used it twice, then kept it in a cabinet for five years and finally gave it away. It was a beautiful, expensive gift and I love coffee, but I was too lazy to figure it out. We already have the Holy Spirit, we just need to activate our gifts by praying the Holy Spirit, asking God’s will for our church, to discern where God is already at work in our communities and where God is hurting, to ask for God’s vision, to ask for God’s dream and to ask how to reach out, to fling our doors open forthe people out there. When I read about all the nationalities of the people in our lesson, from the East to the West, it makes me think about all those moving in our town, from the West coast to the Easter shore. People coming from everywhere, God seekers maybe, people who have left their church, people in need of community, in need of hope, in need of renewal, How do we reach to them in their own language? We probably don’t need to speak with a New-York accent, but we certainly need to do some adjustments, we certainly need to be open to newness and it also starts with a sense of boldness and also dispossession, self sacrifice. This is not our church, this is Christ’s church for all of God’s people.
We are going to take this intentional time of prayer, reading of the Scriptures, reflection and discernment on our parish retreat on June 28th, to tune in with God’s work, God’s dream and God’s Spirit, because it could all end here, but it could also be just the beginning. Maybe like the Apostles, this is all just the beginning for us, and for All Souls and for our community.