Pentecost Sunday
In my last mass, the 10.30 morning mass in Herberton last Sunday, in introducing the Gospel I finally actually read the text in front of me, which is unique in our Church year: “The End of the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Mark”. It is similar for Year A and Year C. In doing so, I finally got to realize what the Ascension is really all about. The Ascension = the end of Jesus’ story, and the beginning of ours. Or, as our gospel has it, “As the Father has sent me, even so do I send you”, on his project of deep healing, for which he shed his blood, “for you and for all so that sins might be forgiven”. For better or for worse: whether the sins get forgiven or retained, it is now over to us. Except that, in so far as our story is to be the continuing presence of Jesus in the world, members of his Body each doing our thing, branches of his vine striving to remain in him and, carrying on his mission, it could also be regarded as Jesus the Christ, Part 2”. But in order to be and to do those things, in order to be Jesus the Christ Part 2, we need to have what Jesus has, what made him who he was, God’s Son the Beloved, and what empowered him to do what he did. This is what Pentecost is about, this is what he hands over to his original disciples, and to us, when he hands over the Holy Spirit! So that we can well be what he was, and do the kinds of things that he did.
This means to say, if we want to know about this Holy Spirit, we can as well consult the gospels, what made Jesus who he was, and what empowered him to do what he did. This is what he is handing over after all. As well as looking at the experience of the Spirit in the early church, and in our lives, in our own experience.
Of course we can’t talk about all of this in just a few minutes, it can only be a few thoughts about it.
One thing they all illustrate, I think, is that Christian lives have a strong, emotive, affective, experiential, even ecstatic side, which far from being opposed to Christian witness and action gives rise to both. (This reminds me of the view of some philosophers, such as Spinoza and Hume, so very different, though agreeing on one vital point: in spite of all the importance of reason and intelligence, including as a guide and distinguisher of passions and emotions: without passion no action. Something even Plato seems to agree on, though Plato, like Spinoza, emphasizes the crucial importance of Intelligence as guide.) By way of a first generalization: the Spirit is what makes the Christian life a passionate, affective, experiential, emotional affair, more than just dry bones, though it is very much a passionate, affective, experiential, emotional affair which cashes itself into witness and action.
Jesus is baptized in the River Jordan, and coming up out of the waters has this profound experience, of the Spirit coming on him like a dove and surrounded by cloud and a voice from the cloud, an experience, not just a feeling, an experience of among other things being powerfully and intensely loved, “You are My Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased”, though maybe more than this, or other things, as well. But it doesn’t stay there: the Spirit then drives him into the desert, to get sorted out, to integrate the experience in all levels of his personality, to face down the temptations which come with the territory. And It (or She or He, Ruach, Pneuma, Spiritus) then drives him back into Galilee to begin his mission, into the synagogue in Nazareth on the Sabbath where he is handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, where it says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, to bring good news to the poor, liberty to captives, to the blind new sight, to set the downtrodden free.” And then to do that, into the ministry, with a similar dynamic, though on a quieter scale, vigorous activity for the reign of God alternating with quiet prayer in quiet places in the early morning, and sometimes right through the night.
We are meant to have the same experience, determining also ourselves experientially as the Beloved, God’s children intensely loved; but also driving us into witness and action for God’s world: an experience which combines the loud and the quiet, in old testament terms the thunder and lightning and fire and earthquake and strong wind of the Exodus and of Pentecost Day itself, and the gentle breeze, the quiet prayer, the still small voice of the prophet Elijah, an experience which combines the prophetic, the charismatic and the mystical; and an experience which is cognitive, affective and pragmatic all at once.
The Spirit, then, is what makes us who we are, experientially, the intensely beloved sons and daughters. The Spirit is the Passion that drives us, that sets our hearts on fire as the song says and sets us into witness and into action. But also, as much in the experience of the first disciples as in that of Jesus: the Spirit is the guide that directs us, the director of operations so to speak, according to Acts of the Apostles in the operations of the early church as well as in the life of Jesus. You get the impression that it’s the Lord Jesus and the Spirit of the Lord/the Holy Spirit that’s directing the operation, rather than Peter and John, or James, or the community in Jerusalem or Antioch, or Philip the deacon or Paul or Barnabas – at least to the extent that people are open to this, which might be a crucial point for us.
So the Spirit is the Love that makes us who we are, the Passion that drives us and potentially at least, Guide and director of operations in our lives and the lives of our communities.
But I think the Spirit is also the Heart that keeps us going,
and the where-with-all to get up and keep going: like in Jesus setting his face
resolutely towards Jerusalem and staying with it through to the Passion; or St
Paul and his companions, getting bashed up or stoned or shipwrecked, and
getting themselves up and going on to the next town, where typically the same
thing happens again! Not just the
passion to get us all fired up, but the where-with-all to keep going when we
are not so fired up, when things are ambiguous and difficult and even when we
feel a bit God-forsaken. The Spirit
helps us in our weakness, as
Finally, I think that the Spirit is also that which enables us to break through and beyond boundaries and barriers and distinctions, the Godly power which Jesus had and which so characterized his mission to all the Lost Sheep, and the power which the disciples also found they had, though in another context, beyond the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel to lost people everywhere, people from every race and language and tribe and nation. This is one of the great gifts and promises of Pentecost, one promise that has been in a strong way realized, in today’s multi-linguistic, multi-cultural church, and something to be proud of, or rather to praise God for, it’s not our doing. It’s the Spirit who invented multi-culturalism, in 30 or 33 AD or thereabouts, not some left liberal type in the middle of last century, and it is realized, more than anywhere else, among us Christians in our world-wide multi-cultural multi-linguistic church: people from every nation and race and tribe and language and culture, hearing and singing the praises of God each in their own language. In the midst of all our problems, this is something for which we on Pentecost really can and should give praise!