Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, and lighten us
with thy celestial fire. Amen.
Have
you ever learned about the origin of something that had previously been unknown
to you? Perhaps you learned that the cordless handheld vacuum was not invented
to make household chores easier, but was made by NASA to extract samples from
the moon’s surface. Or you learned that when Caesar used to conquer a people,
he would announce his victory with a decree known as an euangelion, a word we today translate as “gospel.” And when we
learn more about the origin of these things, they give us a deeper
understanding of how they work and function. Pentecost is one of things that
has a foundation that is often not known.
We tend to think of
Pentecost as a Christian festival, and in a sense, it is; or at least, it has
become one. Pentecost though actually has its roots as Jewish festival. It’s not that the Holy
Spirit sent out invitations to everyone that said “Hope you can come to my
debut.” Our reading from Acts today begins “When the day of Pentecost had come,
the disciples were all together in one place.” They gathered for a reason.
In Judaism, there are
three major festivals: Passover – when liberation from Egypt is celebrated; the
Festival of Booths – a harvest celebration that also remembers God’s providence
while the Hebrew people journeyed through the wilderness for forty years; and
Pentecost – a celebration of the first fruits of the harvest, and a
thanksgiving for the Torah that was given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Pentecost is
a Greek word that means “the fiftieth day,” as Pentecost always falls fifty days
after Passover.
There are many reasons
why this is important. For one, it further reinforces the Jewish identity of Jesus
and the disciples. Christianity is not something that started 2,000 years ago,
but rather is the same system of belief that goes all the way back to the
beginning of Genesis. Our faith began not with the preaching of Peter and Paul,
but with the faithful actions of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David,
and Ruth. This not only affects our approach to interfaith dialogue, but also
means that our tradition’s roots are that much deeper.
The basis for the
gathering at that Pentecost ritual also shows us something about how we are to
live, particularly in difficult times of life. You’ll recall that Jesus was
crucified and died, and then was Resurrected and appeared to the disciples over
a period of forty days. Then, ten days ago, we celebrated the Ascension – the
event where Jesus ascended into Heaven. What exactly “ascension” means was a
sermon for that day, but the point is that Jesus was now gone from the
disciples’ presence. As Jesus departed, he told his followers “Stay here in the
city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
It’s a rather confusing
instruction. Their leader is gone. The Temple authorities who sought Jesus’
death were still suspicious of his followers, waiting to see if they would try
to continue his teachings. The Roman authorities wanted to makes sure that any
rumors of an insurrection were put to rest. And they are told to “wait here
until the Holy Spirit comes.” We have a hard enough time defining what the Holy
Spirit is today, and people of faith disagree about what the Spirit is and
isn’t; and that’s with the benefit of 2,000 years of thinking about it. Imagine you’re in a tense meeting, and the
leader walks out and says “I need to get going, but don’t worry, I’m going to
send someone else to come help you all out.” But you have no idea who this
person is, what they look like, or when they’ll arrive. And minutes turn into
hours, and hours into days, and days into ten days.
I imagine that there was
a lot of anxiety amidst the disciples, a lot of questions, perhaps even of disagreements
and arguments about what to do next. It is important though to know the that
the historical roots of Pentecost was a Jewish festival, not a holiday created
by the Church. When the disciples were in a tense and uncertain situation, they
gathered to practice their faith. Instead of staying in their
anxiety, they went to gather with the faithful for worship. This is a great
model for us. When you don’t feel like praying, pray. When you don’t have the
energy to pray, go to church and listen to other people pray. When you’re too
anxious to focus, sing a hymn. When you don’t know what to do next, read the
Bible and let God speak to you through those holy words. When you don't have strength, come and feed on the Body and Blood of Christ. When you can’t take
another moment of the toxicity of this election cycle, come sit in a pew and be
still and know that God is God.
This is the beauty and
wisdom of The Book of Common Prayer:
it helps us to walk through the year with liturgies with deep roots, it helps
us to make holy moments out of everyday situations, it gives us words when we
have none, it connects us to people across generations and geography who use
the same prayers. Even if we don’t feel like our prayers or rituals are “doing”
anything, even if we feel empty or think we’re “not getting anything out of
prayer,” this Pentecost event shows us that when we show up, so does the
Spirit. To be sure, sometimes the Spirit isn’t manifest as strongly as wind
that blows open windows, sometimes it’s more of a very faint whisper. Sometimes
we don’t perceive the Spirit at all. But we can assume that the disciples had
been praying together each day after the Ascension, and it was ten days before
the Spirit was fully manifest to them all. What if they had given up after a few days? Sometimes prayer is like a garden,
you have to tend the soil, water the seeds, and wait for the sunlight to do its
work before any sprouts come up. This Pentecost story is an admonition and
encouragement to keep praying, especially when tensions, fears, and
uncertainties are high.
Realizing that Pentecost
is a part of an on-going tradition and isn’t a holiday that was created to
commemorate the coming of the Holy Spirit is also important because it helps us
to realize that the Spirit of God is always present. That Pentecost wasn’t the
first time the Spirit was manifest, and it certainly wasn’t the last. Genesis
records that “The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of
the deep, while the Spirit of God swept over the face of the waters.” It was
the Spirit of God that brought dry, dead bones back to life in Ezekiel’s
vision. Job says “The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty
gives me life.” The Servant in Isaiah prophesies that “The spirit of the Lord God
is upon me, because the Lord has
anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed.”
It was the Spirit that
incarnated the Christ child in Mary. God’s Spirit descended upon Jesus at his
Baptism. Throughout the Book of Acts, we read of the power of Spirit to create
new life and new possibilities, through a Ethiopian eunuch, through Paul’s
conversion on the Damascus Road, through Peter’s vision and realization that
what God has called clean, we must not call profane. It was the Holy Spirit
that led Martin Luther to speak out against abuses in the Church. The Holy
Spirit led Patrick and Augustine who preached the Gospel on the British isles.
The Holy Spirit was with Martin Luther King when he spoke of his dream.
The Holy Spirit was
present in 1753 when St. Luke’s was founded. God’s presence was manifest when
the children of St. Luke’s paraded in with symbols of doves and fire. God’s
Spirit will fill this church when baptize Ruby Corriher later in this service,
just as God was present at each of your baptisms. The Holy Spirit is with you
when you speak a word of peace instead of a word of negativity. The Holy Spirit
lives in you when you open your heart to those in need. The Holy Spirit is made
known to the world when the Gospel is proclaimed: when light overcomes
darkness, forgiveness overcomes resentment, faith overcomes fear, love
overcomes hatred, listening overcomes yelling, peace overcomes war, generosity
overcomes greed, and when Resurrection overcomes death.
Pentecost is but one
example, perhaps the most famous, of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our world.
And so we celebrate Pentecost not as something that happened once in the past,
but as something that happens over and over again – that God takes us beyond
our horizons, that God is with us as we encounter new and diverse situations,
that God is constantly intruding into our lives, beckoning us towards God’s
love.
And this changes
everything – because of the Holy Spirit, history becomes God’s story, not ours.
The story that we tell as a congregation isn’t “The History of St. Luke’s,”
it’s “The History of God through St. Luke’s.” The history of religion in this
nation is not “The History of the Church in America,” it’s “The History of the Holy
Spirit’s Movement in America.” Your life isn’t only about what you experience
through you senses, it’s about God’s movement in the world through you. It
means that every person that we encounter is a potential vehicle of God’s
Spirit if we’re willing to find it. It means that every moment is an opportunity
to be stirred by God’s Spirit. It means that Pentecost is more than a religious
celebration, it is a description of the very nature of our world: that God’s
Spirit is on the loose: to comfort, to instigate, to guide, to bless.
The Pentecost festival
that the disciples attended certainly didn’t happen in the way that anyone
thought that it would. They came in order to give thanks for the first fruits
of their springtime planting. Just as we’re starting to see fresh produce
showing up at the farmer’s market, we know that there is something special
about the first taste of new life. Pentecost has its roots as a festival where
we pay attention to the ways in which God continually creates and sustains us.
Pentecost has become a declaration of God’s redeeming, restoring, and
Resurrecting Spirit. And so we give thanks for the first fruits of the Spirit,
for moments of peace, grace, love, and hope. May God’s Spirit nourish these
fruits, that they may grow in us. May God grant us the senses to always feel the Spirit moving in our lives. And may God pour out the holy and life-giving
Spirit on us today, just as it was present 2,000 years ago on that day of
Pentecost. Amen.
