Day of Pentecost-Year C
Acts 2:1-21; John 14: 8-17 [25-27]
Brandon Lutheran Church, Brandon, Manitoba
Grace, mercy and peace to you in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Today, we come to the end of the Easter season. Pentecost Sunday is the 50th day of the Easter season, the season that began with Mary Magdalene showing up to the tomb only to find that the stone had been rolled away, and the tomb was empty.
The readings during the season of Easter are interesting—especially over the last few weeks. After a few weeks of resurrection stories, our recent gospel readings have been from the days before Jesus’ trial and crucifixion, as Jesus tries to encourage his community to receive, understand and embody the love that he’s been trying to demonstrate as a reflection of the relationship between God and creation. So, in the season of resurrection, we’ve been holding this tension between the teachings about love and community and service in action, and the reality of the complicated and imperfect world into which the community of faith is trying to demonstrate and share those teachings. Even the resurrection appearances themselves are stories of a mix of emotions as Jesus appears to the disciples in the midst of their fear, fatigue, frustration and grief.
The gospel reading today begins with Philip asking Jesus for a clear sign about God. “Show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus says again what he’s been saying and what he will continue to say—to know ME is to know the Father. I can almost imagine when Philip asks Jesus for a sign of the Father, Jesus throwing his hands up and saying, “I’m right here! I am the sign! How can you keep asking for a sign when I’m right here!” You know me, so you know the Father. You will come to know who God is and how God is showing up in the world as you love one another.
What does the resurrection look like in real life? It looks like love in action. How do we know that death has been defeated? Look at love in action. What evidence do we have for the presence of God in the world? Look at love in action. How can we be sure that God is still with us, or what God wants from us? Look at love in action.
The good news of the gospel is that in Jesus, God demonstrates the LOVE God has for the world that moves towards relationship and crosses boundaries for the sake of healing, wholeness and community. In the disruption of the crucifixion, the disciples might be tempted to isolate and separate from the pain and suffering of the world around them, and might be tempted to idolize their memories of Jesus to the point of fossilizing their experiences. The power of the resurrection appearances is that they move the disciples beyond the boundaries of their own fears, memories and uncertainties, and re-energize and re-activate an orientation outside of themselves towards the world around them. They can know God because they know Jesus, and now the world can know God as the world gets to know the disciples. The love that they’ve received from him is meant to be shared, not kept to themselves.
That’s where the Holy Spirit comes in. Jesus seems to know that love in action is easier said than done. Left to their own devices, the disciples will deny and betray him, hide behind closed doors, and go back to life as they knew it. But he wants more for them, so he promises an Advocate—a helper—who will give them the strength to keep up the mandate of sharing love in action with the world.
The dramatic story of Pentecost as recorded in Acts is sort of easy to sanitize as we hear it from the safety of our sanctuaries. But maybe you’ve been in a crowd that gathers for a fair or festival, or if you’ve ever been in a really busy airport or in a really busy city like New York, Chicago, or London. Think about the energy and chaos that those experiences evoke. Two years ago, Pentecost Sunday came around in the midst of the riots and protests in Minneapolis, and I remember reading the text through the lens of that chaos and unrest. Words like fire, breath, and crowds meant something different in that context. When we think about Pentecost in that context, it takes on a different kind of energy. I don’t know about you, but that kind of chaos and disruption makes me uncomfortable. So it’s okay if you read this story about the crowd gathering for the festival of Pentecost, and tongues of fire appearing, and everyone speaking in different languages, and accusations being thrown around, and you get uncomfortable. My sense is it was a very disruptive experience in the moment.
The reality is that the Holy Spirit is disruptive. The Holy Spirit stirs things up and challenges our norms and expectations. The Holy Spirit urges us to try new things that we cannot guarantee will be successful. The Holy Spirit reminds us to stay open to what initially seems strange, uncomfortable or unfamiliar. The reality is that the Holy Spirit is disruptive.
Pentecost comes with tongues of fire in the story in Acts, but before that it comes through the promise of Jesus and the breath of the Risen Christ. Before the Holy Spirit comes in tongues of fire, the Holy Spirit comes through a promise and a relationship. You know God because you know me. The promise of the Holy Spirit comes through a relationship (pulpitfiction.com).
Some of us may be looking for our own signs of the Father. We long to know that God is real and active in the world. We think we’ll know that God is real if ___________ (fill in the blank). We’ll know God is real and active in the world if our church is growing and children and youth are present. We’ll know God is real and active in the world if bad things don’t happen to good people, lives no longer get destroyed by poverty, disease or violence, political powers make decisions we agree with, and everything that is wrong with the world gets corrected. If we’re honest with ourselves, maybe we are with Philip, asking Jesus to show us the Father, so we can be sure. And if we’re honest with ourselves, maybe we think that sign will be as visible and public as the Acts 2 version of Pentecost.
But the reality is that this event–this Pentecost moment–is just that…a moment. It’s a moment that comes in the midst of an ongoing relationship, as a fulfillment of a promise. We know God by knowing Jesus. We demonstrate and participate in God’s presence in the world through love in action. The Holy Spirit is the force that enables and strengthens us to DO love in action. And the Holy Spirit comes to us as a promise, an Advocate, a support, a relationship—in those moments of inspiration and revelation, but also in those moments of doubt, fear, uncertainty, and confusion.
Despite all the disruption in our world these days, I would imagine that many of our stories are filled with everydayness–the regular, day to day events that consume our lives. We hear about these big things happening in other places, and maybe we get caught up in situational chaos and disruption of sickness, caring for our families in various ways, and trying to respond to the needs of our neighbours. But it’s easy to wonder if the ordinary-ness of our circumstances means we’re missing the signs of the Holy Spirit.
The message of Pentecost is that the Holy Spirit is with us in and for these ordinary moments. Like the disciples, who kept asking for a sign even though Jesus was with them the whole time, we might not always know it, or feel it, or recognize it for what it is. But the Holy Spirit is there.
Through the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives, who strengthens and equips us to love God and love one another, we come to know Christ. This transforms us from being a people with a story to tell about a man born in Bethlehem who did some cool stuff and taught some important things, to being a people who live into Jesus’ story and extend it beyond his death and resurrection into our world today. As we live into this story, we discover—like the disciples did throughout the rest of the book of Acts—that the Holy Spirit moves us beyond our own boundaries and assumptions about “us” and “them,” and invites us to experience the radical diversity, breadth, and expansiveness of the love that God has for the whole world.
That’s the work of the Holy Spirit…not only those significant moments of revelation and inspiration—which in your own life might be moments in worship, or experiences at Bible camp, or encounters with a stranger or someone who was different from you who shifts your perspective and understanding—but also that everyday invitation to remember that you are loved, that you are free from the bonds of sin and death, and that you have the promise of the Advocate who will accompany you in your loneliness and who will remind you who and whose you are when the world’s messages wear you down.
Our service today began with a thanksgiving for baptism. Many congregations have a tradition of including an affirmation of baptism on or around Pentecost Sunday. In our baptism, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, the spirit of joy in your presence, both now and forever. We are sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit, who accompanies us and advocates for us as we seek to demonstrate love in action. Gradually the Holy Spirit expands our understanding of God and God’s love for us and for the world, and breathes new life into us even in the most normal times.
And we need that too! As much as we need God’s Spirit to comfort us and advocate for us and accompany us, we also need God’s Spirit to push us outside of our comfortable places. We need God’s Spirit to breathe new life into us when we start recirculating what has become too comfortable and familiar. We need God to light a fire underneath us and around us to reshape and refine us, to move us out of our closed and locked rooms into the new life God calls us to as the Body of Christ—which is always just a bit broader than our assumptions and boundaries.
The day of Pentecost is one of those days that we hear about in our grand narrative of who God is and what God’s Spirit gets up to. The Spirit’s disruption at Pentecost isn’t the definitive moment, but is a sign post along the way. It is a sign that points us back to promise of God that we are not alone and that nothing can separate us from God’s love for us—not even death. It’s a sign that points us back to Easter.
In all of your Pentecost moments, the big and the little, the exciting and the ordinary, may you always remember that the same God who revealed himself to Mary Magdalene outside the empty tomb on Easter morning is revealing God’s self to you. Through the waters of baptism. In the bread and the wine. In the community of faith. In the world in which we live. God’s Spirit goes with you in the good times and the bad. And as ones who are now witnesses to this story—not just to tell it, but to get caught up in it–God is inviting you – with all of your strengths and weaknesses – to bring about God’s kingdom.
Pay attention to the disruptions of all of the Spirit’s Pentecost moments, reminding you that you are God’s beloved. Named by God. Claimed by God. Sent by God into the world to share the good news of Jesus Christ. AMEN.