Pentecost
May28, 2023
Acts 2.1-21
+ This Wednesday, on May 31stthe Feast of the Visitation, I will celebrate a big event in my life.
It will be the 40th anniversary of my calling to thePriesthood.
For me, that day was sort of my own personal Pentecost.
On that day, I felt the Holy Spirit move in me.
I knew that presence was holy and good and true and right.
It was on that day that I clearly heard to Spirit say to me thatGod wanted me to be a priest.
Of course, I was a 13 year old Lutheran kid.
What did I know of priests?
But it was a very clear calling.
It was clear to me on that day that God wanted me to be a priest,for whatever reason.
And with that realization, my life changed, and I was led to places by thatsame Spirit which called me that I would never have thought formyself.
We are of course celebrating our own calling by the Spirit toserve God and each other today.
Pentecost is an important feast in the Church.
In fact, it’s one of the most very important feasts in the church,right up there with Easter and Christmas.
In fact, like Easter and Christmas, it even has a vigil servicethe evening before.
With the ending of this day of Pentecost, the Easter seasonofficially ends.
This evening, I will move the Paschal Candle back out to theBaptismal font in the Narthex.
We will say Alleluia a bit less than we have during the season ofEaster.
But, we will continue to live into the resurrection and into theHoly Spirit’s indwelling presence among us.
Pentecost is the feast in which we celebrate the Holy Spirit—ormore specifically the Holy Spirit’s descent upon those first followers ofJesus.
It also gives us an opportunity to think about a very importantthing that we often just don’t think about but which works in our lives on adaily basis:
The Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit, after all, is God in our midst.
God’s very Presence here on earth with us and in us.
The Holy Spirit is that gift that Jesus told us would be the giftwe receive now that we no longer have Jesus physically with us in the flesh ashe was before his Ascension.
It’s a very important day in the life of the Church.
Today is essentially the “birthday” of the Church.
But, in Judaism, the feast of Shavuot was celebrated this weekend.
It actually ended last evening.
Shavuot is a wonderful and important Jewish feast.
It is now 50 days since Passover.
The word Shavuot is Hebrew for “weeks.”
The belief is that, after fifty days of traveling after leavingEgypt, the nation of Israel now has finally arrived at Mount Sinai.
And on Shavuot, the Torah, the “Law,” the 10 Commandments weredelivered to them by Moses.
So, in a very real sense, this is an important day not just forJudaism, but for us as well.
The Torah, the 10 Commandments, are important to us too.
Our feast of Pentecost is very similar in many ways.
It now 50 days after Easter.
The word “Pentecost” is the Greek word for 50.
And it’s connection with Shavuot is pretty clear.
Shavuot is this feast onwhich the early Jews offered to God the first fruits of their harvests.
Now that is particularly meaningful to us Christians and what wecelebrate on this day of Pentecost.
It is meaningful that the Holy Spirit came among us on this feastin which the first fruits were offered to God.
After all, those first Christiana who gathered in that upper roomin our reading this morning from Acts, were truly the first fruits of theChurch.
And let’s not forget that those first Christians were also Jews,gathering to celebrate the festival of Shavuot.
God chose to send the Spirit on those first followers of Jesus onjust the right day.
Still, like nuclear power or electricity, God’s Spirit issometimes a hard thing for us to grasp and understand.
The Spirit can be elusive and strange and sometimes we might havea hard time wrapping our minds around the Spirit.
But it is clear from the words of Jesus before he ascends backinto heaven what the role of the Spirit is for us:
"It is not foryou to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you willbe my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of theearth."
Although Jesus’s prophecy from God might no longer be among us as it was when Jesus himself was with usphysically, the prophecy does remains with us in the sending of God’s spirit.
Jesus will leave—we will not be able to touch him and feel him andlisten to his human voice again, on this side of the veil.
But God is leaving something amazing in Jesus’ place.
Jesus is gone from us physically, but God is still with us.
In a sense what happens with the Descent of God’s Spirit upon usis the fact that we now have the potential to be prophets ourselves.
The same Spirit which spoke to Ezekiel, which spoke to Isaiah,which spoke to Jeremiah, which spoke to Moses, which spoke through Jesus, alsocan now speak to us and be revealed to us just as it spoke and was revealed tothose prophets from the Hebrew Bible and through Jesus.
That is who the Spirit is in our midst.
The Spirit we celebrate today—and hopefully every day—is truly thespirit of the God that came to us and continues to be with us.
It is through this Spirit that we come to know God in ways wemight never have before.
God’s Spirit comes to us wherever we may be in our lives—in anysituation or frustration.
God’s Spirit is with us, as Jesus promised, always.
Always.
For those of us who want to grasp these experiences—who want tohave proof of them—the Spirit doesn’t fit well into the plan.
We can’t grasp the Spirit.
We can’t make the Spirit do what we want it to do.
In that way, the Spirit truly is like the Wind that came rushingupon those first disciples.
So, how do we know how the Spirit is working in our lives?
Well, as Jesus said, we know the tree by its fruit.
In our case, we know the Spirit best through the fruits God’sSpirit gives us.
Remember what the feast of Pentecost originally was?
It was the Jewish feast on which the first fruits were offered toGod.
In a sense, what happens on our Pentecost, is God returning thosefruits back to us.
On the feast of Pentecost, we celebrate the fruits the Spirit ofGod gives to us and we can be thankful for them, and, most importantly, sharethem in turn with those around us.
The Spirit comes to us and manifests itself to us in the fruitsgiven to us by the Spirit.
For me, the Spirit of God came to me not in a noisy, raucous way,but rather in a quiet, though just as intense, way.
The Sprit of God as I have experienced it has never been a“raining down” so to speak, but rather a “welling up from within.”
The fruits of the Spirit for me have been things such as anoverwhelming joy in my life.
When the Spirit is near, I feel clear-headed and, to put itsimply, content.
Or, in the midst of what seems like an unbreakable dark grief,there is suddenly a real and potent sense of hope and light.
When the future seems bleak and ugly, the Spirit can come in andmake everything worth living again.
We experience God’s Spirit whenever we feel joy or hope.
As Jesus says in today’s Gospel, the Spirit of God is a Spirit ofTruth.
We experience God’s Spirit when we strive for truth in this world,when truth comes to us.
In turn, we are far from God’s Spirit when we let bitterness andanger and frustration lead the way.
We frustrate God’s Spirit when we grumble and mumble about eachother and hinder the ministries of others in our church, when we let our ownagendas win out over those who are trying also to do something to increaseGod’s Kingdom in our midst.
We deny the Spirit when we deceive ourselves and the truth is notin us.
No doubt everyone here this morning has felt God’s Spirit in someway, although we might not have readily recognized that experience as God’sSpirit.
But our job, as Christians, is to allow those fruits of the Spiritto flourish and grow.
For us, we let the Spirit of God flourish when we continue tostrive for truth and justice, when we stand up against the dark forces of thisworld.
The Spirit of God compels again and again to stand up and to bedefiant against the dark forces of this world!
That dynamic and life-giving presence of the Spirit of God speaksloudly to us.
Certainly we have seen God’s Spirit at work here in ourcongregation as we celebrate a bountiful harvest—the growth and vitality here.
We see the Holy Spirit at work in the ministries we do, in thelove we share with others, with the truth we proclaim as Christians, even inthe face of opposition.
We experience this Spirit of truth when we stand up againstinjustice, wherever it may be.
This is how God’s Spirit comes to us.
The Spirit does not always tear open the ceiling and force its wayinto our lives.
The Spirit rather comes to us just when we need the Spirit to cometo us.
Though, often the Spirit comes to us as fire—an all-consuming firethat burns way all anger and hatred and fear and pettiness and nagging and allthe other negative, dead chaff we carry within us.
So, this week, in the glow of the Pentecost light, in the Shavuotglow with the Law written deep in our hearts, let us look for the gifts of theSpirit in our lives and in those around us.
Let us open ourselves to God’s Spirit and let it flow through uslike a caressing wind and burn through us like a purifying fire.
And let us remember the true message of the Spirit to all of us.
Whenever it seems like God is distant or nonexistent, that is whenGod might possibly be closest of all, dwelling within us, being breathed untous as with those first disciples.
On these feasts of Shavuot and Pentecost—these feasts of thefruits of God—these feasts of the fire of God—let us give thanks for this Godwho never leaves us, who never stops loving us, but who comes to us again andagain in mercy and in truth.
