Pentecost Sunday

11 May 2008

Year A - RCL

The Rev'd Lloyd Prator

New York City

Today we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, with which we close the great fifty days of Easter. At the end of today's liturgy, the deacon will carry the paschal candle out of the church just as he carried it into the church at the great Vigil of Easter.

The season of Easter marks a transition in the way the Church has known Jesus. In his earthly ministry, he was known as any human being is known as a person limited by time and history, in a tangible body, present with his people as one of them. In his resurrection, it became clear to the disciples that he was still with them, but present in a new way. He had a new and different kind of body, one which was still tangible in some ways, but which also knew fewer limits than he had known in time and history. Near the end of this 50-day period we call Easter, we celebrate the Ascension, which marks the end of Jesus' risen appearances to his disciples. And in Pentecost, the disciples experience him in a new way, as the book of Acts calls it, they experience him as the spirit of God, which is free and clear like the wind.

Our ancestors were Jews. They were radical monotheists; they could tolerate belief in only one god. And yet, as they came to know God in history, they came to know a god who was a creator, a lawgiver, and the sender of messengers called prophets, and the source of wisdom both personal and social. In Jesus, they saw the same kind of God displayed in human form.

After the death and resurrection of Jesus, the disciples longed for their Lord to be present with them. And they recalled, as we heard in today's gospel, that in fact he had said that he would be. When they had that experience of the stirring wind and the ability to speak other languages, they knew that it was God with them in a new way.

And why:

Because it sounded like God, it looked like God and it was God at work.

In the Pentecost story, the disciples found they could speak in other languages. The miracle of Pentecost, in this way, undoes the tragedy of the story of Babel, when divided and embittered human beings found themselves unable to understand each other. This division was gone in the mystery of Pentecost.

Before Pentecost, the community of the disciples was dispersed and fearful. Only a handful were there that day when the spirit was poured out, and the story of the book of Acts continues to tell the story of a community which was unified, strengthened and prepared to face the future.

As the community continued to grow and to gather as the Church, they found, as Paul points out in the second reading, that they had gifts for ministry to build up the body, and to care for each other. As God had promised, Jesus would be with them in a new way, a way that was powerful and rich and sustaining.

And that is what they experienced.

If Pentecost is about a clear experience of God, it is also about the gift of a new way to think about God, a way suitable for the centuries. Let me explain. The earthly Jesus, however magnificent he was and however fully he displayed God, was a figure of first century Israel. In order for him to be present in other times and places, he needed to be freed from the limits of being a first century man. And, so, in the third part of the trinity, he is now present as wind, fire, language, and consoling presence.

He is freed to be present to people who could not hear a Jew. He is free to be present to those who could not hear a man. He is free to be present to those who have no experience of first century philosophy or theology. He is freed for the ages. He is freed to minister to the ages.

God the Holy Spirit is God freed and powerful to be fully God for all times and for all people.

Today is Pentecost. It is a time of endings. Jesus' earthly presence among us is gone for a time. It is a time of beginnings: We recall that we are given gifts for ministry, ministry in a new, radically different part of the world and culture than that in which Jesus lived. I invite you to consider what your gifts might be, and, as we join in singing the church's ancient creed, to offer those gifts for the expansion of the dominion of God on earth in all times and in all places, places which can be reached only by the spirit of God, set free and roving in all place, full of grace, truth and power.