Pentecost, Year C
Sunday, May 12, 2013
St. Mark’s, Bay City
Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104: 25-35, 37
Romans 8:14-17
John 14:8-17 (25-27)
Happy Pentecost, y’all. Happy birth of the church. On the first Pentecost after Jesus’
resurrection, Jesus’ disciples, as well as those who became Jesus’ disciples
were united in many ways. The Holy
Spirit came upon them with a rush of wind and tongues of fire. They were united in their language such that,
rather than speak one language, they spoke the language of those who heard
them. There was no barrier that was
going to stop the church, no lack of spirit that would still its birth.
Jesus was victorious once
again. As he had been in his death,
resurrection, and ascension, Jesus was now victorious in the Holy Spirit and
the disciples continuing the work he had done, continuing to spread the good
news of God’s kingdom, continuing to give to others the faith, hope, and love
that Jesus had given them.
Jesus had united his followers
before his death and then reunited them after his resurrection. That was Jesus’ prayer which we have been hearing
for weeks, that his disciples would be one.
“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will
believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you,
may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”
(John 17:20-21)
In our story from Acts today, we
see God’s enormous “yes” to Jesus’ prayer for his disciples. We see God’s Holy Spirit uniting Jesus’
disciples, and we see God uniting them in a reversal of the way in which God
separated humanity in the Genesis story of the Tower of Babel. In Genesis 11, we are told that all people
had one language and that they decided to make a tower to the heaven’s,
literally to God’s realm, so that they could make a name for themselves and
prove how mighty they were. Knowing that
there would be no end to the peoples’ ambition and selfish glory, God confused
their languages so that they would be limited in what they could accomplish, so
that their selfish and harmful schemes would be more difficult.
On the day of Pentecost we see a
reversal of what happened at the Tower of Babel. God took the confusion that had entered in to
the languages of the people and brought them back together. He also helped his disciples to see that
there was nothing that could stop his message in the world. He gave them an assurance that if they worked
for him he would give them the words to speak and would open the ears of those
around them to hear and understand his word.
he as preparing the church for an explosion of growth even before the
disciples had set out on their mission.
Unity in the church was
essential. The disciples needed to
believe that what Jesus had asked them to accomplish could be done. They had to believe that they could take the
good news of the resurrected Christ out into the world. If they didn’t believe that God would be with
them, that the Holy Spirit would be guiding them all along the way they would
have failed.
Unity in the church is essential
today as well in the work and mission that we do. We are still continuing Jesus’ mission in the
world, to live and invite others to live in the Kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit unites us if we allow it to. The Holy Spirit draws us together in Jesus. The Holy Spirit is the wind that flows
through each of us and inhabits our homes, our churches and everywhere that we
move in this world that God has created.
United by God’s Holy Spirit we have
a mission to take God’s message out into the world, and as confusing, or hard ,
or impossible that may seem, God has promised that he will be with us wherever
we go and that he will give us the words to speak. We are a people who are gathered under God’s
spirit and we have to remain a people united if we are to spread his message of
peace, hope and love.
The unity the Holy Spirit gives is
essential for us, and without it we cannot stand against the things in this
world that pull us away from God. I thought of this while reading a children’s
book to my son, Noah. We’ve been reading
the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, and in the fourth book, the great
enemy returns, and the leader of the good guys gives the following speech:
In the light of [our enemy’s]
return, we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. [Our enemy’s] gift for spreading discord and
enmity is very great. We can fight it
only by showing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust. [Our differences] are nothing at all if our
aims are identical and our hearts are open.” (J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,
Chapter 33, p. 723)
People think they don’t need
Jesus. They think other things will fill
them more fully than Jesus. They think
the kingdoms of money, time, power, amusement, etc. are better kingdoms than
the kingdom of God. I say this not to
look contemptuously at anyone, but to realize that for many, church, and even
Jesus have become irrelevant. Jesus has
no place in many peoples’ lives. They
have filled the holes in their hearts with other things: with stuff, with high stress jobs, with fun
activities which they think will bring fulfillment to their lives. None of these things are bad, but as St.
Augustine said, “our hearts are restless until they rest in God.”
We are a people who were made to
rest in God--to put all of our trust in him and to fill the deep longings of
our heart with his. But our society
increasingly presents us with other things to fill the holes in our lives. We have to resist the temptation to fill in
the empty places in our hearts with more things or more activities or more
work. We need to fill in those empty
places with God.
This is the message that the world
is craving to hear. So many people are
spinning their wheels trying to figure out why their lives don’t seem to be
what they imagined they would be, trying to figure out why something always
seems missing. So they constantly strive
for the next activity or thing which will finally make them complete and whole,
and they fill themselves up with things.
People fill their lives with fear, and vengeance rather than with faith
and love. People live out various
kingdoms of men rather than the kingdom of God, the kingdom of peace, hope,
faith, forgiveness, charity, and love.
As a church we need to live that kingdom of God and bring the message
that we as a people are meant to fill ourselves with God and live lives of his
kingdom.
In light of the challenges facing
the church, people’s indifference to Jesus and the competing kingdoms out
there, we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. There are many competing narratives, whose
gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can help guide people away from those
competing narratives and to the narrative and life of Jesus best by showing an
equally strong bond of friendship and trust among ourselves, by living God’s
kingdom, by allowing God’s Holy Spirit to unite us in Jesus, and by inviting
others to that same unity in Jesus. Like
the disciples on the morning of the birth of the church, God has given us the
ability to sort out the broken languages, the misplaced desires and the
misguided understandings of who Jesus is.
We know that Jesus lives and that his Spirit is within us. Now go out into the world and live and preach
his Gospel. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment