The following is a sermon prepared at the invitation of the Oak Hill Presbyterian Church for Pentecost Sunday, 2013
Acts 2:1-11
John 20:13-23
Happy Pentecost! It
is wonderful to be with you today as we celebrate one of the three major feast
days of the Christian year. Pentecost
Sunday is the day set aside to celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit. The timing of Pentecost coincides with the 50th
day after Easter Sunday. In Biblical
times Pentecost was a Jewish festival known as the Feast of Booths and it
occurred fifty days after Passover. As
the Jewish people came more and more under the influence of Greek ways, the
name was changed to Pentecost.
The most
well known version of the events of Pentecost appears in the Book of the Acts
of the Apostles. This account is full of awe and wonder. Because
the Spirit appears on the feast day, Jerusalem is crowded with many Jews from
various geographical areas. When the
Spirit comes it does so with tremendous pomp: A great and mighty wind and
tongues of flame. The crowd is caught up
in the frenzy. The mighty deeds of God
are extolled in the languages of the world.
All in all it is quite a dramatic spectacle.
And it
should be, for without the coming of the Holy Spirit there would be no Church
and therefore no Book of Acts to chronicle the Church. The Book of Acts is the account of the Church
after the coming of the Spirit. Acts is
the story of Saul who is converted on the Damascus road into Paul, the early
Church’s greatest evangelist. The coming
of the Holy Spirit is the necessary bridge over which Peter and Paul can walk
as representatives of the community of the risen Christ. The Spirit under girds the difficult and
challenging job facing Peter and Paul as they confront the tensions between old
and new, law and gospel. It is the Spirit that converts Peter in chapter 10 and
leads him to offer baptism to the Gentiles for the first time—the first
occasion of the Holy Spirit being received by “outsiders”. The book of Acts ebbs and flows through trial
and conflict and finally to triumph, and the Spirit is always there—moving and
flowing in and through the Church as it spreads out into the world.
This is a
compelling and dramatic story played out on a big stage. But it is not the only account of the gift of
the Holy Spirit that appears in the New Testament. There is another, more intimate
portrayal. This is the second of our two
readings, the one from the Gospel of John.
As John
relates it, Jesus breathes the Spirit upon the disciples on the eve of his
resurrection day. This gift is the fulfillment
of a promise Jesus makes in chapter 14, when he promises to give the disciples
not only peace but also the “the advocate, the Holy Spirit”. This Holy Spirit will “teach you everything
and remind you of what I have told you.” This is a private moment, seemingly
intentionally so. No one else
knows. There is no public display, no
wind and fire, no amazed bystanders. Only
Jesus, his disciples, and the Holy Spirit.
In Greek,
the language of the New Testament, the sentence containing the phrase “then he
breathed on them” contains a unique expression.
It appears only here. Although it
is not repeated anywhere else in the Greek New Testament, it does appear in the
Greek translation of the Old Testament: at the time of creation in the book of
Genesis. The Spirit of God swept over
the face of the waters. The spirit
“breathed” over the waters…and God spoke creation into being.
Clearly the
author of the Gospel wants his readers—who would have had access to both the
Old and New Testament in Greek—to make this connection. Jesus is not only breathing the Holy Spirit
onto the disciples, he is performing an act of Creation. This is entirely consistent with John’s
understanding of who Jesus is. We might
recall the words with which John begins his gospel, words we often hear
associated with Jesus at Christmas time.
“In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was with God and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,
full of grace and truth.” John
understands Jesus to be the incarnate word of creation. The words “In the beginning” are an intentional
echo of Genesis. So as Jesus is the New
Creation, so now his disciples are the New Creation, as Jesus breathes upon
them in the same manner that the Spirit of God moved and breathed across the
unformed vastness of the earth. The
implications of John’s story are immense.
It means no less than the truth that the community Jesus’ empowered is
the community now responsible for the mission and ministry begun by Jesus. As Jesus tells his disciples, “As the Father
sent me, now I am sending you.” The Word
became flesh and dwelt among us. The
Word is still with us, for we are the Word.
This same
message is communicated in the Book of Acts as well. Clearly the coming of the Holy Spirit was
intended to get the Church up and moving.
In the power of the Spirit the gospel is proclaimed, the lame are
healed, and even the dead are raised. It
is understandable to see these two stories as being distinct in detail but the
same in overall message. And this is
essentially true. But it is important to
keep the two stories distinguished as well, especially in these days. For the majority of churches known in casual
language as “mainline”, there is a reassurance and a peace that comes with
John’s version of events, the peace that Jesus promises throughout the gospel.
The vast
majority of Reformed churches across America have less than 100 members. The vast majority of the churches in our
Presbytery have fewer than 100 members.
These churches are contemplating the future, wondering how much longer
they can remain viable congregations.
Pastoral leadership in these churches is becoming harder to come
by.
Understandably,
members of such churches, many of whom have been members for much if not all of
their lives, struggle to remain optimistic.
Churches with declining and aging membership might well be compared with
those disciples of Jesus who sit alone in a locked room, afraid. It is into this locked room—it is into this
fear—that the risen Christ comes with his peace and his life giving breath. Pentecost is so named because the story in
the Book of Acts takes place on a Jewish festival day known as Pentecost. But it does not exhaust the reality of the
Holy Spirit at work in the world.
Equally compelling is John’s small market version; intimate, tender, peaceful. John’s version of events does more than
provide hope for small churches everywhere.
It validates the essential integrity of such churches. John’s story of the Holy Spirit reminds us
that the power of the Spirit and the responsibility to be bearers of the Word
is not defined by size or location—only by the existence of a community in personal
relationship to Christ the risen Lord.
This awareness does not wipe away the practical difficulties of being a
small church in the world. But it should
provide spiritual confidence that a church, no matter how big or little, is
infused with the Holy Spirit and empowered to be a witness to the ways of God
in and for the world. It is not our
primary job to “keep the doors open”. It
is our job to trust, through faith, that God is working his purpose out, that
the Spirit of God is in this place, and that we are called—not to earthly
success—but to faithfulness.
We have
this sacrament to remind us of this as well.
Like the gift of the Holy Spirit, this meal is played out on big and
little stages. Jesus fed the five
thousand and he fed the four thousand.
But he also gathered around an intimate small table and said to those
close to him “this is my body, broken for you.
This is the cup of the New Covenant sealed in my blood. Do this in memory of me.” For whenever we eat this bread and drink this
cup we proclaim the saving death of our risen Lord. We proclaim it to two, four, twelve, twenty,
twenty thousand. It matters not. What matters is that we proclaim it, we live
it, we believe it, and we witness it in and through the Holy Spirit which is
with us now and always. Amen.
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