THE DAY OF PENTECOST – 27 May 2007

St Paul Lutheran Church, ABQ NM – The Rev. P. L. Holman

Acts 2:1-21; Ps. 104:24-34, 35b; Romans 8:14-17; John 14:8-17, 25-27

“Gifts for Becoming Whole”

This is a day of gifts. Not Christmas gifts, of course, or birthday gifts, though Pentecost is often called birthday of the church. Today we remember God’s gift of the Spirit to the people of the New Covenant – God through Jesus gives the Advocate, the Spirit, to accompany all Jesus’ followers on their way. It is the power to become what we were created to be, the power to imagine the world becoming whole. The Spirit gives God’s people the gifts we need for the journey of becoming whole.

Our Christian festival this day is connected to the Jewish tradition of the Festival of Weeks. It is for them a time to celebrate YHWH’s giving of the Torah to the people of the First Covenant. According to one source, on the fiftieth day after Passover, seven weeks of weeks counting from the day after Passover, Jewish people celebrate Shavu’ot, the festival of weeks. Along with Passover and Sukkot, Shavu’ot is a major Jewish festival with historical and agricultural significance.  It commemorates both the time when the first fruits were harvested and brought to the Temple, and it celebrates the giving of the Torah to Moses at Mt. Sinai. It is the giving NOT the receiving that makes this holiday significant: the ancient sages remind the people that they are constantly in the process of receiving the Torah, that they receive it every day as guide for living.  [JUDAISM 101, Tracey R. Rich, JewFAQ.org]         

On this day we praise God for giving the Holy Spirit to the followers of Jesus. It is this Spirit that they received at Pentecost, which we claim anew every day as power for faithful living. We can’t be faithful without it! In the confessions of this church we affirm belief in the Holy Spirit, and Martin Luther’s explanation of that third article in the Apostles’ Creed unpacks the meaning of that confession of faith in the Holy Spirit: I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy, and kept me in the true faith, just as [the Spirit] calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one common, true faith. Daily in this Christian church the Holy Spirit abundantly forgives all sins – mine, and those of all believers. On the last day the Holy Spirit will raise me, and all the dead, and will give to me and all believers in Christ eternal life. This is most certainly true.

That’s one powerful gift! It means we’re never alone, never left to our own devices. The Spirit received in Baptism is the same Spirit present in the sharing of this Holy Meal. We’re not doomed to defeat – the Spirit is with us to release the burden of judgment and guilt and free us to live again! The gifts of the Spirit – all seven of them (wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, fear of / reverence for God, and joy in the Lord’s presence) – are poured out upon us to guide our faithful living. They are gifts – not laws – gifts of the Spirit to guide our becoming whole.

The confirmation youth studied The Sacraments for their third and final session this Spring, and to conclude that study I gave them an assignment. Prepare an essay, collage or other creative interpretation reflecting on the following question: “Where is the Holy Spirit in your daily life? Reflect on this, then ask an adult the same question.”  The feedback session was amazing. Every youth had important images and wonderful insights to share about the Holy Spirit’s presence and work in their lives.  The display in the Narthex case contains their work. I encourage you to take time over the next several weeks to look at them, and then ponder how you would respond!

One reply was consistent throughout the group: they had never really thought about the Holy Spirit before I gave this assignment; as one person wrote, “When I began to think about the Holy Spirit I realized I was clueless.”  

Talking through their reflections and interviews with parents, we discovered shared images of the Spirit as wind and force, comfort and protector and guide, and as power behind those things we call coincidence. One student shared how the opening lines of a movie she’d gone to see gave her insight into the Spirit. ‘Look around! Just like Love, the Spirit is everywhere.’ Help with studies or music performance, on the soccer field or outdoor track, were all attributed to the Spirit. “If I do accomplish the seemingly impossible task, I know that I didn’t do it alone. But if I don’t accomplish it, I know that the Holy Spirit is trying to teach me something.”  Hmm, is this perhaps a glimpse of the gift of Wisdom? Certainly this one is: “I have also come to realize that the Holy Spirit is probably responsible for me coming up with an answer to this very hard question.”

We ignore the presence and work of God’s Spirit at great peril to our health and wholeness, and to that of the world. It is a resource for living that is readily available to us. Ii is like a gift of God’s grace longing for an opening in our hearts to lead us into more meaningful lives. I shared a brief summary of this confirmation experience at a meeting with some folks in the Religious Studies department at UNM this past week. Afterward, a spiritual guide who participates along with me in that department’s community workshops sent and email sharing with me the following thoughts: “I was so happy to hear of the question you posed to the youth about the Holy Spirit. So many young people have seemingly never been guided to think about the Holy Spirit in their day-to-day life. Once they are directed to the obvious, they can start on what I call the Great Adventure in Spirit, where they expand to more subtle feelings, and then try to find the good in what we perceive as ‘bad’ and vice versa.” She went on to share how a woman she works with who was raised as an atheist is now, through meditation, “discovering that the emptiness and frustration she was feeling all her life is [connected to a] lack of recognition of the Spirit.” This woman’s UNM education helped her get a job “but it didn’t help her in knowing how to live.”

The gifts of the Spirit help us know how to live. They help us make connections in our daily lives: connections among all the elements of God’s creation, connections among all the people we share this world with who are on the God-blessed journey with us toward becoming whole. Aware of these gifts and alive in the Spirit, we are free to trust God’s Spirit to guide us into new ways of seeing. On this Memorial Day weekend we remember those who have served in the armed forces of this country over the years, who have followed call and conscience, sometimes by conscription and sometimes by choice, to serve in times of war dying in order that there might be times of peace. We remember those whose service has inspired hope that one day death of soldiers and innocents will no longer be needed. It is a good day to remember the presence of the Spirit – to remember that we are not alone, and we are not in charge – and to recommit ourselves to trust God’s Spirit to lead us on the way of healing and peace.           

As we come to the Lord’s table, invited in this place by the grace of God to open our hands and receive this Spirit-filled meal, we receive not just morsel and sip but Christ present through the power of that Spirit; in the receiving we are given our lives back more fully than before to live our days with an awareness only the Spirit can give.  The goal of our life in the Spirit is not to fight battles, but simply to live life in the fullness of its challenges. For there are no wars that can be fully won, whether fought on terror or on political turf, against crime or against illness. There is only the harsh reality of pain and brokenness that must inevitably be lived through in times of conflict by faithful people on the journey – thanks be to God – by faithful people on the journey together into peace, into one day becoming whole.

I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. [John 14:25-27]

Peace to you -- Shalom