PENTECOST

Pentecost put a fire on and into people.

50 days after resurrection, the Church celebrates the feast of Pentecost.  Jewish people celebrated this feast in memory of the covenant in Mount Sinai.

The gift of the Holy Spirit is at the heart of our transformation through baptism, where we receive the Spirit.  Pentecost is a celebration of God indwelling they church.

We wear red to signify people being on fire spreading it to and catching it from one another.

 Pentecost tears down walls that divide and unites people.

The role of the Spirit in the biblical accounts is to speak.  In the Old Testament prophets received the Spirit of the Lord to speak to the people the word of God.  The Spirit speaks through the prophets, and in the gospels Jesus tells the disciples that the Holy Spirit will speak through them and give true testimony.  To be filled with the Holy Spirit is to be moved to speech –to proclaim God’s presence in our lives and God’s message to our world.

The Pentecost miracle of tongues with everyone understanding the other even though they speak different languages is clearly a reversal to the Tower of Babel story.

The gift of tongues is much broader than just the ability to understand foreign languages.

The gift of tongues affects not only our ability to hear one another.  It includes our ability to use our tongues to speak words of understanding of compassion, of forgiveness, of encouragement.

The Holy Spirit unites us.

 Pentecost and fear are incompatible.

When the Holy Spirit entered the room where the apostles were huddled up, fear went out the door, soon to be followed by fearless disciples bent on proclaiming the Good News.

In his preaching, the only time Jesus ever gave a negative command -do NOT- is when he said: Have no fear. Be not afraid, fear not.  It seems Jesus realized that fear paralyze.  How many wrong decisions are made because they are based on fear.

 Sending.

Pentecost calls us to write with our own lives a new Pentecost journal.  Our journal would contain many of the same features, listening to one another, being on fire because we are determined to build a place where people can live together in peace and justice, a place where we see that no one lacks necessities, where we too can e descried by the quote “see how they love one another”

“Go and make disciples of all nations” we have been given a commission, a mission but more than that we have been given a companion.  The Holy Spirit will be with us.  And the Holy Spirit comes laded with gifts.  He gave some to you; no, he gave you many.

The other part of Pentecost is the sending out of the disciples to be witnesses and testify to all nations.

 Thought this day and in the weeks ahead, let us not lose our grasp on our Easter joy, our sense of God’s presence with us.  I invite you to simply pray quietly to yourself the words; “Come Holy Spirit” throughout the day.  At any task and especially at times of stress and worry, or loneliness, or fear, cultivate the habit of calling on God as the disciples did, saying “come Holy spirit”.  Increase your awareness of what if means to be filled with the Holy Spirit, to live with the understanding that God is truly with us.  Let us pray to live with the boldness given to the disciples on Pentecost, knowing that the Spirit is ours.