The Feast of Pentecost (Mother Marisa)

In the Name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

They didn’t believe him at first. He was leaving them, that much they grasped; but Jesus talked about it as though his departure would be a good thing. And how could it be? When you love a person, you want them to be near, to never go far. And yet he had — and more than once. 

Jesus was betrayed, arrested, led to his death. He died a criminal. Almost every one of his disciples abandoned him. Until the news of his resurrection brought them back, three days later, shaking to the upper room. “Peace be with you,” Jesus said. He talked with them. Walked among them. Ate with them. But not for long. Forty days after his resurrection, Jesus met with his disciples on a mountain outside of Jerusalem and told them that he was going back to the Father. “I will send you the Advocate, the Holy Spirit,” he said. And then he was gone.

Looking at the sky, the disciples marveled and wept and surely remembered the words Jesus spoke in our Gospel text today: “I tell you the truth; it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.” 

What could those words have meant to the disciples when they first heard them? And what did those words mean to them as they peered into the clouds? “It is to your advantage that I leave. I will go and send you someone else.”

The mystery of God’s will was still a mystery, even as the day of Pentecost dawned. The disciples had waited. And wondered. And prayed. They knew that something was coming; but nothing else was clear. All they could do was abide in that place of expectation, painful as it was, and believe that the promise Jesus gave them would be fulfilled. 

And it was. In the space of a moment — in the space of a breath — the early morning clamor of the City of Peace was swallowed up in the roar of gale-force winds. Fire appeared and burned over the disciples’ heads; and the Holy Spirit himself filled the room. And not just that. For the breath of God filled the disciples, too. 

It was almost like breathing for the first time. The fear was gone. The sorrow was gone. The confusion was gone. Divine life had been poured out without hesitation or limitation on the men and women gathered there that day, and the experience was nothing less than re-creation. 

We see it happen. We hear it happen. Think of Peter, the disciple who got so much right when he wasn’t getting it so utterly wrong. Peter stood up and, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, told the crowds gathered before him that these were the days of which the prophets had spoken and that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, sent by God himself to save the world. 

And the crowd believed him. They heard the Truth in his voice. And that was transformative. Thousands of people began to worship Jesus that day. Thousands of people were baptized. Thousands of people received the Holy Spirit. The presence of God was palpable. The lame walked and the mute spoke; but more wondrously and more miraculously, the rich became poor, and the poor became rich. Everyone had everything in common. And Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female sat down together to eat.

That is Pentecost. This is Pentecost: the rebirth of the world as it was meant to be. We know from Holy Scripture that the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters at the very beginning of creation, holding everything that is in the knowledge and love of God. On the Day of Pentecost, that same story was retold. For in his descent, the Spirit takes what Christ has done and makes it our own. He takes the love and the faithfulness and the obedience Jesus showed to the Father and places the power to do the same in our own hearts. He fills us with the grace that makes us what we were always meant to be: We are no longer strangers but God’s friends, no longer enemies but beloved brothers and sisters to each other and to all of creation. 

That miracle isn’t just something that happened on a single day so long ago. We live in Pentecost. We move in Pentecost. The Spirit of God has come, and he fills all things and sanctifies all things. He is God, invisible almighty and eternal; and yet we can see him, know him, feel his presence in the lifting of our hearts and the glow of our countenance and the impulse to reach out in love to someone, to anyone purely because they are a fellow creation of the Lord our God. 

We know that the Holy Spirit is among us because no one else could cause that love to blossom and grow. No one but God himself could beget such holiness and wholeness that is the same sign and the same miracle that took place so long ago. We may not speak in the tongues of every nation, but moved by the Spirit and transformed by the Spirit and filled by the Spirit, we can and do speak in the language every human heart knows and longs to hear: which is love. 

One look at the news, one honest glimpse at ourselves, and we know without a doubt that the entirety of creation groans as if in labor pains, awaiting the coming of a God who makes right what is wrong and heals what is broken. We long for the day when wars will cease and suffering will end.

We long for that day; and it is coming, not only in the future, when Christ returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, but now and every day in our hearts. We have the Spirit, the power of God himself to change and to grow into the likeness of his Son; and we have the honor to do so with him, to hope, to actively passionately hope that God might take us as we are and make us into who he wants us to be. And he will. He does. He starts with that desire. He starts with frightened disciples and makes them into saints. He starts with hostile crowds and makes them into his Church. For the Spirit helps us in our weakness. He prays for us with sighs too deep for words that when the time comes we will act as one with the Lord of Love, whom he brings near, never to depart.

This is our life, our life in the Triune God. What will come of that will surprise and amaze us, for we breathe with the very Breath of God. Let us go forth rejoicing in the power of the Spirit. Alleluia, alleluia! AMEN.

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