Friends
Peace be with you.
I would guess that one of the more rewarding and yet challenging components of being a parent is being equated with the actions of your children. If you have more active children, you may think that people believe you’re letting your children have too much screen time and they’re acting out because they don’t get out enough. Or you may think they’re saying that your kids spend too much time outdoors and have become feral like a child raised by apes. Or, God forbid, if you child breaks the law, you may think people say that you should have punished them more as a child, to teach them respect for the law. Or you may be worried that people think you should stand up for your kid and not just accept that the police are always right. I think it’s even more difficult when your kid domes thing good, especially if it was something you really struggled to do. You may be worried that people will think you really pushed your kid to succeed and were a slavedriver even if you didn’t have to push him or her because they loved what they were doing and pushed themselves. Or you may think they’re going to say you pushed them hard so you can correct your failures through your kid’s successes. Let’s face, the people in our heads are the worst!
This weekend, we celebrate Pentecost, the giving of the Holy Spirit to the Church. Some people ven call this the Birthday of the Church, since all ministry is empowered by the Holy Spirit and we can do nothing good without her. In our readings today, we hear two separate accounts of the Pentecost event. Unlike last week during the Ascension, when we heard the same author, St. Luke, tell the same story twice in two different books, we have the story of Pentecots told from two, very different perspectives. The Gospel writer, St. John, tends to remember more the preaching and teaching and less the miraculous side of Jesus. So, in St. John’s story, Jesus appears through a locked door without any fanfare and shows off his body to show that it was truly a resurrection. Then, he breathes on his disciples to empower them to forgive sin. It appears that all of this took place on the night of the Resurrection, Easter night.
In contrast, St. Luke, who tends to favor the miraculous because of his goal to show the movement of the church from Jew to Gentile, says the Holy Spirit was given fifty days after Passover, on Pentecost. The differences in dates is just one difference between these two accounts. In Luke, Jesus ascended 10 days before Pentecots and was, therefore, not present for Pentecost, Further, the Holy Spirit sounded like a mighty wind and was accompanied by tongues of fire, which empowers the Apostles to be able to spread the message of the mighty acts of God to everyone around by giving the Apostles the ability to speak in such a way that the many people with different languages could understand them. If Pentecost is the undoing of the Old Testament event of the Tower of Babel, it’s not by making us all speak one language. It’s done by making the gospel heard by all people in their native language.
Some scholars say that the Gospel account is about a personal giving of the Holy Spirit while the story from Acts tells about a second, communal giving of the Spirit. And, while that’s entirely possible, I prefer to think of this as the same story told from two different perspectives. For St. John, Sunday itself has been transformed because of the Resurrection of Jesus in such a way that every Sunday is Easter and Jesus is always present there because we eat his flesh and drink his blood in the Eucharist. Further, the fire and sound of driving wind in St. Luke are merely the breath of God empowering the Holy Spriit. And, even though it appears as though the mission of the Gospel to spread God’s mercy to all nations seems different than St. .Luke’s message to spread the mighty works of God, the truth is that God’s forgiveness is the mightiest act of God and, indeed, the basis for all the mighty acts the church will be called to perform.
It seems to me that we tend to focus on Pentecost on the Gifts of the Spirit, which is important. In fact, it’s important to do so every day of our lives, not just Pentecost and certainly not just during confirmation class. But, it’s important for us to remember why we need the gifts in the first place; to give glory to God. The gifts we are given by the Holy Spirit are given to show forth the glory of God. So, yes, we need to pray for the gifts of the spirit but not so that we can have superpowers like Captain Marvel or Superman, but so that others will see the mighty acts of God and long to encounter God’s mercy and forginess as well. May the Holy Spirit always empower us in this endeavor.
