The Power of the Spirit

By Emmett Jarrett
Monday, May 9, 2005
 

Lectionary Reflections for the Day of Pentecost (A)

Readings for the Day of Pentecost, Year A, May 15, 2005

• Acts 2:1-21 or Numbers 11:24-30
  
• Psalm 104:25-35,37
  
• I Corinthians 12:3b-13 or Acts 2:1-21
  
• John 20:19-23 or John 7:37-39

My 15-year-old daughter Sarah was confirmed on a recent Saturday morning, in a deanery-wide (regional) service, with 40 confirmands from 8 different parishes. The bishop presided, choirs from all the parishes participated, and the church was packed. It was a grand occasion, much bigger in numbers, more elaborate in ceremonial, and more full of enthusiasm than I imagine the usual Sunday service is in the host church, or any of the participating churches. The bishop's sermon, while perhaps not quite as inspired as Peter's on the first Pentecost, was pretty good. People felt the power of the Spirit.

I have also attended small, quiet, intimate services, where the Spirit's presence was felt in very different ways, but powerfully. Some of these have been early Sunday morning services, but others have been in "house church" situations, or at hospital bedsides, or college chapel gatherings. Some have even been in hotel rooms, and some have not been church services at all! God's presence among God's people takes many different forms, but all of them involve the dangerous presence of the Spirit in power and forgiveness.

Today's readings from Acts and the Gospel of John present two dramatically different accounts of the bestowal of the Holy Spirit upon the gathered church, which is what Pentecost is about. In Acts we have the big public event, with lots of people and dramatic special effects. The event takes place on the Day of Pentecost, fifty days after Passover in the Jewish calendar, and after Easter for Christians. The risen Jesus has ascended into heaven on the fortieth day, and the disciples -- not exclusively the apostles in either Acts or John's account -- have been praying for the promised gift of Holy Spirit. They were "all together in one place [when] suddenly there came from heaven a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability" (Acts 2:1-4). We learn from this to be careful what we pray for, because the Spirit forced the first disciples out into the street with the dangerous message of the Gospel for very different people than they expected.

While this is a crucial text for the experience that charismatic Christians call "Spirit baptism," it is important to note that the image of "tongues, as of fire," which "appeared among them" and "rested on each of them," are not the spiritual gift of glossalalia that Paul is concerned with in I Corinthians 12-14. Those of us who have witnessed or experienced this presence of the Spirit and heard the susurration of whispered sounds by persons praying in the Spirit will value that expression of Spirit power, but not confuse it with the special gift at the first Pentecost of the ability to speak in many different human languages to proclaim the Gospel. Luke lists the nations present in Jerusalem on that first Pentecost, who heard "about God's deeds of power" (Acts 2:13) in their own languages. A clearer example of the inclusiveness of the Gospel can scarcely be imagined.

John's version of the gift of the Holy Spirit is dramatically different from the picture seen in Acts, but makes the same point. It happens on Easter Day, in the evening, not 50 days afterward, and the disciples have still not understood the resurrection, because Jesus must show them the wounds in his hands and his side. They are not a confident group ready to proclaim good news, but a dispirited bunch, in hiding behind locked doors "for fear of the Jews" (John 20:19). Jesus gave his gift of peace to them and "breathed on them" to commission them: "as the Father has sent me, so I send you" (John 20:21).

It's one of those wonderful linguistic coincidences that the word for "breath" in both Hebrew (ruach) and Greek (pneuma) means "spirit" as well as breath. John's use of the word that occurs in Genesis (2:7) when God blew the breath of life into the nostrils of the first human being emphasizes that the gift of the Spirit to the gathered community is a new creation. And the new creation is about life and forgiveness, as the Pentecostal experience is in Acts. Jesus says in John's Gospel: "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. . . ," while Peter, in his first sermon in Acts, quotes the prophet Joel (3:5) to proclaim that "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" (Acts 2:21).

Two very different pictures of the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church at Pentecost confront us in our readings today. But both of them speak the same message of the Spirit's power to triumph over death and sin, and the church's commission to proclaim the Gospel of new life and forgiveness to the world. This mighty Word of God was spoken from the margins of the Roman Empire. We who live at the center of another Empire, in a world of war and greed and arrogance, hear the same message when we allow the Spirit of God's risen Messiah to take control of our lives. Whether it's in a big dramatic event, like the fifteen million people around the world marching against the Empire's war on Iraq, or in a small gathering of people in a more intimate setting planning to liberate their neighborhood, the word we hear, the word we are sent to proclaim, is the Word of life and peace, forgiveness and salvation. A dangerous word, a word of power, the peace of the Crucified and Risen Christ.

The Rev. Emmett Jarrett, TSSF, is a Third Order Franciscan. He lives and works at St. Francis House in New London, Conn. Emmett may be reached by email at stfrancishouse@mindspring.com.
 

Published by The Witness (www.thewitness.org), May 9, 2005.

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