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Pentecost.....
May I speak in the name and to the glory of God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
You may remember the instructions given to the disciples when Jesus ascended, he said: "You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but wait in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high." Then he .... parted from them, and was carried up into heaven. And they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple worshipping God.
For once, even Peter was patient. At the feast of Pentecost, also known as Shavuoth, they gathered in prayer. This Jewish feast is celebrated seven weeks after the Passover, today is seven weeks since Easter! It began as a feast celebrating the barley harvest and became a feast to celebrate the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, a dairy meal is eaten, symbolic of milk and honey.
This festival is first spoken of in Exodus as "the feast of harvest," and as "the day of the first- fruits". The instructions on how to keep the observance is described in Leviticus and Numbers. Besides the sacrifices prescribed for the occasion, everyone was to bring to the Lord his "free-will offering". The distinguishing feature of the feast was the offering of "two leavened loaves" made from the new corn of the completed harvest, which, with two lambs, were waved before the Lord as a thank offering. It's the only festival at which leavened bread is used, this is extremely unusual.
So what more appropriate day to begin new life in the long awaited promised land, the spiritual land of milk and honey, which our Saviour brought. The day on which the Spirit descended upon the apostles, and on which, under Peter's preaching, so many thousands were converted in Jerusalem. The celebration of the first-fruits which Christ had gathered in, making of themselves a free-will offering and in turn receiving the leaven of the Holy Spirit.
The disciples had sufficient faith to wait in the city as Jesus had told them to, they met together in expectancy, fear, excitement,
and then the Holy Spirit visited them, just as Jesus had promised.
The One we meet in Genesis - God's Spirit moving across the face of the waters before creation, and then throughout the Hebrew scriptures.
The prophet Nehemiah says of God and the Israelites "you gave them your good Spirit to instruct them".
Isaiah spoke, to the Hebrews of his day, about their ancestors, saying "but they rebelled and vexed his holy Spirit".
When the tabernacle of the Lord was being designed and built in the desert God filled the designer "with the spirit of God in wisdom, knowledge and skill in every kind of craft: in designing and carrying out work in gold and silver and bronze";
When Moses was struggling with the responsibility of leading Israel God said "I shall come down and talk to you there and shall take some of the spirit which is on you and put it on" the elders.
The Holy Spirit was known in Jewish religion and culture as creator, judge, inspiration and enabler - but only in very specific circumstances and people - He didn't come to everyone.
However, as we study him further we find the Holy Spirit is the one who has always been the secret presence of God within the Creation:
a source of life within the chaos, bringing into form and order what was at first shapeless and barren, and also the voice of truth in the hearts of all rational beings.
So he is called the life-giving spirit - being, as it were, the soul of the universe, the strength of all created things, the guide of faith, the witness against sin, the inward light of the patriarchs and prophets, the permanent gracewithin the Christian soul, and the Lord and ruler of the Church.
Looking at the Hebrew's experience, and that of the early church - everything was thrown into the melting-pot.
The spirit hovered over the waters just before creation began,
Moses didn't know where to turn, but the situation was redirected through the Spirit of God.
The disciples had been through an amazing fifty days - first the events of Easter, then the appearances of Jesus, then His departure, in a rather spectacular fashion -
They must have felt very bewildered.
We so often find ourselves in circumstances which we feel are beyond our ability or control - we often live in fear of one kind or another, work or family problems or meeting strangers.
As our lives mature so we meet all kinds of newexperiences which can make us feel alone and inadequate.
The very circumstances that the disciples found themselves in. We can either try and run from them or, like the disciples we can face them head on and allow the Holy Spirit to flower and give us strength.
This is the key - we all have the Holy Spirit within us because we are God's creation, but as fire won't burn if it's smothered so the Holy Spirit will be unable to flourish effectively if we suppress his work, and we won't receive the benefits of his presence in full.
It takes a great deal of courage not to smother Him, because, by allowing Him to work we open ourselves up, not just to comfort in time of trouble, but to change in our lives which is notnecessarily comfortable - we become human torches which are very lovely, but also dangerous to our complacency.
Holiness is unfashionable in the modern world. We think of it as a negative term today, preferring "wholeness" or "fulfilment".
Wait in the city, wait is the key word, in our world one is only considered to be working or successful when one is busy or active, forever doing something - there's very little space in our lives to wait, to be still, if we're held up for any reason we grow impatient. BUT if we're to hear the still small voice of God we need to be quiet, we need to wait. This is very uncomfortable for most of us - because in silence we're confronted with all the thoughts which scurry around in our brain - we're brought face to face with ourselves as we really are - and that can be disconcerting. If we're patient however, we hear through all this babel God's healing voice and we begin to find a way through the mine-field of our own egos.
The Church is cursed with activity. We're always doing and seldom considering, acting in haste and then trying to find a good theological reason for having acted, otherwise called, repenting at leisure.
In the early Church the question was "How can my life bring glory to God?"
We have a duty to know about our Faith, and to develop a prayerful, thoughtful relationship with God. Attending to our spiritual life through the week and not just for an hour or so on Sundays. Nurturing God's gift within us.
The key to the disciples success was that, despite their anxiety, they waited, they opened themselves to the working of the Holy Spirit, as free-will offerings, the first-fruits of God's renewed creation. No longer the unleavened bread of the Passover but the leavened bread of Pentecost.
Come Holy Spirit, and kindle in us the fire of your love.
May the Spirit empower each one of you to ever greater depths of love and service to Our Lord.
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