Pentecost (May 19, 2024)

O God, who have taught the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit, grant that in the same Spirit we may be truly wise and ever rejoice in his consolation. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Let’s do a Bible review. “In the beginning…”

“God created the heavens and the earth.” And the Spirit of God, hovered over the waters. in the Ancient Near East, the waters were used as a symbol of chaos. But in the first chapter of Genesis, the sublime creation poem the Spirit of God hovers over the water and, out of their chaos, orders the world so that at the end, God can step back and say it was very good.

Fast forward a few chapters of Genesis and we have the Tower of Babel: humankind gathered to build a tower to the heavens, a temple in which they could worship the sun, moon, and stars instead of the Creator of the sun, moon, and stars. And so what does God do? He confuses the language and the people scatter over the face of the earth: chaos. But in the very next chapter, out of that chaos, he calls Abraham: “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” Out of the chaos and disintegration of Babel, God calls Abraham from which comes not only the Chosen People of Israel, but also our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

When Acts 2 opens, there is a kind of chaos. Jesus’ ministry is complete and he has ascended into heaven. The Church is at a crossroads: what should they do now? Before he left, Jesus promises that another would come after him who would guide the Church and empower them and he told them to wait in Jerusalem. But nothing has happened yet. But then we hear a rush of wind and tongues of fire alight on the heads of the Apostles. It’s the Jewish feast of Pentecost, a feast for which many from other regions would have made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. All the sudden, they can hear the Gospel being preached to them in their own languages. And it’s not like the Disciples were linguistic scholars; these were poorly educated fishermen. Through the use of other languages, God brings order out of the chaos; he undoes what happened at Babel because membership in the Church is not based on one’s ethnicity, language, geographical proximity, or any other external markers.

Fast forward to today. In American Christianity, the Holy Ghost is often overlooked or improperly related to. Some ignore him altogether while others equate him with emotional highs and loud worship services. I would argue this is largely because many in the American churches have a poor theology of what it means to be the Church.

The Feast of Pentecost is a timely Feast in this regard because it is so instructive for us. In the descent of the Holy Ghost, we see what the Church is. To put it in theological terms, our ecclesiology is our pneumatology and our pneumatology is our ecclesiology. In other words, our understanding of the Church is intricately connected to our understanding of the Holy Ghost and our theology of the Holy Ghost directly informs to our theology of the Church. We don’t have one without the other. And what this means is that we are in just as much need of the Holy Spirit today as the Apostles were some 2,000 years ago. We might underplay that need by saying “Well the Apostles needed the Holy Ghost to speak in tongues, to perform miracles, to write Scripture, and all the other things that were unique to their vocation.” And it’s true, they did the Holy Spirit to accomplish those things; but you and I are called to be followers of Jesus and we can’t do it without the Holy Spirit either. And fortunately for us, the Holy Spirit endures with his Church, even today. There are three dimensions by which we can say the Spirit dwells in the Church.

The first dimension is personal. It is the Holy Ghost who makes us partakers of Christ by making us alive, dwelling in us, pushing us towards holiness, empowering us to do what we are called to do, and assuring us that we are God’s children. When we performa baptism, the Prayer Book makes it clear that we are baptizing the child with water and the Holy Ghost, a reference to John 3:5 where Jesus tells Nicodemus that to be born again, one must be born of water and the Spirit, speaking clearly about Baptism. We pray over the child: “Give thy Holy Spirit to this Child, that he may be born again, and be made an heir of everlasting salvation.” All of us who have been baptized have received the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The second dimension by which the Spirit acts in the Church is in our mission. Fruitfulness of the Church means growth, it means that we go out into the world bearing Christ and, by God’s grace, bring people into the Church. In Acts 2, we see the Holy Spirit empowering the Apostles to overcame the language barriers that prevented people from understanding the Gospel. Throughout the history of the Church, there are stories of missionary saints who were empowered by the Holy Spirit to transverse these linguistic barriers so that unreached people could hear about Jesus. While many of us may not be called to go overseas to be missionaries, we are still called to participate in the Church’s mission: we do this with our families, our friends, at our jobs, sitting in traffic, at the store. The world is our mission field. But if we try to evangelize of our own power without the power of the Holy Ghost, we’re just a personality cult. Our job is to follow his promptings and his lead and let him be the one who works through us.

The third dimension of the Spirit’s relationship with the Church is through governance. On Low Sunday, we read the story in John 20 where Jesus breathed the Spirit on his Apostles and gave them the authority to forgive and retain sins. The Spirit remains on the Apostolic Office: when a Bishop is consecrated, we sing the “Come, Holy Ghost” and, at the laying on of hands, it is said, “Receive the Holy Ghost for the Office and Work of a Bishop in the Church of God.” It is through the visible ministry of Bishops, and by extension, Priests and Deacons who help administer the Sacraments and preach the Gospel, that we know the Spirit dwells in his Church. Even when the men chosen for these offices are woefully insufficient, the Spirit can work through them. But the gift of the Spirit for the governance of the Church is not limited to clergy. Last week, we got to see 14 confirmations. Confirmation has been called the Ordination of the Laity: “Strengthen them ,we beseech thee, O Lord, with the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, and daily increase in them thy manifold gifts of grace.” Every Christian has been given spiritual gifts for the mutual edification of the Church. The Church can’t be what it is without you and your particular set of gifts that enrich our common life. And I should say, if you’re ever curious about what spiritual gifts you have, please come talk to me. We have a spiritual gifts inventory that you can take that might help you find out where the Spirit is prompting you to serve or contribute to our common life.

So we see that the Holy Spirit remains with us today. He remains with us personally, inwardly directing us. He remains with us missionally, empowering us to bring the Gospel to the world. He remains with us corporately in the Sacramental and hierarchical organization of the Church and in our corporate life through spiritual gifts.

Now we should draw our attention to one of the prayers we pray in the Daily Office: “O Lord, show thy mercy upon us. And grant us thy salvation. O God, make clean our hearts with us. And take not thy Holy Spirit from us.” In the Old Testament, we see the horrifying story of King Saul who was chosen by God as King but, because of his disobedience, God removed his Spirit from him. This is a warning for us. The nineteenth-century Anglican Priest John Keble cautions us: “a man’s inward house cannot remain empty; and if Christ be not dwelling there by His Spirit, we know who is on the watch to enter in.” We must be prepared to receive the Holy Spirit more and more because one thing is true: God gives us what we want. If we reject the gift of the Spirit, we can quench him as our souls become ossified by sin. But we become prepared when we mimic the Apostles who, after Christ ascended, set their hearts on him. They were prepared for the Holy Spirit because they continued to gather together with one accord.

The question that confronts us on Pentecost is whether we are participating with the Holy Spirit in our lives or if we’re resisting him. Like every gift, the Holy Spirit must be received.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.