Readings (Acts, 1 Corinthians, John 20)

The Spirit has arrived. Alleluia? Alleluia!

Let’s start with the simplest. Pentecost, like all our major feasts, celebrate God keeping God’s promises. Jesus promised the Spirit; the Spirit arrived. Living, as our Bishop reminded us last week, in the inbetween, that God keeps God’s promises is something to remember. In a typical week it’s something I need to remember multiple times.

We heard today’s Gospel reading also on the second Sunday of Easter. The part relevant to today’s feast comes towards the end: “Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’”

“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” That, in passing, is the basis for the Absolution that follows the Confession. The bishop—or priest under the bishop’s authority—isn’t improvising, but doing what Jesus has authorized.

OK, so how will Peter use this power on—say—the Day of Pentecost? Recall Luke’s earlier story: Jesus and the disciples are headed to Jerusalem, and a village refuses to receive them. “When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, ‘Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?’” (Lk 9:54) That’s for refusing a night’s hospitality; what when Jesus is arrested, tortured, and executed?

We heard the beginning of Peter’s sermon in today’s reading; we heard the rest of it in the second through fourth Sundays of Easter. Right after that lengthy quote from Joel, “Jesus of Nazareth…you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up.” The crowd asks “what should we do?” And how does Peter answer? “Do? You’re toast. Remember John the Baptist? ‘The chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire’” (Matt. 3:12).

The Spirit has arrived. The Spirit has given Peter the freedom not to default to “eye for eye.” But how to respond is in Peter’s hands. And thank God he remembers the “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” part. And how did the Father send Jesus? With “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44). So Peter offers forgiveness to everyone present. So for that reason the Day of Pentecost is a day of celebration rather than a day of mourning.

Where does that leave us? There’s a necessary role for confrontation in our playbook, what John Lewis called “good trouble.” Peter names what has happened. But it’s subordinate to the primary message, that God desires the prosperity of those who are currently our enemies. This is the “gentleness and reverence” we heard Peter talking about in his letter two Sundays ago. On the other hand, Peter’s sermon is the definitive “no” to our recurrent temptation to weaponize the Spirit’s coming. God’s with us, and therefore against our enemies. Christian nationalism as practiced in Russia and this country come to mind, the voices that shout “I have no need of you.” But the clarity with which I see these specks in my brothers’ eyes does give me pause. Surely there are no logs in mine…

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians gives us a second look at how we respond to the Spirit’s arrival. Corinth was a proverbially competitive place, and from Paul’s letter it’s clear that some of the Corinthians have taken the Spirit’s arrival as another opportunity for one-upmanship. There are different gifts; some must be more important than others; if my gift is more important then I’m more important. So, later in the chapter: “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’” (v.21). So Paul encourages them—pleads with them—to understand themselves as a body in which the different gifts are given for “the common good.”

The frightening thing about using the Spirit’s gifts for the one-upmanship game is that it probably didn’t involve any conscious decision. If I’ve got something that I can use as an advantage, I use it.

This is where God’s love for us, love for our freedom is—depending on your mood—overwhelming or frightening. God gives us gifts. God doesn’t control how we use those gifts.

Last Sunday our Bishop spoke of prayer as paying attention. So if Paul tells us to pray without ceasing (1 Th 5:17), perhaps we need to pay attention without ceasing. The Spirit has arrived. (Alleluia? Alleluia!) The Spirit gives us freedom. The Spirit doesn’t—typically—mess with our default settings, our habits, our ingrained patterns of behavior. That’s our work. The Spirit has given me this gift, this moment, this opportunity: how am I going to use it?