Readings (Acts, 1 Corinthians, John 20)

“You send forth your Spirit, and they are created; / and so you renew the face of the earth.” That line from today’s psalm isn’t a bad summary of what we’re celebrating today. The same Spirit that hovered over the chaotic waters in creation is now at work in re-creation, in renewal.

One of the things I appreciate about our tradition is that at the major feasts the liturgy itself does the heavy lifting. The sermon has more the character of the program notes that accompany concerts at the Overture Center. So, some program notes, and then back to the celebration!

In a Bible that opens with two accounts of creation, Genesis 1 with its majestic six days crowned by the Sabbath, Genesis 2 with the creation of the earth creature and—finally—the creation of an authentic counterpart, perhaps it’s no surprise that there are two accounts of the Spirit’s arrival. Acts is the familiar one; our reading from John’s Gospel gives us the other, with John’s version of the Great Commission included. As in Genesis there’s no point in trying to harmonize the two, but there’s plenty to learn from both.

“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.’”

It’s a single action, beginning with “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” We’ll hear Matthew’s version of the Great Commission next Sunday (“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…”). Sadly it’s too often been hijacked in support imperial projects. John’s version reduces that danger: “as the Father has sent me,” that is, without coercion or violence, vulnerable.

That approach to mission is hard to sustain, so just as the Spirit comes on Jesus at his baptism, so Jesus breathes on the disciples: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” As many readers have noted, it recalls the creation scene back in Genesis 2: the Lord God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gen 2:7). As other New Testament writers recognized, it’s a new creation (2 Cor 5:17).

“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” That verse, as you might imagine, has occasioned heated debates: basis of sacrament of reconciliation or (more broadly) the proclamation of forgiveness? Perhaps it’s there to underscore that whether the hearers accept or reject the disciples’ message really matters.[1]

John’s “Pentecost” occurs in a locked room; Luke’s—recorded in Acts—spills out into Jerusalem’s streets. Among the many things we might notice: the Spirit’s translation strategy. The multinational crowd doesn’t hear and understand Peter’s Aramaic. “Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, etc.… in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” That’s another way “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” plays out: Jesus speaks our language; Peter’s audience hears in their own languages. As the Gospel spreads to and past the edges of the Empire that frequently means that the missioner’s first task is to learn their hosts’ language.

And it’s not simply a matter of language in any narrow sense, but of the concepts, the ways of seeing the world. We heard the beginning of Peter’s speech in our first reading. It goes on for some length and ends with “Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” How do we translate that for our time and place? While the continuity is crucial (“one holy catholic and apostolic church”) every time we cross cultures—if we do it right—it’s also a new creation. Do we always do it right? Of course not, so it’s a good thing that the Spirit that brooded over the chaotic waters isn’t easily scared off.

What might be the take-aways from these readings? Let me suggest three, and then back to the celebration.

First, it’s obviously not Jesus leaving, and leaving us to sort things out. The Spirit arrives, and, as Jesus does, takes the lead. As more than one commentator has suggested, the title “Acts of the Apostles” is a misnomer. Better: “Acts of the Holy Spirit—with the Apostles playing catchup.” We’re usually playing catchup. So discernment is always the first priority. What is the Spirit doing? How do we align with that, not get in the way of that? That pretty much organizes Peter’s sermon at Pentecost as he seeks to discern in light of Scripture what the Spirit’s doing now.

Second, not only two creation stories, two accounts of the giving of the Spirit. Four Gospels! Some years at Pentecost we hear the story of the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel. It’s often said that Pentecost is the reversal of that. That’s true in a way: mutual understanding in place of confusion. But it’s equally true that Pentecost is the Amen to the Tower: The profound difference between Creator and creation demands multiple languages.

And that runs parallel to Paul’s discussion of the Spirit’s gifts in our reading from Corinthians. We need those different gifts not only to address the different needs within the body (the congregation) but equally as windows on the mystery that is God. (And Paul’s listing of gifts is by no means exhaustive.)

Paul’s vision is that every congregation is an ongoing experience of Pentecost, the Spirit speaking to us, molding us, through the particular gifts the Spirit has given each of us. That can be exhilarating. That can be scarry. Had we extended that Corinthians reading we would have heard Paul dealing with the ways we deal with that fear: “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). We do that too often. The other person may well have drawn the wrong conclusion, but they are probably also seeing or feeing something the Spirit wants us to pay more attention to.

Third, many different languages, many different gifts. If we’re doing it right, it’s periodically just about to all fly apart. But it’s God’s project, not ours. It’s not for us to pull back on the throttle. Jesus elsewhere in John: “You did not choose me but I chose you” (Joh 15:16). God’s project, driven by love, God’s love for us and that love for one another Jesus commands.

Or, returning to Paul, at the end of our long chapter focusing on the Spirit’s gifts, speaking to an audience overly concerned about which gifts are the Most Important, Paul pivots:

“And I will show you a still more excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.… And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 12:31; 13:1, 13).

It’s love that keeps us listening to each other, trying to understand, even when it’s uncomfortable. Love isn’t the frosting on the cake. It’s what holds the whole thing together so that the Spirit can teach us both what we want to know and what we’d rather not know. It’s either that or what Paul describes at the beginning of the letter: “each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or I belong to Christ’” (1Co 1:12).

Love “hopes all things” (1Co 13:7), so God sends the Spirit, hopes that we’ll continue to discern, to accept the Spirit’s leading through each other’s diverse gifts and perspectives, to let our love hold it together even when we understand far less than we’d like. Nothing less than the face of the earth needs renewing, in which our God calls us to joyfully participate. Amen.

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[1] Cf. R. Brown, John XIII-XXI pp.1042-104.