Church of the Incarnation

It was the festival of Pentecost, also known as the Feast of Weeks. This was one of three annual pilgrim festivals, so every Jewish male who was able had traveled to Jerusalem to worship in the Temple. It was fifty days after the Passover, and the wheat was just starting to be harvested. Each man brought two loaves of bread made with fresh wheat and leaven as an offering to God of the firstfruits of the harvest. The people recognized that the earth's bounty was a gift from God, and they were thankful.

So they came from every nation under heaven to make their offerings at the Temple. Some came by camel train, some by donkey, and some on foot. Dry desert sand and rich valley soil clung to their sandals and stained their robes. They dressed differently, had different customs, and even spoke different languages, but they gathered in common worship.

And they remembered the first Pentecost, fifty days after the first Passover. God had delivered their ancestors from slavery in Egypt and delivered them from Pharaoh's wrath by parting the Red Sea before them so they could walk through to safety as Pharaoh's chariots were swallowed by the foaming waves. But desert life proved difficult, and the people grumbled their despair and forgot God's loving-kindness. They made themselves an idol and danced wildly before it, looking for a god to love them. But even as the people fumbled after false gods, the true God loved them. He offered a New Covenant: if they would but cleave to him, he would make them a priestly kingdom and a holy nation, God's treasured possession out of all people. Then God summoned Moses onto Mount Sinai. And God appeared to all the people in a blazing fire, the smoke of which covered the mountain and the heat of which shook the mountain. The people saw the fire and knew that God was with them. And out of that fire God spoke the law to Moses, the ten commandments which God knew his people couldn't keep. But God gave the law as a measuring stick to show the people how short they fell so they would always return to him, aware they could never earn salvation on their own. So in the fire at Sinai, the people were bound to one another as God's chosen nation and they were bound to God.

This was what drew the pilgrims to Jerusalem that day: the opportunity to renew once again the covenant their ancestors made with God and one another at Sinai. Devout Jews from every nation under heaven filled the Temple with the cacophony of their worship, each intoning the prayers in his own way.

And suddenly, as they recalled God's presence in the fire on Sinai, the Temple shook with a mighty wind and they saw God's presence in tongues of flame. But this time, God's presence alit on each of the disciples rather than on Moses alone. And as it did, it empowered the disciples to communicate with all people the love of God for them. Soon everyone in Jerusalem, Jews and gentiles alike, became aware of God's spirit in the disciples. And they asked to be baptized so that they, too, could receive the spirit.

In Baptism, we each received this same spirit. But the Holy Spirit isn't some scary shade that possesses us, demon-like, causing us to shout out nonsense as though we have Turrets. The Holy Spirit is our advocate, like a guardian-ad-litem who helps us communicate with God. And when we don't have the words to express our prayers to God, the Spirit "intercedes with sighs too deep for words."1

The Holy Spirit is the breath that swept over the waters of chaos at Creation, stirring God's power and sparking God's imagination. The Holy Spirit is the breath that filled Adam, changing him from dust to a human, and the Spirit fills us as our breath does, enlivening us and empowering us. The Holy Spirit is the heartbeat before our heartbeat, the thought before our thoughts, and the love before our love. The Holy Spirit is God with us, God in us, and God uniting us.

In one sense, it is foolishness to talk of receiving the Holy Spirit, since the Spirit is part of us before we are us. But it's all too easy to lose sight of the Spirit's presence, and Pentecost is about renewing our awareness of God with us, acting in and through us.

So my prayer is for an awareness of the Spirit in me, and for the ability to hear and respond to the Spirit as the people did on that first Pentecost. My prayer is that the Spirit would renew my covenant with God and my covenant with God's people.

Of course, we've already prayed that prayer together today. It was in the words of our gradual hymn, hymn 516. Let's sing it again, but this time let's sing it as a prayer.

Come down, O Love divine,
seek thou this soul of mine,
and visit it with thine own ardor glowing;
O Comforter, draw near,
within my heart appear,
and kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.

O let it freely burn,
till earthly passions turn
to dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
and let thy glorious light
shine ever on my sight,
and clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

And so the yearning strong,
with which the soul will long,
shall far outpass the power of human telling;
for none can guess its grace,
till Love create a place
wherein the Holy Spirit makes a dwelling.

Amen.

References:

1. Romans 8:26.