GRADUATION DAY

 Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock

[Acts 21:1-12; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13; John 20:19-23]

The 50^th Day.  Just to be clear about this and to re-make the essential point, Easter is not simply about one morning’s unique (albeit, joyful) events.  This is to say that while Easter most certainly is rooted in Christ’s resurrection and the revelation that God’s life and love are stronger than fear and death, this triumphant news is not all there is to our proclamation: “Christ is risen!”  Not by a long shot.  Therefore, in the wisdom of the spiritual and worshipping tradition of the Church, this is the reason that Easter is a season and not simply a singular morning.

Clearly, it takes time for us to absorb the transforming reality of Easter, not to mention practicing all resurrection entails.  So it is, liturgically speaking, that our worship in this season of Easter (what is called “Eastertide”) has involved fifty days of steady immersion into the reality of Jesus and the new life of his resurrection.  So, here we are at the Day of Pentecost: “Pentecost” being a Greek word for “fiftieth”.  As such, today is the 50^th (and last) day of the Easter season.  Tomorrow opens another chapter – another season – in living the God-life.

In a very real sense, the Day of Pentecost marks our “graduation” in the Easter life and mission.  For on this day, we receive our diploma – in the form of the Holy Spirit and in our baptisms.  Today, marks the transition from being Jesus’ disciples (that is, his students) to being the Risen One’s representatives and ambassadors to the world.  As I say, our “diploma” is the gift of the Holy Spirit which enables us to speak for, and stand in for Christ for the sake of the world.  Stunning, don’t you think?  When people look at us, they are meant to see and hear and experience Christ.  How’s that going?

St. Luke reports that when the first day of Pentecost came, the disciples of Jesus were (yet again) in one place – that upper room – when unexpectedly a sound like a run-away train swept over them.  When they looked up from that sound, they saw tongues of fire resting over one another’s heads; and curiously they began to speak in other languages – as the Spirit gave them such ability.

Biblical sidebar: The tongues of fire over the heads of the Apostles is the reason bishops’ vestment hats (their mitres) are the shape they are, Tongues of fire: an indication of the purpose of a bishop’s life and ministry.  Bishops are meant to carry the Apostles’ legacy: that is, of being first-hand witnesses of Christ.  Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

The commotion that the roaring sound and the outbreak of cauterizing fire created drew a crowd to explore what was going on.  That crowd, largely made up of devoted Jews who, having come from all the lands of the Hebrew diaspora, were in Jerusalem for -- “Pentecost”.

The Jewish feast of Pentecost is known as Shavuot [sha-voo-ut], which in Hebrew means "Feast of Weeks".  In its original Hebrew context, “Pentecost” was celebrated 50 days after Passover as an agricultural thanksgiving for the spring wheat harvest.  Yet, later this feast evolved into a commemoration of God giving the Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai.  This is the reason (as St. Luke points out) that there were all these pious Jews in town who sensed that something important (albeit, quite odd) was going on with these Galileans in that upper room.

So, following their sense of curiosity and amazement – not to mention their bewilderment – these Hebrews encountered the disciples speaking the diaspora’s individual languages.  This raised questions, to say the least.  “Are not all these weirdos Galileans?  So how come we hear them speaking in our respective languages?  How is it that they are making sense to us in our individual ways of talking about God’s great deeds of power?  What gives with this?  What does all this mean?”

What it means is that what Jesus has demonstrated with his own life, culminating on the cross and exploding in his resurrection is precisely what God wills for us all to have and to be.  For what God gives is the gift of God’s very own life and nature, given now as the Holy Spirit.  This is to say that the Spirit of God, the Spirit we have known and encountered in Jesus now allows us to carry on what the Lord has begun.    This is Good News.

Spirit.  To an extent, we get spirit.  For instance, we know people who are in good spirits.  A social gathering – at least a good one – is identified by its lively spirit.  There are cheerleaders at sporting events and political gatherings that are in charge of creating a positive and energizing spirit.  So, what about that spirit we identify as “Holy Spirit”?  What about God’s Spirit?  What precisely is that?

Many images and metaphors attempt to answer that question.  The Bible, in particular, speaks of God’s Spirit as being “generative”: that is, God’s Spirit creates and sustains and promotes life on God’s terms.  For instance, how does the Book of Genesis convey God’s Spirit?  In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.  The poetic and profound result is what?  God’s Spirit created ripples over the undefined deep, unleashing the process of creation itself.

It helps to see and sense this Spirit of God in the language we have at hand.  Specifically, it is most telling that the term for “spirit” in both Hebrew and Greek (the main languages of the Bible) requires three English words to capture its significance.  The words are “spirit”, “wind”, and “breath”.

The Spirit of God is that Holy “Wind” that causes the ripples to form over the deep.  God’s “wind” fills all of creation’s sails.

So, too, is the Spirit of God the very “breath” of the Creator, inspiring our lives reviving our lives, resuscitating our lives quite literally with new, restorative life.

So, what is the Holy Spirit?  How shall we know what we are talking about when we employ this familiar appellation?

Personally, on this subject I take helpful clarity from St. Augustine, the 4th century Bishop of Hippo, North Africa, and Western Christianity’s foundational Christian teacher.  Augustine says that the Holy Spirit is “the love the Father has for the Son and the Son for the Father”.  Remembering scripture’s sense of the term, expressing God’s generativity, God’s life-giving nature, Jesus (Emmanuel: God with us) reveals that our Lord would rather die than break Communion with the Father.  The Holy Spirit is (in a fundamental manner of speaking) the “glue” that promotes and holds all life together.

The Spirit of God generates true and eternal life, which means that at the core and reality of life, we find life as relationship (Communion, if you will) with God, with our neighbors, and – yes, with ourselves.  Communion as “Holy Connection”, “Holy Relationship, is the will and gift of God, and such a gift comes from the gift of the Holy Spirit.

That the Spirit is God’s essential and eternal gift to all who yearn for life makes it patently clear that our response to this gift is to ground ourselves in the rich soil of gratitude.  Our lives, bound by the Spirit of God, are meant to be a living “thank you” to the Source of all that is.  Or as we say in the Communion liturgy, “all things come of Thee, O Lord; and of Thine own have we given Thee.”

What this means is that our lives are meant to reflect God’s life; and in human terms, Jesus reveals what that life looks.  We are meant, therefore, to live fruitful lives, as the Spirit provides for.

This is one of St. Paul’s great insights to the followers of Jesus, teaching that there are many fruitful, individual expressions of the Spirit’s gifts, just as there are many instruments in an orchestra.  Yet, the music we play and the beauty our expression conveys all stems from the same Source.  The Spirit of God is both the conductor and the composer.

All followers of Jesus have gifts of the Spirit.  In the Greek, the word for “gift” is “charism”, which means in a very real sense, that we are all “charismatic” Christians.  We are all gifted spiritually by God.  In our distinctive Spiritual gifts (charisms), we all have the same purpose.  The writer of the “Letter to the Ephesians” expresses our common purpose this way: “to equip the saints for the work of ministry and to build up the Body of Christ”.[1]

“All things come of Thee, O Lord; and of Thine own have we given Thee.”

There are no “professional Christians” just followers of Jesus like you and me who have distinct and varied gifts (skills), by which the world may see, know, and receive the love and life of God.  What more does this anxious and fragmented world need more than what God alone gives?

So, today is the Day of Pentecost, and in the sense of our relationship with the Holy One and the Christ, it is our graduation day.  With our diploma in hand, with the gift of the Spirit infused into our lives, what will each of us do as we cross over the threshold from being students and to representatives?

As every student realizes (in some form or fashion) graduation is the time to go to work!  And every graduate of the Holy Spirit knows that there is no unemployment in God’s kingdom – right?

Thanks be to God.  So, let’s continue to go to work – together.  Amen.

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[1] Ephesians 12:4.