"Come, Holy Spirit!" **sermon for Pentecost, 8 June 2025, Year C**

 

"Pater noster, qui es in caelis,

sanctificetur nomen tuum.

Adveniat regnum tuum,

fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra.

 

          Who could understand what I said?  (No offense, John, you have an unfair advantage).  Anyone else besides John?  Perhaps the cadence gave it away.  I was praying part of the Lord’s Prayer in Latin!  Very fitting on this day of Pentecost.  Today we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birthday of the Church.

          Pentecost tells us that 50 days have passed Easter.  That is how we get the name, Pentecost.  Pente fifty.  Cost days.  The festival of Pentecost (or weeks) has its roots in the Jewish tradition.  Pentecost is one of the three high holy days of obligation, along with Passover and The Festival of Booths.  The festival explains the diverse audience.

In the book of Deuteronomy, we read:

“Starting from the day you put the sickle to the ripe grain, count out seven weeks.  Celebrate the Feast-of-Weeks to God, your God, by bringing your Freewill-Offering—give as generously as God, your God, has blessed you.  Rejoice in the Presence of God, your God: you, your son, your daughter, your servant, your maid, the Levite who lives in your neighborhood, the foreigner, the orphan and widow among you; rejoice at the place God, your God, will set aside to be worshiped”.  (16:9-11; MSG)

          The first Pentecost finds Jesus’ friends upstairs.  Probably in the same room where they celebrated a final meal with Jesus.  Where they encountered the Risen Jesus twice.  Closed windows and locked doors could not keep Christ out.  Nor can they keep out God’s Holy Spirit.  The Spirit is made known to the disciples with wind and flame.

          Suddenly, Jesus’ friends are made bold and brave.  They loudly proclaim the good news of God’s radical, inclusive love for all in Jesus.  Even in languages they do not know!  The good news is shared for people of every tribe, language, people, and nation to hear and believe.  Three thousand are united with Jesus in baptism that day!

          Their powerful witness is just one of the “even greater works” that Jesus’ first disciples will do (John 14:12).  We’ve seen other acts during Easter as Peter and Paul continue Jesus’ ministry.  Eventually leading both to Rome.  Philip shares Jesus with a court official from Ethiopia.  That official is baptized and then returns to Africa with the good news.

          What about you and me?  How do you and I share the love of God in both word and actions?  We live in the age where the Holy Spirit has already come.  You and I do not have to wait here in this room.  God’s Holy Spirit strengthens and fills us here and now.  Building on John 14, scholar Eugene C. Bay shares these words of encouragement:

          The intent of John 14 is to form a community of believing and obedient people, a community that is confident in the disclosure of God that has come in the person of Jesus and that depends on the leadership of the Spirit of truth to keep it obedient and productive in its life.  The community intended by the text will not be satisfied with bowling leagues, sewing circles, and yoga classes, or even with therapy sessions or Bible study classes, but will be led to do “works” similar to those of Jesus: befriending the outcasts, healing the sick, speaking up for the marginalized, housing the homeless, feeding the hungry, and speaking truth to and about the empire.”

Bay continues: “Because the community remembers, because it is helped by the Spirit to “know” its Lord, because it is obedient to Jesus’ commands, because it is doing his works, and because of the presence and power of the Spirit in its life, it will be a non anxious presence in an anxious, fearful age; it will have the peace the world cannot give (v. 27) or take away.”[1]

          May you and I go forth this week “to love and serve the Lord with gladness and singleness of heart” (BCP, 365).


[1] Eugene C. Bay in Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 3: Pentecost and Season after Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16) by David L. Bartlett, Barbara Brown Taylor.

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