May 31, 2009

John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Pentecost Sunday

Becoming Conscious of God’s Presence

            Pentecost was a festival of the Jewish religion before the Christian church took it over. Pentecost is the 50th day after Passover and is the celebration of the harvest of wheat by a day-long indulgence of bread and wine. At daybreak the horns would sound and a priest would wave the bread in his hands and the festival would begin. And by early morning it was not unusual for some to be intoxicated for they would be very grateful, let’s say, for the harvest and celebrate too much with the wine. Laughter and celebration with family and friends would be going on everywhere in the city.

 However, for these 120 followers of Jesus there was nothing to celebrate – they were sad and lost. Only seven weeks had passed since the horrible killing of their Messiah and his shocking resurrection. And for 40 days they had occasionally experienced his presence with them until his ascension. But these poor folks still did not have an understanding of God’s purpose for them. Jesus had chosen and called them for what? For such a brief time Jesus had taught them and led them and entrusted them with his treasure of God’s revelation through him, but now what? They were lost and rudderless.  Is this all there is?

 It is a good thing they had some “stickability” and were there for each other.  What would the future have been if they had scattered individually to wherever they had come from. I tell you what it would be. We today would not know God’s revelation of Himself; we would not know that our Creator is a God of love; we would not know God’s plan for us, His children; we would not know we are recipients of His grace; and we would not know of our eternal future with God.

 Jesus told them to stay put and he would send the Advocate to them - and they did. They still trusted in him even after all the tragic events. Jesus told them it would be better for them if he would leave for then a power from God would come and be with each of them – along side and within.  The Gospel of John is the only place in scripture that calls the Holy Spirit, the Advocate. The Greek word here that John uses is “Paraclete” that is a legal-type term meaning, “One called to the side of another for assistance.”  The “Paraclete” would guide them in all truth and would continue the revelation of God begun by Jesus. 

 On the Day of Pentecost the disciples became conscious of the presence of God, and they would continue to grow in the likeness of Jesus. No longer were they dazed and confused. They knew they were part of God’s plan for salvation. They were empowered to speak openly and forthrightly about the revelation of God in Jesus Christ and to live confidently in God’s grace and forgiveness.  Peter spoke eloquently of God’s plan on that first Pentecost Sunday. What could have possessed him to speak so powerfully? Stephen soon died for this faith; Philip preached the gospel to the hated Samaritans; James, the brother of Jesus, became the leader of the new church in Jerusalem; and John healed a man who could not walk. The world would never be the same again.  Jesus could not do all this work by himself. His voice and actions had to be multiplied hundreds, thousands, and millions of times. The church would be more than one person now; it would be made up of the Children of God.  Although the beginnings of the church were in doubt for a while, the church would now exist until the end of time.

 We stand nearly 2000 years later in a long line of God’s children who are recipients of the Advocate’s presence, and it is we who bring the living Christ to our communities and the world. There has always been just one ministry – that of Jesus Christ. You and I are apostles, which means that we are the ones sent – we now bring God’s mercy and forgiveness to others. We are responsible, as the first disciples were responsible, to do the love of God where we live and work and play. It is not of our own power; it is from the power of the Advocate who is with us and within us.

 It is because of our baptisms, it is because of the Apostles who taught us, it is because of our faith that we know of God’s presence with us. But it is by doing God’s love and will in our lives that we become conscious of His presence. And being conscious of the Advocate of the Living Christ, we are empowered by his presence within us to do his love and will.

 The church is good about getting the nature of God right; it does a  pretty good job about who Jesus is and how he reveals God to us; but there is a great deal of confusion about what the Holy Spirit is about and how it is related to God and His Son.  I read in my study this week that “God wants spiritual fruit, not religious nuts.” The work of the Advocate seems to produce some strange proponents of the faith. Because Jesus promises us that there will continue to be revelations through the Advocate, Christian history is rife with tragic events and “new” practices that have taken the church down some awful roads because of someone’s understanding of “things to come” believed told to them by the Advocate.

 These “things” result from cherry-picking scripture. Jesus tells his disciples that the Advocate “will not speak on his own.” Nothing that the Advocate reveals can be different than what has already been revealed of God through Jesus, His Son. There is a unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Advocate is not something other than the Living Christ. Jesus may not be present physically today, but he is present to us through God’s Spirit. Any and all things revealed by the Advocate must be tested by the love of God revealed through His Son. If our love is not increased by a new understanding, be sure it is not of God. Our test is spelled out clearly in 1 John 4 that says, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”

 The church is not a club. It is not an organization that simply puts on programs for its families. It is not a place where we come to do our duty to God. It is the place where we come together to experience the presence of the Holy Spirit among us. God is then able to produce from us together much more empowerment of his love than could be produced by just me and you separately. We come to be shaken together by the power of God’s Spirit so that He can do His mighty works through us …if we just let him.