Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." 9 Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. 12 Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.
15 If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17 This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
25 I have said these things to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.
Last week opened with an I statement
“I frickin hate preaching on this passage.”
How about another I statement -
“I don't know what the heck to do with Pentecost.”
I think, in part, that we make a mistake.
We read Pentecost as a Power Event.
We are empowered by the Spirit.
Yet, this is the Gospel we're talking about.
Forgiveness. Love. Not power.
Is it, instead, a learning event?
I know, stated that way it sounds a bit flaccid, but a learning event as in being informed and renewed by a vision of God who is for you, and for you in a particular way, and sends you into the world to be for the world in the same way.
I know that we say that knowledge is power, but. . .
Well, I like the suggestion by Edmund Steimle that the miracle of Pentecost is the hearing. "And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?”
We have a hearing problem at my house.
It resides - most irritatingly and obviously - in my 5 year old.
I will say to him. "Don't do - - - ."
He then does it.
I will then say to him "Did you hear me say, 'Don't do - - - ?'"
"Yes" he will say.
Then why did you do it?
"I don't know."
Come to think of it.
That's not a hearing problem, is it?
hmmmmmm
I digress.
I like the suggestion that the miracle of Pentecost is that one would hear the Good News.
Let me quote from a sermon by Jim Callahan, from the Christian Century, May 2000. I linked to this on textweek.com.
Some call Pentecost the "birthday of the church." I disagree. I sense that the church was born on Good Friday when Jesus, "just hanging around," as Robert Capon stunningly puts it, asked the Father to forgive us, and a few bewildered, broken-hearted women and men wandered off wondering how they were going to live with that. Pentecost was the day they got their answer: with great joy, and with wind and fire and Spirit, making them look like a bunch of happy drunks in the midst of a numbingly sober and sour world. At last they knew that they were God’s -- every last one of them -- and that God was Love, not just in poetic theory but in palpable fact. They learned that in belonging to God they belonged also to each other. The joy derived from their trusting contained power, power not only to gladden but also to heal and redeem.
Here’s a true miracle of the Spirit - that we should believe - that we should hear this Good News - that we should become a part of Jesus' mission of loving the world to the end.
Here’s a true miracle of the Spirit - that we should be forgiven, that we should do greater works than Jesus. How greater? Greater in that the love which Jesus has unleashed, should go to the ends of the earth - borne by disciples who will hear the call to take up their cross and will in their own, halting and half hearted ways, follow this one who gave his life for the world. . .
2 comments:
Thanks for the entry. Here's mine, for what it's worth...
There is something about Pentecost--with all of the forigners that are miraculously able to hear each other in the language of each-- that makes me realize how risky it is to speak(or write a blog entry) in general. I wonder if the main significance of the Pentencost event is that the Holy Spirit enables the people to hear each other, and by "hearing" I think Luke (or whoever wrote Acts) is really getting at "understanding" rather than just hearing-- It's one thing to hear a forign language, it's another to hear it in my own language...to understand it.
Many have noted that the account of this event, what was accomplished by the Spirit, amounts to the reversal of Babel (a coincidence not overlooked by the lectionary gurus). Then God confused the speech of people who were misusing their unity for sinful purposes. Here God enables people, whose different languages separate them, to understand each other praising God which is the proper use of unity.
I tend to agree that Pentecost is sometimes misunderstood as a "power event." It strikes me that the account from the beginning of Acts is not the first time that we have heard about this image of "wind and fire." It was also presented at the beginning of Luke when the same author sites John the Baptist's claims about Jesus, "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. So with many exhortations [John] proclaimed the good news to the people (Luke 3:16-18).
Is not this pentecost event the fulfillment of John's earlier prophesy? I always wondered growing up, how John's exhortaion could be heard as good news. Here we have our answer. The Wind and fire are not so much images of judgement, as they are of purification. This baptism, that we recieve as Christians, is the promise of an encounter with a God that will clear our threshing floors and burn away our chaff. It's not a sheep and goats type of image, for the flame winds up resting on each one present. The flame is a sign or symbol of the refining power of the Holy Spirit. If this is true, it is also a reminder of our need to continually be refined. It is a sign that God has not abandoned us on account of our sin (not that chaff has to be sin--chaff seems more an image of uselessness--the non-fruit part--worthlessnes), but has chosen to rest and work on us, so that we might belong to Christ. That is, as you say, "become a part of Jesus' mission of loving the world to the end."
From: Suburban North Dakota
O Joshua of the suburbs - albeit, sorta unpeopled burbs - your words prompt some thoughts on hearing and understanding of each other. . .
I heard an interview yesterday of K. Costner, talking about Dances With Wolves, and how hard it was to get a production company to back a movie with native speaking and subtitles. For him, that was crucial, for a main point of the movie - to his way of thinking - was that there were so many misunderstandings in the Western frontier that were rooted in the peoples and nations inability to communicate with one another. . .
I think of Paul's marvelous line, that God "reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation."
While some might read this reconciliation as simply between God and the believer - we might tie this reconciliation to the work of the Spirit - allowing us to hear and understand and love one another.
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