Pentecost B

Image: "Pentecost" by Lawrence OP

May 19, 2024

May 23, 2021

Romans 8:22-27, Casey Wait

116: May 24, 2015

One: O Holy One, how amazing are your works
Many: In wisdom, you made them all.
One: The earth is full of your creatures
Many: The sea, great and wide, living things both small and great.
One: These all look to you to give them their food in due season;
Many: When you send forth your spirit, they have life;
One: Let us sing to the Holy One as long as we have breath;
Many: Sing praise to our God while we have being.
One: O Holy One, how amazing are your works
Many: In wisdom, you made them all.

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

Initial Thoughts

  • Lectionary cuts out v 1-3, which is about the coming persecution of the Church. This seems to change the meaning of the passage. 

Bible Study

  • Advocate or Companion?

    • NRSV = Advocate

      • Illuminates the trial metaphor, and seems to work better with testify language in the rest of the passage. The Advocate is the one who testifies on behalf of.

      • Later, it says that the Spirit will “prove”

    • CEB = Companion

      • Illuminates the idea that the disciples will not be left alone. A companion is literally “one with whom to break bread.” com=with. pan=bread. This seems to fit more with the pastoral claim that the disciples (and thus the John community) will not be left alone despite their apparent ‘aloneness.’ 

      • Later, is says that the Spirit will “show”

    • The choice to focus on Advocate, one who testifies on behalf of someone in the time of trial; or Companion, the one who walks with you through all of life, could inform the rest of the sermon. Lifting up both of these aspects and revealing how neither explanation of the Spirit is complete, could be powerful too.

  • As always John is working on two levels. Jesus is speaking to:

    • His disciples. 

    • A persecuted faith community

      • Deleted part of the passage refers to the struggle that is to come to the John community. All dichotomous language in John needs to be read through this lens, but the lectionary removes it.

  • What is the Spirit to do?

    • Fill the void of the soon-to-be Jesus (or long absent Jesus when heard from the perspective of the John community - or us)

    • Testify to the truth of Jesus

    • Testify to the wrong-ness of the world about

      • Sin because they don’t believe in me.

        • Sin connected to belief. Belief in the right relationship between Jesus and God is a key component of belonging to the John community.

        • More than belief, but faith. Faith is a radical trust in the relationship between Jesus and the Father. Faith is an orientation of life, not just a casual nod to a set of facts.

        • Jesus reminds us that our lives, our worth, our value is defined by God’s love and not by our sin. God meets our sin with amazing grace

      • Righteousness because I’m going to the Father and you won’t see me anymore.

        • Jesus ascent with the Father is further proof of his relationship.

        • Righteousness is not found in the palaces of Rome, but in the love one has for God and for one another - “to lay down one’s life for the sake of one’s friends” 

      • Judgment because this world’s rulers stands condemned.

        • The world’s rulers have already proclaimed their misunderstanding of Jesus’ role in the world. Their judgment, or separation, has already been accomplished by their own actions.

Thoughts and Questions

  • The opposite of sin, as far as this passage is concerned, is not virtue. It is faith. Sin is missing the mark. It is be mis-aligned to God’s will. Faith however, reorients a life toward God. Faith in Jesus as The Way, the Truth, and the Life, gives the one with faith a new aim, a new orientation. Faith is what draws someone toward eternal life, which is more appropriately understood to be authentic life. Authentic life is the life which is lived for the sake of others. Authentic life is one lived in faith, and acted out in love.

  • The role of the Spirit is to testify not only to the Church, but to the world. The Spirit will continue to speak through the believers to a world which refuses to recognize the truth. It is the role of the Spirit to continue to work through the people. First, the words were for the disciples, as a warning and commissioning as they moved forward without Jesus. Then, it was a reminder to the John community that their work was right. It was a word of comfort and encouragement to a community under duress. Now, we may read it in the same way. The same Spirit that guided the disciples to step out of the Upper Room is the same Spirit that encouraged the John community in its trial. It is the same Spirit which walks alongside us today.

Acts 2:1-21

  • Listener Comment from 2014: “The problem with Pentecost is not that it's a busy time of the year, but that it so unambiguously requires of us that we carry the gospel out into the world, and blow our own covers. It is one thing to adore the infant Jesus, another to mourn the death of Jesus in our insular communities. It is something else, VERY else, and to many, VERY scary, to proclaim the gospel in every action we take, and to publicly proclaim ourselves to be THOSE people, those [insert negative adjective here] Christians. Pentecost gives us marching orders. Christmas is so much easier…”

Initial Thoughts

Bible Study

  • Pentecost - fifty days or seven weeks after Passover (Lev. 23:15-22)

    • Giving of law at Mount Sinai

    • End of the Spring Harvest

    • All were included in the celebration: Deut. 16:11 “you, your sons, your daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites who live in your cities, the immigrants, the orphans, and the widows”

    • “Pentecost is the moment when gestation ceases and birthing occurs. Thus, it is both an end and a beginning, the leaving behind of that which is past, the launching forth into that which is only now beginning to be. Pentecost therefore is not a time of completion. It is moving forward into new dimensions of being, whose basic forms are clear, but whose fulfillment has yet to be realized.” (Walter Brueggemann, Texts for Preaching, Year B,  p. 347)

    • Double Celebration:

      • End of the Spring Harvest (we aren’t in Illinois anymore)- connections to Peter’s Sermon (Joel 2:24a "the threshing floors shall be full of grain” and Jesus 10:2 ”The harvest is great, but the laborers are few

      • God gives the Hebrews the Torah - not explicit in the Hebrew Bible, but traditionally celebrated.

        • Gift of the Torah - which unites a people as a holy nation and priestly kingdom

        • Gift of the Spirit - which unites all people

        • Both are inclusive celebrations to be blessings to all people

  • Who is they? (David Bender, Feasting on the Word, Year B, volume 3)

    • The 11 (Acts 1:13)?

    • Has Matthias been added (Acts 1:26)?

    • Have the women been added (Acts 1:14)?

    • Do we allow the gift of the Spirit to flow through our congregations or only our seminaries and adjudicatories?

  • Baptism of the Spirit- see Luke 3:16, Acts 1:5

  • Images of the Spirit

    • Rush of wind, tongues of fire, community gathered

    • Freedom of the Spirit

    • Not limited by language

    • Reversal of Babel- once commanded to be fruitful, multiply and fill the Earth- now commanded to love one another

    • Perhaps the semi-collapse of Enlightenment orthodoxy, with its elevation of reason and science as the only paths to true knowledge of the world, has opened the door to a recovery of a kind of pre-/post-Enlightenment religiosity in which once again people are open to, and therefore experience, "signs and wonders." - David Gushee

    • Not limited by different languages or even needing to be explained - “What does this mean?” They cannot explain it and still today we try and answer this question

  • Spirit of Liberation

    • Liberation from Chaos - Genesis 1-2

    • Liberation from Babylon - Isaiah 11:2

    • Liberation from Rome - Luke 3:16, Acts 1:5

    • What do we need to be liberated from?

      • The church?

      • Consumerism?

      • Self-importance? Self-delusion? Self-disregard?

  • Joel 2:28-29

    • Joel background - not much is known about Joel or historical context.

      • Possibly post-exilic, living in Jerusalem (Common English Study Bible notes, p. 1445 OT)

      • “The book shows a blend of judgment and deliverance.” Subheadings in order:

        • Lament

        • Mourning

        • Suffering

        • Prophet’s Prayer

        • Alarm and Peril

        • Change your hearts

        • Compassion and promise

        • Judgment on nations

        • Coming war

        • Salvation

      • 2:28-29 is within the Compassion and Promise section.

      • “For Joel the outpouring of the Spirit are a prelude to disaster, but for Peter these wonders have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ… and their purpose… is nothing less than the redemption of humankind.” (Brueggemann, Texts for Preaching, Year B, p. 349)

    • Spirit of inclusivity

      • Age, gender, ethnically (all persons)

      • Signs and Wonders - theme throughout the first half of Acts - performed by Jesus, the Spirit, Stephen, (Moses), Philip, Paul and Barnabas

      • The word of the Spirit is something which has happened, did happen (on Pentecost) and continues

      • “Your young will see visions. Your elders will dream dreams.” Is it just me, or does that seem to be a reversal? I think of older people have mystical visions, and younger people as dreaming dreams. Yet here it is, the young are given visions usually reserved the old and wise, and dreams are given to those who may not live them out.

Thoughts and Questions

  • From either Becca or Lydia (can’t remember which) on Lit Liturgy Podcast: “Christmas is stupid without Easter. Easter is pointless without Pentecost.”

  • Is the current church as flexible as the ancient church to adapt to where the spirit is calling or do we insist on the Spirit working within our institutional and/or traditional methods?

    • Do we truly allow the spirit to guide us or is the Spirit in the backseat?

    • Are we willing to be led by the spirit without knowing the destination?

      • Local churches struggling week to week

        1. Denominations struggling year to year

        2. Pastors struggling with calls

        3. Can we be led out of the temple and into the wilderness?

  • What do we need to be liberated from?

    • The church?

      1. Consumerism?

      2. Self-importance? Self-delusion? Self-disregard?

  • “Without Pentecost, we’d just be people who tell Jesus’ story. With Pentecost, we’re people who live into Jesus’ story” (Danielle Shroyer, The Hardest Question blog)

Romans 8:22-27

Initial Thoughts

Bible Study

  • Holistic vision of the world - all of creation groans

    • Brings the focus out of our own personal lament to see the great need of the world

    • “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” - Fredrich Buechner

    • Pain can draw us inward- paul calls us to an outward interconnectedness that doesn’t deny our pain, but allows us to see and serve the world through it

  • Hope

    • Being a child of God does NOT mean freedom from suffering- Christ was God’s son and Christ died and suffered. Being a child of God means we do not suffer alone or suffer needlessly, but live in hope of redemption and liberation

    • Hope is for the foolish- it is a belief against all belief

    • “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” Desmond Tutu

    • “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” MLK Jr.

    • Hope is a thing with Feathers (254) by Emily Dickinson

  • Hope is born out the disconnect between what is and what should be

    • The dis-ease and pain of the current suffering is expressed in groaning: Pain acknowledged, experienced, lived through, not denied.

    • The glory of resurrection doesn’t erase the agony of crucifixion - nor does it justify it. Nevertheless- resurrection, life, light is coming

    • Faith does not draw us out of our sufferings into a pollyannic escape, rather hope gives us the strength and courage to endure and work for a better future

    • Hope keeps us from falling into despair or apathetic acceptance.

    • Patient hope is not acquiescence.

  • A better future

    • Hope is born out of living in the Spirit and being inspired to work for a better future

    • Inspired = literally In-Spirit

    • We have seen the first fruits of the Spirit in Jesus Christ- his love, forgiveness, welcome,  and grace are a glimpse of the kingdom to come

    • Now but not yet = First fruits but still groaning, suffering and hoping

  • The Groaning Spirit

    • Luke Powery gave an amazing presentation on the groaning Spirit of God at the 2015 Festival of Homiletics and has done some great work on reclaiming lamentation: Spirit Speech: Lament and Celebration in Preaching, Dem Dry Bones: Preaching, Death, and Hope, Ways of the Word: Learning to Preach for Your Time and Place

    • Reclamation on lament in the groaning Spirit of God- what a great new take on Pentecost

      • Creation groans in ecological crisis, our nation groans in racial and socio-economic injustice, our world groans under extremism and growing inequity between the haves and have-nots and we ourselves groan inwardly because we are inextricably connected to the world.

        • “The groaning of the world and its suffering stalks us like the paparazzi”- LP

    • We cannot get to glory without groaning

    • Lament, pain and grief are indescribable, inarticulate- it is a groan of pain and agony that God expresses with us

    • “Groaning leads us to hope...our tears create the pillow for the Gospel of Hope...hope is tear stained”

    • Invite people to express their grief, their pain, the flames of Pentecost can burn sometimes

  • Not knowing what or how to pray

    • From Fellowship of the Ring  by JRR Tolkien:

      • Legolas: A lament for Gandalf.

      • Merry: What do they say about him?

      • Legolas: I have not the heart to tell you. For me the grief is still too near.

    • Sometimes we do not have the heart to articulate a prayer- the grief, the pain is too near to our souls. In those moments- the Spirit prays for us

Thoughts and questions

  • Our culture has created such insulation from grief, death and lament - they are signs of failure or loss. It is time to reclaim lamentation - a true expression of grief that acknowledges the world is not as it should be.

  • The Good News does not negate current suffering. Following the way of Christ will often lead us through dark valleys from crucifixion. Even though we may be faithful- we cannot simply ignore or dismiss the pain and suffering experienced. Who is walking through the dark valleys of persecution, abuse, depression, etc in your congregation? What word of encouragement do they need? Suffering is isolating (“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”) - the important reminder that the Spirit is with us and praying with and for us even when we do not have the words.

  • Passage is a lot about identity: Who and whose are you? You are God’s child. Adopted into God and an heir to all that is God’s. Being God’s child does not prevent suffering but changes our outlook on the past, present and future. We are no longer bound by the past. We groan in the present seeing that the Kingdom is not here (having seen the first fruits as presented in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus) and we are inspired to work with God toward a better future.

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING AND GET IN TOUCH:

Thanks to our Psalms correspondent, Richard Bruxvoort Colligan (psalmimmersion.com,@pomopsalmist). Thank you to Scott Fletcher for our voice bumpers, Dick Dale and the Del Tones for our Theme music (“Misirlou”), Nicolai Heidlas (“Sunday Morning”,"Real Ride"and“Summertime”), Paul and Storm (“Oh No”), and Bryan Odeen for our closing music.

Pentecost BEric FistlerActs, John, Romans, Psalm 75-1501 Comment