Receive the Holy Spirit! Pentecost Sunday
Sermon by Emmanuel Suntheni OSB – Pentecost Sunday
Sermon And Christian Act In The Word
Theme: Receive the Holy Spirit! Let us be the Pentecostal people every day! I receive the Holy Spirit and bear good fruits!
Point of Reflection: Am I living a life in the Spirit or a life apart from the Spirit? What are the signs to differentiate between these two options? What gifts have I been given by the Holy Spirit? Am I using them in the manner that Paul taught the Corinthians?
The coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples, known as Pentecost, marks the beginning of the Church’s existence, and its subsequent expansion.
Pentecost encourages us to search for the presence of God’s Spirit within ourselves, rather than regarding it as a reward reserved only for certain individuals. We should embrace the Spirit of God, the source of all vitality. This Spirit is accessible to all, since the boundless love of God is present within the joys and sorrows, struggles and aspirations of all God’s offspring.
First Reading: Acts 2:1–11
Psalm: Psalm 104:1, 24, 29–31, 34
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:3–7, 12–13
Gospel: John 20:19–23
Sermon (Reflection): In the light of the three readings of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit emerges as the very life of the Church. The Spirit is its voice as it descended upon the disciples in tongues of fire and enabled them to communicate with all. The Spirit is its very blood which enlivens the body of Christ consisting of diversely gifted members. Finally, the Spirit is the very life of this community breathed into it by Jesus.
No one pays as much attention to the role of the Holy Spirit than Paul. In the passage of the second reading from 1 Corinthians read today, the apostle describes the Spirit as the binding agent responsible for creating coherence and harmony among the members of the community. According to him, the working of the Holy Spirit is first evident when a person is able to recognise and acknowledge Jesus as the Lord. Many of Paul’s contemporaries rejected Jesus as the Lord, considering him as just an ordinary human being. However, those able to acknowledge Jesus as the Lord evidently were led to this insight by the Holy Spirit working in them. Second, the Spirit gives specific gifts to individual community members. These gifts are very diverse, and Christians in Corinth foolishly argued about which of them are the most important ones (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:14-31). Paul shows the folly of such arguments, emphasizing that these gifts are given to the individuals not for self-glorification but for service in the community, for mutual benefit.
The Spirit “manages” the Church by providing it with the talents and ministries needed for its proper functioning.
Paul also uses a very meaningful image of the Church as the body of Christ. He sees Christians as the body of Christ on earth because they have been “made to drink of one Spirit”. If Christ is the head and the faithful are the body, then the Spirit can be likened to the blood that runs through its veins, making it alive.
In the first reading, Luke devotes much attention and detail to the manner of the Holy Spirit’s descent. His presentation of the coming of the Spirit accompanied by great wind and tongues of fire includes two ingenious double references. In Hebrew, the word for wind is the same as the word for “the spirit”. This double meaning of the word recalls Ezekiel 37:9-14 where God sends the wind or spirit in order to animate the dry bones of the fallen Israelites. The room where the disciples were gathered was filled with the wind, which means that God’s Spirit filled it.
The Spirit descended upon the disciples as tongues of fire. The word “tongue” in Greek also carries a double meaning, referring either to the physical organ or to the language or speech. This suggests that the Spirit filling the disciples enabled them to speak. This ability is immediately confirmed as the Spirit-filled disciples are able to communicate “God’s deeds of power” to a large crowd of people from different languages and ethnic groups who are able to understand the message.
Just as on Sinai the people of the first covenant received the gift of the Law and commemorated the event on Pentecost, so also, on the very same day, the new community of God’s people, founded on Jesus’ resurrection, received the Spirit who would be its guide. The day when the Sinai covenant was made was the birth of Israel, the day when the Spirit was given was the day when Christianity came into existence.
Today’s Gospel passage focuses on Jesus’ commissioning of the disciple and the gift of the Spirit. First, a parallel with the creation story in Genesis 2 becomes immediately apparent. While Luke presented the coming of the Spirit as descending tongues of fire, John presents it as a new creation. In Genesis God made the first human alive by breathing his breath into an effigy he had molded out of clay. Jesus “breaths” the Holy Spirit into the disciples. However, the outcome of both of these accounts is much the same, thus, both in Acts and in John the disciples are empowered and sent on a mission.
There is a difference in the description of this mission between Luke and John. In Acts the disciples are to proclaim the risen Lord to the ends of the earth. In John, the disciples’ mission is “forgiving and retaining sins”. It might seem strange that their mission focuses on sin. This is, however, easily understood in the context of the entire Gospel. When John speaks of sin, most often he means the sin of unbelief. The greatest sin in the Gospel of John is a refusal to believe in Jesus as the Son of God (cf. John 15:21; 16:8-9). Speaking of sins in today’s passage, John refers to the disciples’ power to remove the sin of unbelief by their proclamation of the risen Jesus. At the same time, they ought also to announce God’s judgement upon those who continue to persist in their unbelief, which is in line with what Jesus taught (cf. John 3:18).
Despite linguistic and cultural disparities, there was an authentic fellowship among the disciples. Wherever people of diverse origins share a bond of the heart and mind, the Holy Spirit is active. The Spirit’s hallmark is unity amidst diversity. Jesus highlights another indication of the Spirit’s presence: the quest for truth. Only the Spirit can guide us to absolute truth. If someone genuinely seeks the truth and is open to collaborating on good deeds with others, the Spirit is present. The fullness of truth and love perpetually eludes us, but the Spirit is bestowed to steer us towards the complete truth and love, encompassing all its profundity and magnitude.
Christian Act in Word of God “Receive the Holy Spirit”
The wind is so powerful. Its force can topple trees and buildings, it can also move clouds so that the rain may fall. The author of the Acts of the Apostles may not have been a scientist in the modern sense, but would certainly have understood and respected wind’s enormous power. He fittingly employs this image of the wind to describe the transforming power of the Spirit’s presence.
In choosing to describe the events preceding the coming of the Holy Spirit with expressions like “rush of a violent wind” and “tongues as of fire”, coupled with the use of the adverb “suddenly”, the author undoubtedly sought to make not only a theological point but also an existential one, namely, the power of the Holy Spirit to cause change. Understandably, immediately after he had spoken of the fact that they were filled with the Holy Spirit, he adds that “they began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability”. The action of the Holy Spirit was so evident that the crowd was filled with amazement and wonder.
Paul affirms that the Holy Spirit makes his presence manifest through the gifts he bestows on the community members. Christian ministry is therefore, one of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit’s presence.
Before Jesus breathed upon his apostles and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit”, he first told them, “as the Father has sent me, so I send you.” There is a sending element that comes with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
As Christians, have we received the Holy Spirit? Are we ready to spread the gifts of the Holy Spirit?
When we allow the Holy Spirit to fill us, he equips us with all kinds of spiritual gifts and abilities for different forms of service and then sends us on a mission. Our lives as Christians would be directionless and fruitless if it were not for the presence of the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit gave birth to the Church and the Church grows in the power of the Spirit. The Church is not just a building made of cement, sand, stone and water, but primarily an assembly of people whose faith in Jesus has brought them together. As we yield to the person and presence of the Holy Spirit, the Church grows, but when we stifle the action of the Holy Spirit, the Church shrinks. In the face of the innumerable challenges that beset our world, the Church needs an on-going Pentecost thus, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon willing men and women, old and young, who constitute the Body of Christ. Let us receive and use the gifts the Holy Spirit has given us to build our church, families and our countries.
Action: As a baptised Christian I resolve to identify one of the gifts the Spirit has given me and put it to practice during this week.
Prayer: All-powerful God, we thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit. May the Holy Spirit empower us to be Pentecostal people and to fulfil the missionary mandate of proclaiming the Gospel to all people until the end of time, Grant this through Christ our Lord, Amen.
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