Pentecost 2020 – May 31, 2020
 
I think it’s interesting that on this Feast of Pentecost, we kind of replicate what was going on at that first Pentecost.  Locked up there in the upper room, it’s not quite the upper room, but it’s not in church, either.  And as we look at this moment, there’s a whole new dimension being granted.  Notice it’s on the first day of the week.  So, when God created the world, Saturday, the Sabbath, was the seventh day.  And for the early Christians, Sunday was the first day of the week in the new creation. This is what’s changing here…you go back to the Old Testament account of creation…and God breathed over the waters of chaos and brought into the world creation itself.
 
Well, we’re talking about a new creation.  Notice, how he breathed the Holy Spirit on them.  He says, “Shalom.”  Original creation was in peace.  It wasn’t until the sin, that Adam and Eve recognized their separateness, their nakedness.  It wasn’t until that first sin that the world began to unravel.  And I think, again, today is so comparable to that moment.  What happens, Cain and Abel – he murders his brother; we have the Tower of Babel, where they’re building this tower to God, to the heavens.   And have their languages confused, to disperse them.  Notice how we reverse that in the Acts of the Apostles today.  That it’s where they go out and begin to preach, that they hear them in their own language from all over the world.

So, the point of this moment of this time in this new creation is to enter into the kingdom, the realm of God that Jesus came to unveil for us…and if we believe this, if we believe this, it has to change how we look at the world today, especially with the struggles that are going on.  There they were cowering in fear, now they’re on the temple steps proclaiming this gospel and thousands, thousands are listening to them and being baptized we see again the church, it’s amazing how early Christianity spread so quickly throughout the Empire.  You would have thought when you go into the Greek agora, the Roman forum and you see all these statues of these powerful,  muscular gods, that you wouldn’t have gotten very far holding up this man crucified on the cross, and saying this is our God.  But to me, that’s what proves the power of this Christian revelation, after two thousand years, it’s still what is essential…

…to our being able to find fulfillment.  This world is not enough. We have been made children of God, it’s that spirit given to us in baptism, we die our death in baptism; we are now adopted children of God, called into communion, called into communion with Christ.  And that’s why it is significant for those who are able to attend today, that we hunger for that Eucharist, that commingling of the Body and Blood of Christ with ours, that draws us deeper in the mystery of His love. 
If this spirit were alive and well, I don’t think we would be seeing the things going on in the world around us today.  When you lose the sense of God, first of all, and then, the way not only in the Church, the scandals in the Church that have broken us apart; but in the world now, the politics going on in the world, that’s turning to violence.  We aren’t converging, we aren’t seeking the truth of God in the center of our lives.  When we do, that Spirit comes alive.  When we come together and hold this memory, and nurture that spirit, the power of that love draws us together.  When we don’t, and everybody’s in their own little island, all of a sudden, you find that that spirit of evil begins to take over. And it’s out of our control. 

And so, are we feeding the good spirit, or are we feeding the evil spirit – it’s the question that we have to ask today when you see what’s going on in the world around us. 
We have been invited into a new creation.  It’s through the gift that Jesus sends us of the Spirit, that bonds us in Him, so much so, that if we listen to that second reading, we are the Body of Christ.  So, we have been given talents, we have been given gifts to be reconcilers as those Apostles went out and preached to the ends of the Empire.  This mystery of our faith’s idea that it’s in the giving and taking care of the other that’s primary for the Christian. 

I read an article the other day, I can’t think where it was, where a psychologist was saying that healthy, happy people are those who help the other person.  You see this on TV now, so often bringing those stories to the fore,  finding the good news,  rather than bad news,  it’s always at the end of the news, but, the goodness and the joy of what people do – those first responders in laying down their lives, and just all that that entails showing us that this revelation of Christ, that it is not the focus of self amassing power, amassing wealth, that’s going to make us happy.  It’s building the Body of Christ.  Using those gifts given to us, that reconcile, that bring people together. 

And we pray, that as we are given this opportunity now, once again, to gather at the altar, and receive this gift of Eucharist, that we take those gifts, we nurture those gifts and take them forth, that we become a true light, a true witness to the world of what Jesus has revealed to us and granted us this communion we have as we become one with Him, we are children of the Father and so the true realm, our hearts are not,  as St. Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”  We are created for the infinite, we’re created for God.  We’re created for God, Who is Love , that we can find this mystery of our faith, this joy that we can proclaim, this good news, this gospel to those in the world around us.