Sunday of Pentecost

Pentecost
Acts 2:1-21
May 23, 2010



Ten days after his departure, the disciples of Jesus experienced a change from the people they had been to a new kind of human family.

They entered that room where they gathered as they had before and there came upon them what they could only describe as "wind" and "fire."

Out of that wind and fire, out of the breath and the life that was given to them, they found the ability to do things they had never done before.

They were new people, transformed people, still the same people but with a difference.

All of this, I suppose, sounds a little eerie and mysterious, abstract and empty.

It will continue to sound eerie and mysterious, abstract and empty, as long as we express this in theological language with theological terms.

Let us say - instead - that after the Holy Spirit exploded upon them and imploded within them they had traveled a further step toward a new humanity — what St. Paul described as a New Creation.

Let us suggest they entered a new period in the history of human evolution, a new era of living had opened before them.

Now that is something everyone could wish for — a new way of human living.
But first we must examine what is "new" by comparing it to what is "old."

We often hear about new eras, a new and remarkable period of human achievement just over the horizon. We even measure past human history in the same way.

We find these demarcations convenient — and all of them are mostly connected to human technology.

So we go from Stone Age, to Bronze age to Iron Age, to Steam age, to Machine age, to Atomic age, and Space age.

We impress ourselves with human achievement.

But —
Through the new steam age, the new machine age, the new atomic age, the new space age
— human life in all of its human relationships has gone on as it has always gone on before.

Real human renewal cannot be found in
a building
a power plant
a landing on the moon
a photograph from Mars
a psychological theory
a sociological insight
a new communications system
or a new age of anything.

You cannot — for instance — change family quarrels by eating a better diet, installing a television reception dish, switching from DSL to Cable, buying a newer car or giving presents to the family.

Real progress, a real evolutionary step, can only be made if mentalities change, attitudes adjust, if outlooks and judgments alter.

True human change requires something more lasting than a techno-fix.

This is what happened at the moment the Spirit descended upon those first disciples.
His disciples were enabled able to speak other languages — but that by itself is not be very remarkable.

The account in the Book of Acts is very carefully inclusive, listing every racial, ethnic, cultural, and national group then known to exist.

Not all of these racial, ethnic, cultural and national groups liked each other.

The word Cretan meant then what it means today. The word Arab stirred up mystery and fear as much then as today.

The remarkable part isn’t those disciples could speak all those languages — the remarkable part is, the prejudices and racial differences no longer made any difference.

The remarkable thing is they were now willing to use those languages to preach forgiveness through Christ.

We sit around here in the first decade of the 21th century, surrounded by cell phones and satellite dishes, twittering and Facebooking, and thinking that our world is so very much different than the world the first disciples faced.

But don't kid yourself.
It's no different now than then.
And it is no different here in this room than it was two thousand years ago when those disciples left that room with the Spirit hovering over and within them.

You leave today, as they left, not the same, but different.

I'll admit, it is the same old world with all the same old troubles, the same international tensions, the same any ten other crises you care to name.

All those things will be out there, waiting for you. They haven't gone away.
That part hasn't changed. I doubt that part will never change.

But by the gift of the Holy Spirit, you have changed, taken a step in your own human evolution.
And because you have changed, that small part of the world for which you have been given responsibility — you can change that part of the world.

For that is how his Spirit works "in, with, and under" this old world making it a new creation.
The Spirit of God in Christ works through you, and always for good.

That's why we have his body, broken for us, and his blood, shed for us — to remind us, among other things, of what we through his Spirit have been empowered to do for each other.

That is true progress, true change, a genuinely new era — the truest I know.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.