Pentecost sermon – Fruit of the Spirit
Sermon by Jamie Howison on Acts 2:1-21 and John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
So here we are, on the Feast of Pentecost. The long fifty-day season of Eastertide is now behind us, and the even longer—much longer—season of Ordinary Time lies before us. Pentecost is the hinge day between the seasons, which caps off the stories and teachings we’ve been reflecting on during Eastertide with a story and a teaching on the coming of the Holy Spirit or, in the Gospel according to John, the Paraclete, translated in our reading tonight as the Advocate. With a quick pause next week for Trinity Sunday, the trajectory of the lectionary readings from now through to Advent will find us working through the Gospel according to Mark in a more or less linear and chronological fashion, with a bit of a detour into John in August. The force of that is to say, “so in ordinary, day to day life, what does this gospel have to say to us?” But before we get there, this hinge day called Pentecost helps to set a sort of stage.
The story we read from the Acts of the Apostles is vivid, dramatic, and more than a little bit wild. The disciples are together in Jerusalem, where they have been in a posture of waiting and preparation for the ten days since Jesus has gone from them. They’re waiting because he has told them to hold tight, and has promised that the Holy Spirit—the Advocate—would come upon them. Well, as told by Luke here in the book of Acts, the Spirit certainly does come upon them!
And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
And then comes that long list of nations and peoples that Sharon had to read to us, which sets out just who was able to receive the words of the apostles, not in Greek or Aramaic, but each in their own language. Man, if that was happening all around you, who wouldn’t be compelled?
Yet for me the most remarkable thing is what follows next. Simon Peter stands up and speaks, and he speaks with clarity, confidence, and authority. Jesus had called him “the Rock”—Petros—and had said that the church would be built using him as a rock-like foundation, but there is pretty much nothing in the gospels that would give you any reason to expect this of the guy. When Peter is called at the beginning of the Gospel according to Matthew, he begs Jesus to leave him alone, “for I am a sinful man.” When he does set aside his fears and join Jesus, Peter is one of the most visible of the disciples, but partly because for everything he understands he gets at least one thing completely wrong. Most famously he is the disciple who denies even knowing Jesus on the night of the arrest, in spite of just have pledged his complete fidelity.
Yet now here he is, taking a text from the prophet Joel and using it in an improvisational way to proclaim to this crowd of devout Jews why they need to take seriously the wild claim that Jesus of Nazareth is the long-awaited one; the Christos, the fulfillment of everything they’ve been longing for… and he does that with complete confidence, commitment, and authority. What the heck just happened?
The Spirit of God just happened—the Paraclete just happened—very much in line with our reading from the Gospel according to John where Jesus says, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” Peter isn’t doing this alone, but rather in and through the Spirit—the very breath—of God. No wonder he’s finally caught his stride!
But for all that this is a dramatic and vivid scene, it really is what follows in the book of Acts that is the most compelling. Right away we see that they began to share their possessions, so that no one in the community of believers was left in need. The circle of that community begins to be drawn more expansively, incorporating those who had formerly been considered the “other”— the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8 and Cornelius the Roman Centurion in Acts 10. Of course there is Saul the Pharisee who had been a zealous persecutor of the Jesus movement, who becomes Paul the Apostle, the greatest champion of an ever-expanding circle. In Acts and in the Epistles we watch as Gentiles, women, and enslaved people take their places at the table with Jewish believers, men, and free people, with special provision made for the landless, the sick, widows, orphans, and others on the margins. If the day of Pentecost is extraordinary, what the Spirit of God brings about in the life of the young church is earth-shaking.
And all of that merely sets the stage for what will then unfold over the years, decades, and centuries that follow, because the Holy Spirit kept breathing inspiration, courage, and strength into the people of God. In his book The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark traces just how revolutionary the church of the opening three centuries of the Common Era truly was. Subtitled “How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Become the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries”, Stark’s book points to things such as the space and status Christianity made for women, its practice of rescuing unwanted infant girls who had been left to die of exposure by citizens of the Empire—a common practice at the time—and the way in which Christians responded to plagues and epidemics by offering care for the sick rather than shunning them. This latter practice in particular caught the imaginations of many in the dominant culture, so remarkable was its compassion and boldness.
The theologian David Bentley Hart makes the point that the care of the sick and dying remained a hallmark of the Christian faith right through the Middle Ages and beyond. He writes,
There was a long tradition of Christian monastic hospitals for the destitute and dying, going back to the days of Constantine… a tradition that had no real precedent in pagan society.
St. Benedict of Nursia [in the early 500s] opened a free infirmary at Monte Cassino and made care of the sick a paramount duty of his monks. In Rome [in the 300s], the Christian noblewoman and scholar St. Fabiolo established the first public hospital in Western Europe, and … often ventured into the streets personally to seek out those who needed care. (Hart, Atheist Delusions, p. 30)
Even now, if you look around our own city you will find a number of hospitals with deep church roots: The Concordia founded by the Mennonite Hospital Society, The Grace by the Salvation Army, St Boniface by the Grey Nuns, and the Misericordia by the Sisters of Misericorde. Though these facilities are now at varying degrees of arm’s length from their religious roots, it is an extraordinary legacy. And of course I also think of the many folks connected to our own saint ben’s community who work in health care as nurses, physicians, and Spiritual Care practitioners, whose contributions during these days of pandemic have been immeasurably important.
Yet right now at a time when the infection numbers in our province are the worst per capita in North America, what about the rest of us who aren’t on the front lines in health care, hospitals, long-term care homes, group homes, and other essential services? What might the Spirit of God be calling us to do? Well, listen to what Paul writes in his epistle to the Galatians:
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. (Galatians 5:22-23)
Reflect on those qualities and apply them to the state we’re in right now. “Patience,” for starters, which calls me to a space of acceptance of, and compliance with, the provincial restrictions that can feels so heavy, so discouraging; and to do that out of a generous love of neighbour. But that’s just the beginning of love and generosity, to say nothing of kindness and gentleness, which call us to not forget those who might be struggling more deeply than we are; to reach out for a conversation; to offer something so simple as fresh baking to a neighbour; to send a note, an email, a card to someone who might particularly need a lift right now. To pray, and to let that person know that you do continue to hold them in prayer.
Search the list of the fruit of the Spirit and see what it might inspire right now in these critical days in our own city and province. No, such things are not nearly so dramatic as what we see in the story of Pentecost, but they are the work of the Holy Spirit all the same. And such things have been Spirit-breathed since the sun set on that day described in Acts 2, and those early Christians began discerning who they were meant to be, day by day, in Ordinary Time.
