Monday, June 12, 2017
Pentecost
Sermon for the Feast of Pentecost
Year A June 4 , 2017
Holy Trinity & St. Anskar
In the last days it will
be, God declares,
that I will pour out my
Spirit upon all flesh…
+In
the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity
Pentecost in Judaism was the feast of the first-fruits of
the harvest — the winter wheat. By the time of Jesus, it had also become the
feast of the giving of the Law on Sinai. Law is a supernatural gift to God’s
chosen people, a gift that makes them holy, set apart from other nations, a
gift that nourishes their consciousness as the winter wheat of the original
feast nourishes their bodies. The law, therefore, is not something antithetical
to the Spirit, but rather a gift of the Spirit. As we say in our Creed, the
Spirit “spoke through the prophets,” which means, first and foremost, through
Moses, through whom God gave the Law.
So, we must not think of the
Christian identification of Pentecost with the Spirit as a correction or a contradiction,
but as an enlargement, an extension, a fulfillment. As of old, the Spirit
inscribed the Law on the stone tablets of Sinai, for Moses to carry down to the
people, so now the Spirit inscribes the Law on the hearts of humanity, as God
promised through the Holy Prophet Ezekiel. Spirit and law are not in opposition
at all. When we speak of the distinction between the spirit of the law and the
letter of the law, we are talking about something else. The inscription on the
stone, the letter of the Law, does not give life, but that which produces the
Law does: that is the Spirit, Whom in the Creed We Call “the Lord, the Giver of
life.” The letter of the law cannot save us, it cannot bring us to the fullness
of God’s intention for humanity. The underlying Spirit of the law, of which the
letter is an expression for a particular place and time, comes into the world in
an unprecedented way on Pentecost.
The Spirit does not replace
the law; it fulfills it, expands it, and renders it intelligible and
life-giving to all flesh. Thus, all the various nationalities assembled in
Jerusalem hear the Apostles in their own languages. These people are not
pagans, they are Jews of the Diaspora — people who had arranged to come to
Jerusalem from all parts of the Empire, to celebrate the feast. And many of
them, we are told, were proselytes, that is pagans who were not Jews by birth,
who had converted to Judaism. They knew the law. Probably many of them could
read it in the original Hebrew. But now,
they were amazed to hear the Apostles proclaiming it in their own languages. In
other words, the Spirit extends the Covenant, of which the Law is the outward
sign, to all flesh.
The Law, which was
originally given to set one people apart from all the rest, the Law which had
been the marker of that people as chosen above all other nations, this
same Law now enlightens all nations, universally. The Spirit is the extension
of the gift of the Law to all flesh. The life-giving nourishment of Pentecost
now appears as a gift not given exclusively to the Chosen People, but to all
flesh. The Chosen People are chosen not to dominate other peoples, but to act
as God’s instrument to enlighten and liberate them.
I was reading the story of
Saul and Samuel this week, and one detail jumped out at me in this context: “at
that time the Ark went forth with the Israelites into battle.” The Ark, where the stone tablets of the Law were kept, was
carried into battle against the Philistines, and others. The Law was the sign
of God’s favor to Israel, as opposed to everybody else. At least, that is how
it seemed to the people at the time, about 1000 years before Christ. They
thought what it meant was that their nation was chosen by God to rule everybody
else.
Occasionally, however, the
Ark was captured by the enemy, which naturally produced great consternation
amongst the Israelites! God had to intervene by causing all kinds of misfortune
to these enemies until they sent the Ark back! This may have been an early clue
that more was going on here than the ancient Hebrews understood.
Gradually, the consciousness
grew that this Ark — the symbol of the Presence of God in human society — God With Us, Emmanuel — was not the possession of Israel: on the contrary,
Israel was the instrument of God. The Ark represented Israel’s identity:
Israel’s heart and soul, what made Israel Israel. The ancient Hebrews understood that very
well. What they learned gradually was that the Ark was not merely the sign of
God’s Covenant with a particular people, but the sign of God’s purpose for
Israel as a Light to enlighten the Gentiles. The holiness the Ark represented
was to extend to all flesh.
The literal commandments,
inscribed in stone by the finger of God, and enshrined in the Ark, were to be
inscribed anew on the hearts of all people: as the Holy Prophet Ezekiel had
foretold, the hearts of stone would become hearts of flesh, upon which God’s
righteousness would be written. The first-fruits celebrated on the Feast of
Pentecost, would nourish not only the people of Israel, but people of every
race and nation.
As foretold by the Hoy
Prophet Joel, the Spirit of God is poured out upon all flesh. The sign will
be the new wheat of Pentecost celebrated in Jerusalem, made into bread
transformed by the Spirit. This transfigured Bread will be the sign of the New
Covenant as the tablets of stone are the sign of the Old. By this Bread, all
races and nations of humanity come into the Covenant and become the instrument
of the Spirit’s transformation of Creation.
ALLELUIA
THE SPIRIT OF GOD
FILLS THE WORLD
ALLELUIA
