PENTECOST SUNDAY B

[cappie]

“There is nowhere you can go that God is not.”

 “There is nowhere you can go that God is not” is a good reminder for this Day of Pentecost. This feast day marks the official birth of the Church and the explicit mission of the Holy Spirit—for us to tell the world about the Good News of Jesus Christ.

 The Church of God then, does not have a mission, but the God of mission has a church. This is our job as Christians. We are going to places that God already is—the past, the present, and the future—and God is using us to get across the message that each person on this planet is loved beyond our limited understanding.  

This is the day where the power of  the release of the Holy Spirit, evokes energy pent up, like a runner finally being able to speed off from the starting line or an arrow released from its bow. When we do something in the name of Jesus, great power is unleashed.  We are to be lie those trick candles on a birthday cake that, when the world thinks it has blown us out, we come back to shine the light of Christ anew. Think about this:   How is our community’s light of Christ resilient in the face of the world around us?  

We are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ in the world. We affirm  we proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ, We  seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbour as ourself? We  strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being” We do all this, with God’s help.”

When the Spirit moves in our own lives, one of the immediate reactions is to be perplexed, like some of the people in our story from Acts were. Another reaction is to sneer in disbelief at what is happening, much like some of the other people. Our human minds cannot wrap themselves around what God is doing, even if we are in the midst of God’s action ourselves, just like those in the crowd.

 And isn’t that still true in this day and age? We want to put God in a box, but God doesn’t work that way.  The Spirit is revealed as the life-giving breath of the Father, the Wisdom by which He made all things, as in today’s Psalm. The  Spirit blows where it will and, like a woman in the middle of labour, we cannot deny it and we can’t stop it. Sometimes it makes us perplexed. Sometimes it makes us uncomfortable. But always, always the Spirit is pouring out to proclaim God’s glory in the world and it is moving through us so that God’s glory will be revealed. God comes alongside us speaking our language, healing and inspiring us so that we can share God’s love with someone else in their own language. This is the Good News!

How has the Holy Spirit blown like the wind in your life? We’ve all had  moments where God has sent the Holy Spirit sounding like a violent wind in our lives, upsetting things, moving things, changing things—and we all know how human beings hate change. Yet we can take a page from the disciples’ story and remember that we should always be prepared for God. Be prepared to receive the vivid experience of the Holy Spirit—over and over and over again. God is always doing something new.

Like a river of living water, for all ages God will pour out His Spirit on His body, the Church, and so we continue, with God’s help, through the Holy Spirit and in Jesus’ name to spread the fire of God’s love in our broken, hurting world. This is our commission. This is our faith. This is what it means to be a new creation in Jesus Christ. This is Pentecost, the birth of the Church—and we are that Church.