Day of Pentecost
We celebrate today – a joyful day as we rejoice in the gift of the Holy Spirit and share the joy with those who gathered 2,000 years ago at the birth of Christ’s Church.
There are two stories told today in our readings about what happened at the Day of Pentecost, the day the Church became visible, as the Holy Spirit came among us, gathering us into the body of Christ. Most of us know both stories, from Acts 2 and John’s Gospel. The story in Acts 2 stirs our minds and hearts, gifting us a wonderful, joyful, enlivening sense of the Holy Spirit, as she made her presence felt with wind and fire; with flames everywhere and three thousand people talking and sharing the news of God’s deeds of power in all the known languages of the world. It is an unstoppable story as we hear it two thousand years later.
John’s Gospel version is completely different. The Spirit doesn’t come upon a crowd gathering to celebrate with anticipation and joy. Instead, it’s breathed into a locked room full of frightened people, who have just watched the Roman Empire execute their teacher and leader. There are no winds, fire or flames, just a wounded, risen Jesus standing in the middle of their terror and disbelief, saying: ‘Peace be with you’ and gently breathing the Holy Spirit upon them.
The disciples see his wounded hands and his side, but Jesus does not demand vengeance, or exclusion of the guilty ones, he simply offers peace, shared with them all and asks for it to be shared around the world. This is an extraordinary gift into the woundedness of the world: made visible in the gaping holes of broken relationships, the mounting hatred, fear, horror, and the implacable positions of ideology, greed and power. The gifting of peace into this chaos comes as a shock. It is a confrontation requiring us to think about what it means for us individually, collectively as the body of Christ and with the world. Jesus is breathing life in the way God breathed over the dry bones in Ezekiel. This is not Rome’s peace, militarised, demanded at the point of a sword, wielded by oppression and colonisation. God’s peace gives life, brings repentance, reconciliation, justice and action, prayer and joy, hope and love.
God’s peace is accompanied by the dangerous, double-edged authority of release and retention, liberation and gate-keeping, all in the one sentence as it is offered by Jesus. Jesus’ precious gift requires us to think deeply and carefully about the peace we bring in God’s name to others around us, and our capacity and willingness to let-go long held hurts, unkindness, hatred, fear and revenge. The Gospel’s words remind Jesus’ listeners of the long tradition of forgiving sins, cancelling financial debt, and in a broad use of the word, reminds us also of Isaiah’s jubilee tradition where it means liberation, release for captives and freedom for the oppressed.
In our world today, God’s peace is distinctly unsettling. We know what the world’s peace looks like, sounds like and tastes like. It is always uncertain, it includes the ideas of the one with power retaining coercive control, holding tight, having and keeping hold of power over others. Its open to interpretation and layered by those with power. People talk about ceasefires rather than peace; a permanent living under the threat of war and violence. The trauma of such living is laid out for all of us to see and know still today.
We see America’s peace, brought by corrupt practices, inconsistent demands and grown through greed and the imposition of power, by a country which has only been truly at peace about 15 – 20 years during its life as a modern nation birthed in 1776, over the last 250 years. In fact, it has been involved non-stop in wars and conflicts around the world, either interfering, creating, supporting or oppressing with violence, showing truly empire behaviour. Other modern and historical empires have been no different; it is one of the characteristics of empire power.
So God’s peace asks something different from us. The room filled with the Holy Spirit in the story in Acts showed us people speaking languages from countries around the world. God’s peace asks us to live and work together, to dream, share, care and hope together even though we are all different. We all have different opinions and different life experiences, and we are called to build God’s kingdom with all the glorious diversity God is gifting to the world. It recalls the Hebrew idea of Shalom, which means peace, wholeness, shared flourishing, right relationships and enough for everyone to live. Such peace is vibrant, life-giving and extraordinary. And Jesus is turning the world upside down – again! Crucifixion was Rome’s most humiliating form of execution. It was used for enslaved people who rebelled, all who were seen as a threat to the social order of the empire. But John turns this upside down. The wounds are not proof of brokenness and loss; they become the grounds for joy and the beginning of the disciples’ mission. The empire did its worst, but it wasn’t enough. No wonder the people were celebrating because this is resurrection peace.
At this point, it’s worth noting what else is included in this text from John’s Gospel 20:19-23: it is the small, devastating statement which has the disciples fearful ‘of the Jews’. A phrase long used as an excuse for wickedness and ill intent by the Christian Church over the centuries against the Jewish people. The Jews mentioned in this and other similar passages in John (7:13; 19:38; 9:22), refer to the specific religious Judean and Jerusalem based authorities opposed to Jesus, who arrest, try, and hand him over to be executed; they do not refer to the chosen people of God.
The collusion between the Jewish religious authorities and the Roman Empire has sought to destroy Jesus, and the disciples had very good reason to expect they too would be on the list of usual suspects to be targeted by the authorities. Such fear of Empires exists today in many countries, among many races and nations, groups, faiths and communities. Feeding the fear rather than contemplating God’s peace means this phrase is still actively working on our hearts and minds to the detriment of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
Understanding Jesus is appearing inside the fear, rather than removing it, allows us to work with Christ, the Holy Spirit, and God, to acknowledge the social and economic pressure in the world today, the marginalisation coming from political expediency for those on the underside of history, those reviled and discriminated against, and to know the Empire did its worst and it failed. The wounds are there, reminding us Christ has risen, we are living as resurrected people and today we celebrate because God has brought us peace and for this to be shared with the whole world.
The Lord is risen. Alleluia! He is risen indeed. Alleluia!