PENTECOST WHY NOW – TODAY
THE BAPTISM OF JESUS – Matthew 3: 13-17
Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordon to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”
Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented.
As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lightening on him. An a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
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Pentecost is celebrated fifty days after Easter Sunday. It is considered to be the birthday of the Christian church. The Holy Spirit first came to us as promised on the first Pentecost. Many refer to this gift from God as giving us inspiration, being our motivator and like a car needing fuel… the gas! Think of ourselves as cars with an empty gas tank that is preventing us from going forward.
From Joan Chittister who believes that the Holy Spirit is the breath of God on earth who keeps the Christ vision present to souls yet in darkness, gives life even to hearts now blind; infuses energy into spirits yet weary, isolated, searching and confused. The spirit has spoken to the human heart through the prophets and gives new meaning to the Word throughout time.
Conscious of the breath of God within and around us, we can with confidence set out on the road to God knowing that it may be rocky yet wholly transversable because the Holy Spirit makes the path with us. Under the impulse of the Spirit, we are guided. The Holy Spirit calls us to be abandoned to the will of God. It is a call to risk the consequences of God’s love here and now.
There is a danger in reading this story however, of thinking that Pentecost is just a happy tale from the past – just one of those miracles that ‘don’t happen anymore.’
The reason that Pentecost is one of the most important celebrations on the Christian calendar after Christmas, Epiphany, (when Jesus was baptized and first received the gifts of the Spirit) AND Easter is the fact that the Spirit’s outgoing is ongoing.
Do we believe that? According to a poll, the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past years. We all know that congregations are shrinking and many churches are closing their doors. Why do people get sick of their churches and stop coming? I would suggest it is because we are not allowing the Holy Spirit to burn within our hearts. We lose sight of our mission. When we are simply members of a church rather than Disciples of Christ, we fail to live God’s love. The question for us then is: ARE WE AS THE CHURCH FEEDING THE WORLD’S SPIRITUAL HUNGER AND NEED OR ARE WE STANDING IN THE WAY?
For the first Christian communities, the resurrection symbolized the emergence of the Christ-consciousness (now to be interpreted more universally) in the world.
However, as Leonard Cohen sings, “the Christ has not yet risen from the chambers of the heart.” So this human potentiality has not been realized at the collective level. Yet it is true that the Christ arises and in individuals, in the mystics, in the saints, in small sub-streams and movements of social justice. The risen Christ as been present even in the history of institutional Christianity through its mystics and reformers, but more often, betrayed again and again by corrupt institutions.
After all, it has been 2000 years since Jesus offered his vision of the kingdom and we don’t have anything like Jesus’ dream (the kingdom of heaven on earth) to show for it. In fact, the world looks a lot more like an apocalyptic nightmare on a global scale than a peaceable kingdom.
So where are we now? The kingdom has not only not come, but the human world and the natural one (primarily because of our species’ impact) is being despoiled by our collective greed harnessed to a military industrial that acts on its demand for instant gratification. More money, more oil, more development. This is truly a global crisis and we are seated individually and collectively at what seems the Last Supper. And as we know, much of the world isn’t feasting, but facing starvation, the impacts of war and social turmoil.
If we look at Jesus’ second coming spiritually, symbolically, it represents the coming of the peaceful, committed activist to save the world. We can’t wait for Jesus to descend from the sky after 2000 years to do it for us. It’s about our empowerment, individually and collectively, to turn things around for the planet.
We have to be the “Second Coming.” We have to make it happen by listening, being receptive, stepping out and acting. Whether or not it’s too late we can’t say, but we can know that we have to try. Giving up hope and letting our machinery crucify the earth that sustains us is not an option.1
All my life it seems I have known God. Apparently my mother prayed for me during my birth, a troubled and painful birth in the spring of 1941. My older brother was born before the war while my other siblings were post-war babies. Living on a military base she knew how the war was affecting friends & colleagues. News from Europe on the radio was grim. I’m sure my baby soul sensed this because I’ve been a skittish kind of person all the years since. My mother’s prayers and my own, along with my relationship with God have made me stronger than I ever thought I would be.
Like most of us around my age, I grew-up with a Sunday school faith and really didn’t question or think too much about it until well into my 20s. Praying to God for guidance, to open doors and show the way was all I seemed to need for the times always wondering what was coming next. Happily and with wonder I had many beautiful God experiences to help me along at the most unexpected times. You know those AHAW moments when God’s warm love is glowing in your heart.
One night in my mid 30s I went to bed and between my eyes closing and sleep taking hold, I experienced a lightening type of shimmering throughout my body. As if to make sure ‘it’ took, ‘it’ happened twice more. For the next while until I got a hold of myself, I behaved like a silly fool…. A fool for God one might say. I’m not kidding, I behaved like a real nut-bar… David will tell you. When I would run in to my friends, I would tell them that I knew the truth… that God was real. Now, I really couldn’t name what had happened to me that night although I did search out people I thought might help…. It wasn’t until many years later when I learned about Pentecost that I began to understand. The breath of God, the wind in the form of a gentle breeze, the Spirit moving through me…. The name the Evangelicals or Pentecostals use is being ‘slain in the Spirit’. I’m glad I was lying in bed at the time.
This experience really did affect me more than I thought. Example.. A funny thing happened when I went to a social justice meeting with the gifts of the Spirit listed on a piece of paper attached to my back. We were all asked to do this. (list your gifts on a piece of paper) Except for me, everyone there listed their favourite crafts or skills. It was an odd but interesting experience. For what its’ worth, the first thing listed on mine was the gift of discernment. Hopefully after all this time, this particular gifts’ includes ‘wisdom’.
BEING LED BY THE SPIRIT
In 1991, then married to Ralph, an Anglican priest working here on Vancouver Island, we went with a group of people on a Third World exposure tour to Cuernavaca, Mexico. It was a two-week program where we were exposed to religiosity, social and political issues in a Third World context. This included going into the shanties of the poorest of the poor. Through an interpreter we could ask any question we wished in order to help us understand the reasons for their poverty. I should mention that most of the poor in Mexico are indigenous people. Arasilla, a very young mother of five children explained why she had so many children. Apparently, only when she could afford birth control could she use it. Birth control came second to eating.
When she learned we were from Canada, while not quite clear where it was she did want to know were there Indigenous people there and were they poor? Obviously a light went on in my head knowing I lived amongst the poorest of the poor in Canada and hardly ever thought about them. I vowed to change that on my return…but how was I to do that….I mean you just can’t walk on to the Reserve and say to the first woman you met, ‘can I be your friend’? No, this would need a lot of prayer and help from God.
A few months later I went to a secular pot-luck dinner with a friend. It turned out the key-note speaker was a woman living off the reserve then who was speaking about violence against women. Immediately I was in awe of her and the confidence she carried with her as she spoke. Later, I asked her if we could meet for coffee sometime and of course we did. We became very close friends but the miracle of our relationship was how this wonderful woman became a mentor to me. I was like a sponge, and came to understand not only her history but so much more about my own. Another AHAW experience! Jill will speak to us on the 29th of June during our aboriginal Sunday service.
So again, what now? For all of you folks who haven’t been baptized I believe we should have a Sunday (perhaps when our new minister arrives) a first baptism and perhaps a renewal of our own baptisms. Why not, many people renew their marriage vows. This so together we can all catch fire with the Holy Spirit.
Oh and yes, this word REPENT that we keep hearing about…. It simply means turning our life around, turning away from all the things that get in the way of our relationship with God. I remember a little girl around 7 or8 asking her pastor what sin is. I too, waited for his answer. “Separating yourself from God.”
In summing up It might be worth suggesting that one way to learn the presence of the Holy Spirit in our own lives is to pay attention to those little bursts of energy that come with new insights, inspiration etc.
Going back to the scripture reading I read at the beginning, we are reminded of Jesus being baptized in the river Jordon by John the baptizer coming out of the water as the heavens opened to reveal the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him.
And in Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost we are told that the disciples and all in the crowds were filled with the Holy Spirit. Thus, through Jesus Christ, with His gift from God enabled all who were there to go and bring forth God’s Kingdom here on earth.
My question to you today is, “If Jesus needed to be baptized to receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit in order to do His ministry here on earth… and on the day of Pentecost His disciples along with all who were there also received these gifts….what makes us think we need anything less.
I truly believe the Spirit is alive and well and burning as brightly as ever. It is for us to decide whether we are ready to put down our spiritual fire hoses to become flames of God’s wild-fire with passion and conviction. May this birthday celebration of Pentecost reignite us to be part of the fire.
“If Jesus needed to be baptized with the Holy Spirit to do his work, why not all of us.”
Pentecost Sunday 2014
- Susan McCaslin, Poet
Langley, B.C.
From Dialogue Magazine
Easter and the Emergence of Christ-Consciousness
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