Did you enjoy your Pentecost a few weeks ago? A great holiday. Huh? You hadn’t noticed? Pentecost may be the most overlooked holiday of the year. We’re all in on Fourth of July, decorating, grilling, and celebrating, as we should be. We celebrate the gift of Jesus’ birth at Christmas. But we received another, maybe greater gift on Pentecost. On Pentecost, G-d the father sent the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is G-d the coach and teacher, the spiritual trainer who teaches us all things and who can change us, transform us. And, if we only let it do its work, the Holy Spirit will transform us - mind, body and soul - into the living Christians God wants us to be. But only if we unwrap our gift, read the simple instructions, and use it – use it all year long.
Transformation is a big claim. But Pentecost is a “change your life” event. You remember how the early disciples were amazed, awestruck at the new confidence and ability that flowed through them. Jesus delivered the Father’s message that there was a new Law in town both simpler and more challenging: Love God with all your being, and love your neighbor as yourself. A new way to see life and approach life. A transformation. God the Father knew we messy humans couldn’t do it alone. God the Father knew - and knows - that our human nature, our pride, our greed, our fear, our hungers, all these get in the way of being loving Christians, builders of His kingdom. So as Jesus promised, the Father on Pentecost sent the Spirit to strengthen us and to guide us through our transformation from animal nature to new humans who know what God wants, who want what God wants, and who do what God wants. That’s a radical evolution and transformation that can only happen and move forward with the Spirit. The Spirit who gives us ordinary men and women and children incredible gifts, gifts of spiritual power. We’d be lost without it!
Pentecost was the real birthday of the church, the day many had a personal experience of God. A first taste of the Holy Spirit. It was more than speaking in tongues. It was God’s call to be transformed. The gift of the Holy Spirit lets us experience the world differently, with transformed physical senses and a new heart and mind. Since that first Pentecost a new set of powers is available to all of mankind. But we have to practice using them.
Pentecost was actually an old established holiday for the Jewish People. By Jesus’ time on earth, this feast had already been a holy day of sacrifice for over 1,000 years. It was the first Thanksgiving. Its Hebrew name was Shavuot, which means “weeks” since it was celebrated seven weeks and a day after the Passover Seder.
On that late spring day 2,000 years ago, 50 days after Passover, Jerusalem was filled with Jews and pagan converts and God-lovers from all over the Mediterranean come to celebrate Thanksgiving in the Holy City. But God had something for them. This Shavuot was something special.
It started in a house probably close by the Temple. The disciples were indoors, yet they heard a roaring sound like a powerful wind as the Holy Spirit descended on them. They began speaking ecstatically in foreign languages. They rushed out into the street and crowds gathered around. Jews from every nation in the Mideast and beyond heard and understood exactly what was being boldly shouted out by these uneducated disciples from the sticks. They heard, in their own languages, Praise be to God! God has done wonders! Hallelujah! Glory to God in the highest! And maybe they were also hearing that this day their sins were forgiven, their old lives of depression and fear and pointlessness were over. Be healed in mind and body. Come and believe what Jeshua taught is true! Be baptized into the new life of the Spirit! The Holy Spirit!
Three-thousand Jews believed and stepped forward for baptism that day, and that day the church was born. The Spirit took charge that day. It wasn’t the wise and experienced rabbis who experienced the fearlessness, energy and insight the Spirit gives us. It was ordinary working men and women and children who yielded to the Spirit’s rush of energy and strength and confidence. The Holy Spirit comes to whomever is open to receive it.
The Spirit empowers and enthuses. And these ordinary people found themselves filled with the Spirit of God. And let’s thank God there was a crowd shouting and praising God. One person might feel awkward or inappropriate and try to squash this feeling bubbling up inside them. But surrounded by others experiencing the same new and exciting, loud, disorderly, yet respectful and godly joy, they encouraged one another.
Christianity is not an individual sport. Christ wants us to encourage and uplift one another. Christianity is very much a team event. And it doesn’t really matter to God whether your team wears orange or green, red or blue. Christianity is a community experience and needs a community.
Our readings give us examples of the experience of people who opened the gift and those who didn’t. In Luke’s Gospel Jesus appoints 72 new disciples to evangelize throughout the towns and villages of Israel. He first instructs them to ask G-d to send them as his laborers into G-ds harvest fields. He tells them to pack nothing, leave your cash at home – don’t even take an extra pair of shoes. Your needs will be met. Show up, extend peace to those who welcome you. Don’t worry about those who don’t. Settle in where you are accepted, be happy with what’s given to you. Heal the sick and say the Kingdom of G-d has come near to you. Because you now have the power to do so. Do it! Act with confidence and purpose. If a town doesn’t welcome you, shake their dust off your shoes in warning and tell them, “Know this, the kingdom of G-d was near.” And they returned in joy to Jesus who said: “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
Those who open their gift act with quiet energy and purpose, confidence and ability. In our Torah Reading we see the losers who ignore the Spirit and act in the shadows with cunning. They end up in shame or worse.
At the time of our reading, Syria was the regional power. Naaman the Syrian General had success, fame and power. He also had leprosy. Hearing about the prophet Elisha in Israel, he loaded up with gifts and headed on over to Israel. Elisha was a man of the Spirit. Elisha acted with quiet energy and purpose. Instead of ceremonially greeting this powerful guest at his door, Elisha simply sent his servant to tell Naaman to wash seven times in the Jordan and he would be healed. Naaman was furious. “Come on, at least come out and wave a wand and pray to your God over me!” But in the end, Naaman believes in the power of G-ds spirit enough to dunk seven times in the Jordan and is immediately healed. Free of leprosy he returns to Elisha, who refuses any gifts or reward. Elisha was just doing God’s work. Naaman now seeing the Spirit with new eyes confesses there is a real God in Israel. Naaman was both healed and transformed. He now had new eyes to see that healing comes by faith and the Spirit, not by incantations.
After Naaman left, Elisha’s servant, Gehazi, took off after Naaman, and begged just a few goodies for “some students.” Just a little tip. Naaman happily paid up - double! - and Gehazi headed home thinking himself pretty savvy. Elisha confronted Gehazi and said, “Was I not present in Spirit when the man got down from his chariot to meet you?... Naaman’s leprosy will fasten on you and your descendants forever.” And Gehazi became leprous. Gehazi’s actions were worldly “smart”, but not those of a spiritually transformed person. It does not pay to cross the Holy Spirit.
Pentecost has come down to us today. Here. It’s our annual chance to renew our spirit. Have you asked for the gifts? If you’ve asked and received, what are you doing with this new high wattage power? Are our lives and hearts transformed so we see and act with God’s love? Do we trust God and throw ourselves into what we are trying to do with energy and conviction that the Spirit will give us the wherewithal and perseverance to make it happen?
The Holy Spirit is there for us. I often quote the first words I heard as a Christian, from ROMANS 12: Conform no longer to the pattern of this present world, but be transformed by the renewal of your minds.
It has been almost 60 years now for me as a Christian, and my faith, belief and love has grown year by year. I almost feel like a grownup! The Holy Spirit is guiding me to transform my messy oh-so-human life. I slip and I fall, but there’s the divine strength to get up and do better. I opened my Pentecost gift: the experience of the wonder of God’s creation, the wisdom of his plan and the gracious mercy and love God has for every single being on earth.
This is the enduring meaning of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit will fill you with power and teach you, not as book learning, but as an experience of God’s love and spiritual power.
Sister Diane Bergant, now 88 years old, taught the new American Pope theology 45 years ago. On a podcast she pictured the Holy Spirit as “the dynamic power of G-d active or waiting to be active in the world. It’s a very homey kind of metaphor, but think of the water system in your house. It’s there with power in the water, but you gotta turn on the faucet for it to come out. That’s how G-d participates in our lives. That’s how G-d accomplishes.” God is not finished. God rested from the work of creation, and now in Jesus, God has announced we are ready for the next step in our long evolutionary process. Paul calls it transformation. Jesus sent the Spirit to us to teach us all things. We’ve got the power of the Spirit just waiting in us.
I urge you as Christians to turn on the faucet. Experience this Pentecost gift. It’s yours. Feel it. Let it move you and fill you. Do your part in God’s creation. Let yourself be transformed. So don’t just celebrate Pentecost. Open the gift. Live it. Feel it. Experience it. God sent it for you. “Turn on the faucet.”