The Struggle to Choose God

Act 2:1-11; John 20: 19-23

In the words of the hymn – “Come, Holy Ghost, Creator blest, and in our souls take up Your rest; Come with Your grace and heavenly aid to fill the hearts which You have made.”

We like this image of the Holy Spirit. This is the way we picture it at Baptisms, the way we picture it when we call out for God’s help. We see this Spirit which strengthens, guides, and supports us in good times and bad, Jesus’ gift to us, as powerful yet benign. And, indeed, we are told that in most cases, this Spirit, whose power is so great we cannot even imagine it, does move silently in our lives.

For many centuries, this Sunday was called Whitsunday, White Sunday, because of an ancient Christian practice tied to the sacrament of Baptism and the Easter season. In early Church tradition, the day before Pentecost — known as Whitsun Eve — was a special “night watch” liturgy where catechumens (those preparing for baptism) who had not been baptized at Easter Vigil were baptized. After baptism, the newly baptized vested in white robes, symbolizing their new life in the grace of Christ. The term Whitsunday directly references this white garment, and up until the 12^th century the vestments and altar hangings in church on Whitsunday were white.

The joyful white colour, the gentle Spirit, these images seem to fit well with our Gospel reading this morning. Jesus said to the disciples again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit”.

Jesus is speaking on the day of His resurrection. He breathes on the disciples, and they are filled with the Holy Spirit. It sounds simple, but there is a mystery here. That one word, “breathes”, which in the original Greek of our Bible is “pneuma”, cannot be translated into English. We have to use three different words, breath, wind, and spirit to try to convey its meaning. Pneuma is a mystery.  And John uses the word pneuma in many passages of his Gospel, and leaves us with much to ponder and pray about. 

And so we come this morning, this Whitsunday, a name we still use, but the vestments and altar hangings are no longer white, and though today we celebrate spiritual rebirth, no newly baptized are present. Today we embrace and are surrounded by the mystery as described by Luke.

TS Eliot summed it up well.

The dove descending breaks the air, with flame of incandescent terror, of which the tongues declare the one discharge from sin and error. The only hope, or else despair lies in the choice of pyre or pyre – to be redeemed from fire by fire.

The colour today is red. The flames are real. It is the birthday of the Church. It is Pentecost!

…it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked…

The disciples were afraid!  Their world had come to an abrupt end on a Friday afternoon as their teacher, leader, and friend had died in shame outside the city walls. There was no good news as they scattered from the city in search of safety, security, and something that resembled sanity. The preaching and teaching, traveling and telling seemed for nothing. The miraculous healings and even the raising of Lazarus were distant memories.

The peaceful kingdom Jesus preached, now lay in ruin, like His body on the cross. The blessing of the poor, the meek, the persecuted, the mournful, felt like empty words. The disciples were both terrified and heartbroken. They had gathered together in the upper room behind locked doors to comfort each other, to connect with the familiar, to feel safe.  Safety in numbers behind locked doors. The world, the pain, the fear all safely kept at bay on the other side of a lock.

And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

It was the beginning of a new age, a New Covenant with God, and the disciples raced into the street, strengthened and guided by the Spirit, to proclaim to all who could hear, the Good News of Jesus Christ. Many who heard were moved by the Spirit, and further on in Acts we are told, Those who accepted [the] message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.

But with the birth of the Church, there now existed a great tension: the New Covenant was now in effect, but it stood over and against the Old Covenant which was still in functional existence. The average Jew faced a very, very difficult decision: to follow this new break-away sect that claimed to be the ministers of a New Covenant from God, or to stay with the priests of the Old Covenant which had been the tradition of the fathers for thousands of years?Pentecost, which occurred fifty days after Easter, happened on or close to the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which occurs 50 days after Passover, and celebrates the giving of the Law. It celebrates a day in Jewish history when, still in the wilderness, the average Israelite faced a dilemma: do I follow the majority, including Aaron the high priest, and worship this tangible, visible Golden Calf? Or do I remain in the minority and walk by faith, while Moses is no longer with us or visible to us? Do I follow the visible authority in Aaron, since he is the high priest, or do I resist?These are the same kind of questions that the Jews who heard the disciples on Pentecost had to resolve. Do I stick with the majority, my brothers, my parents, my friends, and all of my ancestors by identifying myself with the high priest at Jerusalem, along with all of the visible, tangible signs of the Old Covenant (the temple, the priesthood, the animal sacrifices)? Or do I break away from this visible authority and walk by faith, pledging my allegiance to this no-longer visible in human form Messiah, who has founded an invisible and "spiritual" Jerusalem, with a new priesthood and a new sacrifice?

It sounds like a terrible decision to have to make, yet, in our daily lives, we face a similar conundrum. We too have a choice to make, and though it may not at first seem to be so, our choice, like that of the early Jews, focuses on where we pledge our allegiance, where we put our trust, what we believe to be the Truth. This is a difficult choice – and one we need to constantly make, because there is temptation everywhere to choose the familiar, the easy, the world. And, yes, when we choose the world, it becomes that in which we have put our faith – it becomes what we have put in place of God.

The Good News, the amazing news, is that we are people filled with the Holy Spirit, which came to us in our baptism.  We walk daily, filled not just with a gift from God, but with God, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. Think about that for a minute. We were baptized, and the Spirit came gently, not with flames on our head – at least not flames we could see – and changed our very being.

When this occurred in our lives most of us were babies, but even those of us who may have been baptized as adults now face a question we probably do not consider on a daily basis, if at all - do I stick with the majority, my brothers, my sisters, my parents, my friends, by identifying myself with my materialistic, angry, greedy society, or do I break away from this visible authority and walk by faith, confirming the vows of my Baptism, pledging my allegiance to this no-longer visible in human form Messiah, who has founded an invisible and "spiritual" Jerusalem, with a new priesthood and a new sacrifice?

Among the many fruits of the Spirit are joy, peace, and the strength to keep our promises to God. To access these graces, all that is needed from us is to keep the channel open, to allow the Spirit to flow through us. This is not easy, because our will, our pride, and the temptations of our daily lives constantly get in our way. So, we begin with prayer to the Holy Spirit, we make time for it, and we keep on praying, every day. The need to constantly choose God never vanishes, but the yearning of our souls, once allowed to express itself, will connect with the one Power that enables us to keep our vows.

TS Eliot has put our situation thus.

“Who then devised the torment? Love. Love is the unfamiliar Name behind the hands that wove the intolerable shirt of flame which human power cannot remove." And then he reminds us of the great choice that faces us every day.  “We only live, only suspire consumed by either fire or fire.”

Let us pray:

Heavenly Father, in every thought, word, and action, let our hearts be drawn to Your perfect Love. When the world offers comfort without truth, give us courage to choose You. When fear whispers doubt, fill us with the peace of Your presence. Lord Jesus, teach us to see with Your eyes, to forgive with Your mercy, and to serve with Your joy. May our choices reflect the light of Your Gospel, so that others may be led to Your embrace. Holy Spirit, guide our steps each day, and keep our souls anchored in the Love that never fails and never ends. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.