Acts 2:1-21 Romans 8:22-27 John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15 Psalm 104:25-35, 37

We often hear Pentecost described as the “Birthday of the Church.”  That is a fitting analogy.  Pentecost is a weighty time – the day that we celebrate the beginning of our responsibility to stand as individuals and in unity with other Christians to carry out the mission of Christ through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. On this specific day we reflect on the weight of our responsibility as the Church – the body of Christ – the weight of the responsibility that Jesus places upon us on this day.  

It was, in fact, at Pentecost that the followers of Christ became true apostles – no longer disciples (students learning from Jesus, their teacher and instructor in the way), but apostles – messengers of the word, charged with the responsibility of taking the message of redemption that they had learned from Jesus to a world in need of his salvation.

Most significant to us today is that, before ascending into heaven, as we read in Chapter One of The Acts, Jesus instructs his followers to wait in Jerusalem for the “promise of the Father.”  As he explains, “for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” 

That day has come.  Here we are gathered for the festival of Pentecost, one of the seven principal feasts of the Church.  It is for the Jews, as it was for these first-century Jewish Christians, the day of the celebration of the coming of the Law brought down by Moses from God on Mount Sinai, celebrated 50 days after Passover. Here we join the disciples, alone and confused, perhaps in the same upper room where they had shared the Last Supper with Christ.  “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…and all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit” [Acts 2:2&4 NRSV] 

For the people of Israel, the wind represents an important paradox: from the East, it brings blistering sandstorms off the desert; from the west it brings the cool Mediterranean breezes and much needed rain.  The wind and its paradox is something with which we along the coast can relate. 

But, this wind is something far beyond the refreshing breezes of spring that we enjoy here on the Bay; it is far beyond the natural force of the wind that carries our sailboat; it is even far beyond the gust of a hurricane that topples a century old oak tree.  This is the force of the power of God; this is the force of the Holy Spirit, the coming of which we celebrate today – the day of Pentecost.  

The word for wind in the original Hebrew and Greek is not satisfactorily translated into English.  The Biblical phrase means wind, breath, and spirit all rolled into one action of God.  Wind – breath – spirit – all one.  

The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, the Cinderella of the Trinity who, it seems, comes later to the ball, but in reality has been with us since the time of Creation through the wind and breath of God.  We read in Genesis 1:2, “the wind swept over the face of the waters” and Genesis 2:7, “God breathed into (Adam’s) nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”  We hear of the breath in the beautiful “peace” passage in our Easter Gospel lesson from John 20: “’Peace be with you.’” […] When (Jesus) had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “’Receive the Holy Spirit.’”  

So, this wind that swept the cosmos into creation and breathed life into Adam is the same wind and breath from which the disciples received the Holy Spirit.  They would no longer be able to see, hear, or touch Jesus but they would feel his presence through the Holy Spirit as we feel His presence with us in the same way.^[3]

The Holy Spirit comes to us, and makes possible our sharing God the Father and God the Son – the Spirit that is both the wind of creation and the breath of our baptism.  This is the Spirit of which Paul speaks in his letter to the Romans, the Spirit that intercedes for us in our frail prayers, the Spirit that “intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”

Now, through the spirit, our relationship with God is a personal relationship and a personal responsibility.  The divided tongues were not meaningless babble, but tongues of inspired speech in the languages understood by the multiplicity of nationalities gathered there, hungry for understanding.  Thus, the coming of the Holy Spirit is the “birthday” of the mission of the church.  It is on this day, specifically, that we accept the personal apostolic responsibility to get to know Jesus Christ and to make Him known to all the world.   It is the day that all of us here gathered commit to all who are to come that the Holy Spirit is present here and now in the Church of the Advent.

The nineteenth century preacher and teacher Richard Church expressed the gift of the Holy Spirit as the “greatest gift ever made to man […] the greatest change that was ever made in what man is in himself, in what he can himself become.”   […] filling [us] with new energies fresh from the very heart of God, begetting [us] anew from the deadness of sin, giving [us], by a new birth through the Spirit, the power to become the sons [and daughters] of God.”^[4]

Now, in celebration of our baptism by the water and the Holy Spirit, let us stand and renew our Baptismal Covenant, being baptized anew by the breath of God.

^[1]Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology, 4th (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007) 235-236.

^[2]Richard William Church in Love’s Redeeming Work – The Anglican Quest for Holiness, selected by Geoffrey Rowell, Kenneth Stevenson and Rowan Williams (New Yord: Oxford University Press, 2001) 440-441.

^[3]Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology, 4th (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007) 235-236.

^[4]Richard William Church in Love’s Redeeming Work – The Anglican Quest for Holiness, selected by Geoffrey Rowell, Kenneth Stevenson and Rowan Williams (New Yord: Oxford University Press, 2001) 440-441.