In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
John 7:37 – 8:12
On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.'” Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. When they heard these words, some of the people said, “This is really the prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” But some said, “Is the Christ to come from Galilee? Has not the scripture said that the Christ is descended from David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” So there was a division among the people over him. Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him. The officers then went back to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why did you not bring him?” The officers answered, “No man ever spoke like this man!” The Pharisees answered them, “Are you led astray, you also? Have any of the authorities or of the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, who do not know the law, are accursed.” Nikodemos, who had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them, “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” They replied, “Are you from Galilee too? Search and you will see that no prophet is to rise from Galilee.” Again, Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
Acts of the Apostles 2.1-11
When the Day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. And they were amazed and wondered, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontos and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”
Pentecost is one of the three great festivals of the Christian year, along with Christmas and Easter. All are part of God’s plan for the salvation of humanity, and thereby show God’s great love for His children. They also show His great faithfulness to us, for all show how He keeps the promises He has made to His children; and because of this we know that He will keep the other promises He has made to us. Both the Incarnation and our Lord’s suffering and death were promised us by God in the Old Testament; and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is also the fulfilment of a promise made to us by God, by our blessed Saviour, when He told his disciples that after His Ascension, He would not leave them alone, but with instead send them the Holy Spirit, who would remain with them, all those who followed Him, in other words his Church, to the end of the ages.
Because of the remarkable events that occurred at Pentecost – by which I mean the Spirit-inspired courage that suddenly filled the disciples who were hiding in the upper room so that they were suddenly enabled to go into the very streets they had seen Christ carry his Cross through. Streets filled with the very people who had arrested Him and dragged Him off to his mockery of a trial, torture, and death, and start preaching our Lord’s Good News to them with such bravery and conviction that they convinced thousands of its Truth that very day. And they continued in that courage and conviction until they had spread that Truth to all the corners of the Empire and those who followed them continued to all the ends of the earth.
Because of those remarkable events, that first day of Pentecost is often called the birth of the Church. It might be more accurate to call it the Manifestation of the Church on Earth – for the Church of God’s faithful exists in Heaven as well as on earth; and we know that the Angels, whom we name in our Liturgies as being part of the Church were worshipping God in Heaven before the beginning of Time itself. But the sending of the Holy Spirit on that day not only granted God’s people in the world to be part of His Church on Earth but also the Divine power to continue in Christ’s work of drawing all people to himself. So, calling Pentecost the day when the Church was born is an understandable short-hand way of describing it, even if not entirely accurate.
We learn much from Pentecost, but today let me make three brief points. The first is that, as I already said, by it Christ shows His faithfulness to the promises He made us. This means we can be sure that the reward of eternal life awaits all those who love him and show that love by being faithful to his teachings.
The second is that we can believe Him when he tells us that the Holy Spirit will remain with his Church unto the end of the ages. Indeed, we know we receive that same Spirit at our Chrismation when we receive the seal of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit that came upon the Disciples the first day of Pentecost has also come upon us. And this means that we must act with the same conviction as they did, sharing the Good News of our Saviour with all people, in all places, in all ages. And with the same courage as they did, unafraid of any consequences, whether those be risking the loss of material comforts, a reduction in social prestige, of giving offence to those who wilfully refuse to hear the Truth, or indeed, like to martyrs of that time and down through the ages to this very day, even if it means losing our very lives. For it matters nothing if we lose the whole world, even life itself, if by our faithfulness to God’s word we gain our souls, our salvation, life eternal.
And the third and last point is that the Church is not something made by us. She was created by God but by God. She – and I say ‘She’ for the Church is also referred to as the Bride of Christ –is not man-made but a Divine Creation. She is, therefore, as we say in the Creeds, something Holy. And being a Holy creation of the Almighty She is not something for us to do with as we please. Her teaching are not our teachings; Her holy and Apostolic traditions are not man-made traditions; and Her Sacraments are not something of our own invention.
And being God’s, we cannot change them either to suit ourselves or the whims and desires of others. We can only hand them on as they were handed on to us, from Christ to the Apostles, from the Apostles to the Fathers, and from those since the Fathers to us.
And that is something we must do until the end of the ages, a time when another promise of God’s will be fulfilled – the great and terrible Day when He will come again. And just as we rejoice in the other Great Promises fulfilled, marking them as great festivals of the Church, so too we will be able to rejoice on that day if we have done our best to be as faithful to God as he has shown himself to be faithful to us. Amen.
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