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“Perplexing” based on Acts 2:1-18 and John 20:19-23

Drew, today's confirmand, planned this worship service.  He had a lot of leeway.  I was surprised at how little of it he used, and how intentional he was in the decisions he did make.  Drew likes worship the way we usually do it, but there were some tweaks.  Please pay attention to the labeling of the music at the beginning and end of worship ;)

Some of the leeway Drew had was in picking the scriptures for today.  He asked what was traditionally read on this day and we read together the Pentecost texts from the Revised Common Lectionary, year A. After questions about the texts themselves, he decided that we should read the two different versions of the Pentecost story from Acts and John.  When we discussed the sermon he suggested that I compare and contrast the stories, and then pull out the meaning that is in both of them for all of us.

I like this young man's idea of a sermon ;)

The Christian liturgical calendar follows the Luke-Acts narrative about Pentecost, placing it 50 days after Easter.  The Greek ordinal number for 50?  Pentecosto.  Pentecost was a part of the Jewish Celebration of Booths (sometimes called Tabernacle), celebrated 50 days after the Passover, and was a harvest festival.  Luke's placement of the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost is saturated with meaning.  The harvest festival becomes a harvest of new Jesus followers.  The harvest festival was celebration of the bounty as a sign of of God's care for the people, and Luke reimagines it as a celebration of God's care for the people through the sending of the Holy Spirit.

It is on this basis that Christianity celebrates the Season of Easter for 50 days, starting on Easter Sunday and culminating in Pentecost. We do it because Luke and Acts tell us that the gift of the Spirit came 50 days later.

John, however, disagrees.  Neither Matthew nor Mark present any version of this story, so the debate is simply between Luke-Acts and John.  (Ah, I should explain my language.  Luke and Acts are written by the same person and meant to be parts 1 &2 of the same book, however the order of the New Testament messes this up.)  John's gospel places the gift of the Holy Spirit on Easter evening.  We may sometimes gloss over this story, because it gets used as an opening to the story about Thomas, who wasn't there when the Spirit was given.  The story is less often heard standing alone, and it didn't get prime attention in the creation of the Christian calendar, which prefers Luke's version.

The stories are VERY different.  Luke-Acts takes place in the morning, a fact we are reminded of because Jesus' followers are again being accused of being drunk.  John's version takes place at night. Luke-Acts's version happens in public, others see the impact of the Spirit, and they hear the preaching, and many are converted.  John's version involves a large group of disciples as well, but without an audience.  There is more FUSS in Luke-Act's version, more description of the event, more of a miraculous feel.  John's version is relatively quiet.  It mostly focuses on Jesus speaking.

In Luke-Acts, the crowd responds to the disciples speak.  It says they were amazed, bewildered, and perplexed.  The movement of the Spirit and its impact seemed startling, and not in particularly comfortable ways.  The Spirit is known to blow as she will, and that often makes people uncomfortable.  

(An aside:  the last time I read about the Spirit, the Bible translation I read from referred to the Spirit with feminine pronouns.  Afterward I was asked about it, and had the chance to share the fact that the Spirit's pronouns in Hebrew are feminine, and some translators follow the Hebrew, despite the fact that in Greek the Spirit is gender neutral and in Latin the Spirit is masculine.  Since the Creator most often gets male pronouns in the Bible, I also tend to want to follow the Hebrew pronouns for the sake of balance within our conceptions of God.)

In both texts the Spirit comes to the Body as a WHOLE.  The Spirit is NOT received by one person, but instead by many.  In Luke-Acts, given that the occurrence is during a Jewish pilgrimage festival, faithful Jews had filled the city to be witnesses, but the people in the house together all receive the gift together.  

The writer in the New Interpreter's Bible, has a fantastic comment on the fact that the faithful Jews from around the diaspora took note that the Galilean men were speaking to them in their languages.  They could still tell that the men were Galilean, including by their speech.  Robert Wall says, “The language of the Spirit is not communicated with perfect or heavenly diction, free from the marks of human identity; it is the language of particular human groups, spoken in their idiom.  God works in collaboration with real people – people who are filled with the Spirit to work on God's behalf in their own world.”1 I rather love that idea.  The Spirit moved, and certainly in unexpected ways, but still worked within the people as they were, including with their existent accents!

Now, likely because of the tradition doing so, I associate the story in Acts as the normative Pentecost story, which means that I'm intrigued by the version in John.  As previously mentioned, it also involves the Spirit coming to a group of Jesus followers, it was likely NOT just the 12 because John doesn't tend to think in terms of just the 12 and he didn't designate them as such.  A group of followers were simply gathered, and they had an experience of the Risen Christ, which IMMEDIATELY involved receiving the gift of the Spirit.

Jesus speaks in five sentences, and two of them are saying “Peace be with you.”  This is a particularly apt greeting for the frightened followers who had fearfully locked themselves into an upstairs room - after hearing the women's Easter story!  The double naming of peace both sounds like a traditional greeting imbued with God AND serves as a reminder that fear need not define their lives.  Those faithful disciples were going to face significant persecution in coming days and years, but Jesus, God, AND the Spirit were calling them to do so in a different way, with the Peace of God within them.  

In this version the gift of the Spirit is the gift given so that the followers of Jesus can continue his work, they become HIM and are empowered to do as he had done.  He was sent, so they are sent.  He breaths on them as God has breathed on the first humans in Genesis. A new life is beginning, one that is defined by peace.

Now, I have never much liked the LAST line of this passage, John 20:23, which has Jesus saying, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."  My objections aren't particularly deep.  I j shy away from sin language, as I've too often seen it lead to guilt and shame rather than to a free and abundant life of peace and joy with God.  

However, Gail O'Day's commentary on John (also in the New Interpreter's Bible) fixed a lot of problems for me, and made me rather glad that line was included.  She says that, “In John, sin is a theological failing, not a moral or behavioral transgression (in contrast to Matt. 18:18). To have sin is to be blind to the revelation of God in Jesus.”2 Furthermore, given this understanding, “The forgiveness of sins must be understood as a Spirit-empowered mission of continuing Jesus' work in the world.”3 And, finally, this work is the work of the community, and never one person alone.  

So, let me see if I can remake those words so they fit with O'Day's insights.  But maybe first, you should know that Gail O'Day is Dean and Professor of New Testament and Preaching at Wake Forest School of Divinity, and was previously professor of homeletics at Candler school of Theology at Emory.  She's an amazing scholar, and especially well respected as a scholar of the Gospel of John. Following her insights, it would be as if Jesus said, “If you work together to help people see God at work in the world, they will be free from their fears and able to live in peace with you.  If you leave people in the fear they already know, there they will stay, without the blessings that you now live with.”  

In O'Day's reflections on this text, she continually turns back to John 14-17, which is called the Farewell Discourse.  Within it are the defining words, in John 15:12, “ ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” O'Day reflects on the continuity between the passages, “By loving one another as Jesus loves, the faith community reveals God to the world”4 Thus, the seemingly problematic line that the institutional church has often used to claim authority over people's lives and access to forgiveness is really about inviting the followers of Christ to share God's love, and in doing so to show other people the possibility of living life in peace, love, joy, and freedom from fear.

Perhaps it isn't so perplexing after all.  Perhaps the story of Pentecost is the story we already know:  God calls us to love one another and be examples of the gracious and abundant love of God in the world.  And that can change everything, because it is the completion of the Easter narrative – no matter when it happened ;).  Thanks be to God for the opportunity we have to extend love into the world.  Amen

1Robert W. Wall, New Interpreter's Bible Volume X: Acts Leander E. Keck editorial board convener (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002) 58.

2Gail O'Day, New Interpreter's Bible Volume IX: John, Leander E. Keck editorial board convener (Nashville: Abingdon Press,1995) 847.

3O'Day, 847

4New Interpreter's Bible, John, 848.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

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