Sermon for the Day of Pentecost, May 28, 2023

Acts 2:1-21+Psalm 104:25-35, 37+1 Corinthians 12:3b-13+John 20:19-23

Anyone who has heard me preach more than a couple of times will know that I sometimes get lost in exploring meanings of our texts by doing a deep dive word study. Sorry, folks, this was one of those weeks, but it’s just one word, I promise.

Among those who are experts in these things – and I am most assuredly not – there is a phrase to indicate when a word appears only once in a selected text, in our case, the Greek New Testament. Okay, I wasn’t going to tell you what it is, but it’s hapax legomenon, which simply means “being said once.” That these words are rare in a given text is reason to sit up and take notice.

We have one of those in our reading from John this morning. When Jesus breathes on the disciples, bestowing upon them the gift of the Holy Spirit, that word for breathe does not appear anywhere else in the Christian scriptures. It does, however, appear in the Hebrew scriptures, specifically the book of Genesis. In the 2nd account of creation in Genesis 2, it says

In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. (Genesis 4b-7)

God breathed life into this human, and Jesus breathes life into the disciples. This Holy Spirit, the oft-neglected member of the Holy Trinity, is the life force of God within each of us. She was not some new thing on the Day of Pentecost; she was in it from the beginning when the wind swept over the waters in Genesis 1 (wind and spirit being the same feminine noun) to that breath blown into the nostrils of the first human. The mighty rush of wind we read about in Acts 2 was just that same spirit of God giving life to this bewildered and beleaguered gathering of disciples, lighting a fire that would spread across the known world in only a few short centuries.

This is why this day, the Feast of Pentecost, is especially appropriate for baptism. Those coming to receive this sacrament are passed through the waters of baptism, dying to sin, and rising to new life. They are anointed and sealed by that same Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever. It is often said that Pentecost is the birthday of the Church. We could as easily say the baptism is the birthday of the newly baptized.

This day is not simply the beginning of the Church, though. The Holy Spirit did not sweep through that Upper Room gathering so that the Church as an institution could be born. All of these people, not just the original eleven plus the newly commissioned Matthias who was chosen in Acts 1 to replace Judas, but all of them – women, children, friends, and followers – were commissioned by that spirit to proclaim that God’s reign was here. It is an apocalyptic message, the inauguration of the end of days, and this is why Peter’s speech incorporating words from the prophet Joel are so important.

  In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
   and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
   and your old men shall dream dreams. (Acts 2:17/Joel 2:28-29)

There she is again, that Spirit, urging us on, breathing life into us, inspiring us, which is what breathing is – respiration, inspiration, expiration all have to do with breathing, and the last – expiration – is what happens when you cease to breathe.

There is something a bit terrifying about the unpredictability of the Holy Spirit. You never know quite when she is going to show up. In the Pentecostal churches, she manifests in ecstatic worship, speaking in tongues, being slain in the spirit, and I kind of imagine that’s what this first Pentecost looked like.

But y’all. We’re Episcopalians. We don’t do those sorts of things. It’s why we are called the frozen chosen, for goodness’ sake.

Well, maybe it’s time for a thaw. Maybe it’s time to open ourselves to the power of the Spirit, allowing ourselves to be unleashed onto the world with the fire of God’s love burning inside of us.

There is so much chatter these days about the Church dying, on its last legs, an irrelevancy in a world that has no use for it.

I’m not willing to give into that. I am not prepared to have the Church expire. We are, by the power of the Holy Spirit, sent into the world, to tell the Good News, to seek and serve Christ in all people, and to draw people into this household of faith.

Today – the Day of Pentecost – is an excellent day to begin.