Pentecost Sunday
There are different ways to be present or absent to each other. For example, in his 'Farewell Discourse', Jesus tries to explain to his disciples some of the deep paradoxes inside the mystery of presence and absence.
He tells them that it is better for them that he goes away because, unless he does, he will be unable to send them his spirit. He assures them, too, that the heaviness and grief they will feel at his leaving is really the pain of giving birth and that this heartache will eventually turn warm and nurturing and bring them a joy that no one can ever take from them.
That is the language of Ascension and Pentecost, not just as it pertains to Jesus leaving this earth and sending his spirit, but also as it pertains to the mystery of giving and receiving spirit in all our goodbyes.
Among other things, it points to that perplexing experience we have where we can only fully understand and appreciate others after they go away, just as others can only fully understand us and let themselves be fully blessed by us after we go away. Like Jesus, we can only really send our spirits after we go away.
We experience this everywhere in life: a grown child has to leave home before her parents can fully understand and appreciate her for who she really is. There comes a day in a young person's life when she stands before her parents and, in whatever way, says the words: "It is better for you that I go away! Unless I go you will never really know who I am. You will have some heartache now, but that pain will eventually become warm because I will come back to you in a deeper way." Parents say the same thing to their children when they are dying.
The earliest Christians underwent two rapid, radical changes that they're inspired authors helped them interpret. They realized after a while that Jesus was not going to return in glory as soon as they had expected, and that they had to undertake a worldwide mission in the interim. Secondly, though the followers of Jesus were originally a small group of Jews, their communities had come to be dominated by Gentile converts. When Saint Luke put pen to parchment, the questions raised by these changes governed his writing of the gospel and of Acts.
Pentecost was originally a Jewish feast that brought Jews from many places to Jerusalem. The mixed crowd is a providential preparation for the beginning of the Church's mission to the whole world. But, instead of diverse peoples crowding into Jerusalem, missionaries will soon go out from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.
One of the reasons Luke wrote his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles in the mid-80s was to explain how a Jewish reform movement begun in the early 30s had, within 50 years, developed into a religion appealing exclusively to non-Jews from all over the known world.
Luke was convinced that the Holy Spirit both motivated and guided the Christian community during this process. That's why, before anyone in Acts starts thinking about converting Gentiles, the Spirit must be embedded in those who will eventually make the decisions that lead to this essential change in direction.
John has the Spirit arriving on Easter Sunday night. Luke places the event forty days later, on the Jewish feast of Pentecost.
Pentecost is the annual commemoration of the Sinai covenant between God and the ancient Israelites. This encounter had formed a band of runaway slaves into the people of God. With this in mind, Luke has the Holy Spirit form those gathered in the upper room into God's new people.
Anticipating the Church's mission to all people, Luke mentions that "there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem," all able to hear the Spirit-filled followers of Jesus speaking in their native languages. Luke names the localities that later will be evangelized and claimed for Jesus.
Such a distinctive change in direction helps explain why Luke uses wind, fire and noise to describe the Spirit's arrival. Each of the three dramatically changes the community's "status quo." Things and people are never the same afterward.
That's why Paul begins his famous second reading (I Corinthians 12: 3-7, 12-13) on the Spirit's gifts by reminding his community, "To each individual, the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit."
Because there's always some who will insist that such Spirit-instigated changes are from the devil and not from God, Paul emphasizes the necessity of the Spirit's presence and actions. He believes one cannot even proclaim, "Jesus is Lord!" unless he or she gives themselves over to the Spirit.
No matter how violent and divisive the Spirit seems, the Spirit has just one purpose: to constantly form us into the body of Christ, one presence of the risen Jesus in the world. This is where John's Gospel comes in. We can forget the contradictions between Luke and John on when the Spirit arrives. The important dimension of the Spirit's presence for John is that, without using Paul's terminology, the Spirit also forms us into Christ's body. The way this is accomplished is by following Jesus' command to forgive.
Jesus reminds His disciples, "As the Father has sent me, so I sent you." Notice the parallel to Paul's insight that we're Christ's body. John simply says that it's up to us to carry on the risen Jesus' ministry, to be "other Christs" to all around us.
Forgiveness is probably the most essential of all the Spirit's gifts. It's the only way communities can exist for long periods of time. And it also mirrors the ministry of forgiveness for which the historical Jesus was so well known and for which He was put to death. Without forgiveness, a community is merely a crowd. However, the community that is the Body of Christ must be founded on and animated by a forgiving spirit.