“A Spirit of Peace and Forgiveness”

Pentecost Sunday

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Numbers 11:24-30

Psalm 104:24-34, 35b

Acts 2:1-21

Today is Mother’s Day – a day when we give thanks for the gift of our mothers.

And so, to all of you who are mothers, or who someday might consider becoming a mother, or who honour those who are mothers even though you never really want to be one yourself, or who have a mother, or who ever had a mother, I would like to wish you a very happy mother’s day.  (If you do not fit into at least one of those categories, my sincere apologies!)

Mother’s Day offers us an opportunity to give thanks both for and to our mothers, for the many gifts that they have given to us, not least of which is the gift of life itself.  Over the course of so many of our lives, our mothers have given so generously and freely of their love, their attention, their energy, their dedication and their resources, and our lives have been shaped and blessed by those gifts.

But this particular Mother’s Day is also Pentecost Sunday, that day when we celebrate the gift of God’s Holy Spirit to the community of Christ’s followers so soon after his departure from among them.

At the heart of both of these events – Mother’s Day and Pentecost -- is a celebration of the giving and receiving of gifts.  On Mother’s Day, the gift of life and the love of our mothers; and on Pentecost, the gift of God’s Holy Spirit.

Most of us know the story of Pentecost as it is recounted in the Book of Acts.  We know the story of the disciples, fearfully huddling together in the room in Jerusalem, pondering how they would proceed now that Jesus had departed from among them at the time of the ascension.  What would they do?  How would they carry on? 

And then, we are told about the way that the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out upon them – a wind rushed through the room, tongues like fire danced above their heads; and then they burst from that room, onto the streets of Jerusalem, with the ability to speak in different languages so that all could understand the good news that Jesus had sent them to declare to the world.

We know this story of the coming of the Spirit, from Acts, so well that we can tend to overlook the fact that the Gospel of John presents the event in a dramatically different way.  Like Acts, the Gospel of John also tells the story of the gift of the Holy Spirit, but with significant variations in the ways that the story is told.

In the Gospel of John, as we read today, the Spirit was given to the disciples, not after Jesus’ ascension, but rather by Jesus himself.  And the Spirit was not given fifty days after the resurrection.  Rather, our reading from the Gospel of John begins by telling us that Jesus appeared to his disciples on the evening of the very day that he had risen from the dead.  He stood among them; he showed them his wounded hand, and feet, and side; and, as the text states, they ‘rejoiced.’  We then read,

Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you."  When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

Jesus appeared; he breathed on them, just as God had breathed on the dust of the earth in the story of Genesis and brought forth life; and, in that breath, he poured out, upon them, the gift of God’s Holy Spirit.

And how was that Spirit known? 

The Gospel of John does not connect the giving of the Spirit with the day of Pentecost, nor does that account suggest that the Spirit drove Jesus’ disciples into the streets with the ability to speak in different languages.  Rather, the Gospel of John suggests that the gift of the Spirit would fill Jesus’ followers with peace and with the power of forgiveness.  “Peace be with you…if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

The gift that Jesus gave to his followers, therefore, was the gift of a spirit of peace and the power of forgiveness.

Such was the nature of the gift.  But when it comes to the giving and receiving of gifts, it is not enough to know what the gift is.  Rather, it is equally important to know who the gift is for.  Most of us, at one point or another, have likely been in that troubling situation, on Christmas morning or at some family gathering, when a card has fallen off of a wrapped present, and there is some doubt as to who is the gift’s intended recipient.  On Mother’s Day, the field of possible recipients is somewhat narrow – but this is not necessarily the case if one’s family tradition includes gathering together with relatives and friends, with grandmothers as well as mothers.  A gift that simply says “Happy Mother’s Day” is not enough.   One needs to be a bit more specific about which mother is the intended recipient of the gift.

And so it is on the day of Pentecost.

After all, to speak of the gift of the Spirit is one thing – but to determine who the intended recipient of that gift of a spirit of peace and of forgiveness is can be a matter of some reflection.

I would invite us to consider that there are, in fact, three answers to this question of who the recipient of God’s Spirit is intended to be.

The first answer might be that the gift of the Spirit is meant for us, as individuals. 

Every one of us comes to faith and to the experience of the spiritual life personally, or not at all.  There is no one that can force us to believe, nor is it sufficient to take everyone else’s word for it.  There is a point when we need to realize, and even to accept, that the blessing of Christ’s Spirit of peace and forgiveness is a gift that is intended for us to embrace in the most personal and individual sense.

And when we come into the experience of that spirit of peace, that spirit of forgiveness, we truly know the blessing of God.  Our lives, and our spirits, which are so often tossed and turned by the tumults of life, or so often plagued by animosity and ill feelings towards those who have hurt or offended us, need that Spirit.  We need to experience peace, and forgiveness, even to the depths of our own spirits.  Christ’s gift is for us.  

But to limit this gift only to ourselves, as individuals, is neither particularly helpful, nor particularly faithful to the biblical text that we read today. After all, the words of Jesus, in this passage, were directed not towards an individual, but rather to a gathered community, to a group of his followers.  A second answer to this question, therefore, might be that the gift of the Spirit is also intended for the gathered community of Christ’s followers.  The Spirit is a gift to the Church. 

And how desperately the Church needs to receive and to embrace that gift of peace and of forgiveness!  The past two thousand years bear witness to the number of times that we, as the community of Christ’s followers, have become divided from each other – sometimes with devastating and destructive consequences.  We can celebrate the fact that, as far as I can tell, there are no longer any places in the world where violent conflicts are drawn along Christian denominational lines in the ways that they once were between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland or in other parts of Europe.  There may still be places where political partisans and religious identities are too closely aligned, but we can rejoice that interdenominational violence, between different parts of the Christian church are, for the most part, a thing of the past.

But this does not mean that Christians have completely embraced a spirit of peace and forgiveness towards each other.  To the contrary, there are conflicts within churches that are not marked by the peace, the forgiveness and the unity that the Spirit was intended to create.  There are many places in the Church where differences over social and moral issues, approaches to people of other faiths, preferences in worshipping styles, and perspectives on the ways that the church should be ordered and structured are tearing at the fabric of Christian unity and the promise of peace between the followers of Christ. 

What we must realize, as Christians, is that the credibility of our proclamation, and the effectiveness of our witness to the world is directly connected with our ability to live at peace with one another.  How we treat one another within a local congregation, how we speak about and treat one another across denominational lines, and even how we seek to maintain a spirit of unity and of peace with others with whom we fundamentally disagree about important ideological and theological issues sends a clear signal to the world about the true power and credibility of the Gospel.  After all, how can we dare to speak of good news of grace, of love, of peace, of unity and of forgiveness to the world if we cannot even live with such compassion with others with whom we claim a common faith?  How much more effective and powerful would our witness to the world be if the Church itself could fully embrace this gift of a spirit of peace and of forgiveness that Christ breathed upon his first disciples?

This question of the credibility of the Church’s witness to the world leads us to a third answer to the question of who the intended recipient of the spirit might be.

That is, it might be suggested that the intended recipient of the spirit is not just we, ourselves; nor is it just the Church; but rather, it is the world.  After all, when Jesus breathed upon his followers, he did not encourage them to celebrate that gift among themselves, in some isolated or sheltered little cult of peaceful serenity and forgiving tranquility.  Rather, he sent them into the world.  “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

Through the work of his disciples, Christ intended for the world to receive the gift of his spirit of peace and forgiveness.  The  Church is meant to be for the world; not in opposition to it.

And how that gift, that spirit, is needed in our world.  There are so many places where peace and forgiveness are rare, but desperately needed.  We continue to lament the tragic loss of life in the conflicts of the Middle East, in Africa, and in so many other parts of the world.  We continue to see violence and the threat of violence as the solution to our problems.   We continue to ponder how different the streets of our cities, and even our own homes and workplaces would be, if they were infused with a spirit of peace and of forgiveness. 

On this Mother’s Day, it is good for us to remember that we live in a world in which there are mothers who are in situations where they have had to watch their children suffer from violence; mothers who have had to watch their children starve to death; and those children who face life without the love of a mother.  We, as the followers of Jesus, have been blessed by a spirit of peace, of blessing and of forgiveness so that we might work towards a world where every mother’s child is loved, fed, cared for and cherished.

The gift of the Spirit, therefore, might be understood as a gift with many intended recipients.  It is a gift that is intended for us, as individuals; it is a gift that is intended for the Church; it is a gift that is intended for the world.

But what is interesting for us to realize is that these three answers are not as distinct or disconnected as they first might appear. 

There is an old Chinese proverb that states the following:

If there is light in the soul,
There will be beauty in the person.
If there is beauty in the person,
There will be harmony in the house.
If there is harmony in the house,
There will be order in the nation,
If there is order in the nation,
There will be peace in the world.

That wonderful saying reminds us that peace within us, peace between us, and peace in the world are all connected.  It is not possible to speak about a spirit of peace and forgiveness in the world if there is no such spirit in our own lives, and in our own souls.  

And so, on this Pentecost Sunday, we pray that the gift of Christ’s spirit of peace and forgiveness might be revealed in this world, which is so often torn apart by conflict and a lack of forgiveness.  We pray that the gift of Christ’s spirit of peace and of forgiveness might be revealed in the church, as we seek to bear witness to the reconciling grace and love of God.  And we pray that the gift of Christ’s spirit of peace and of forgiveness might be received, embraced, and revealed, in us -- both now and forevermore.

Amen.