Pentecost Sunday - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2005

Today’s gospel is so encouraging. The newly risen Christ says to his disciples: Receive the holy Spirit: for those whose sins you forgive they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain they  are retained. He is telling us in so many words: Be empowered; Confront the destructiveness of the sin of the world. Earlier, Jesus had referred to the Spirit as the Spirit of truth, who would prove the world wrong about sin, and justice and judgment. He saw the Spirit as the one who would provide the insight to recognise justice and to name its opposite – sin; and in so doing to prove the world wrong in what it takes as read: the world as it takes shape in our institutions, their assumptions and their operations. It is a message we all need to take to heart as we live together in our world and in our Church.

In today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Luke wrote: we hear them preaching in our own language about the marvels of God. Luke connected the power of the Spirit to the capacity to hear and to speak the same language, to communicate the one message of Jesus to every culture... and is so doing to bring the world into unity through dialogue: hearing as well as speaking.

In the second reading, Paul was dealing not with the world stage, but with the local Christian community and its problems of speaking the same language. He envisaged a community of great diversity: There is a variety of gifts, and rejoiced in that varied giftedness.

However, earlier in the same epistle he had confronted the situation where there was also a variety of  factions: some for Apollos, some for Peter, some for Paul, some (the theological sophisticates, no doubt!) for Christ. Paul saw the emphasis on those differences as basically unhelpful. “What are we really on about?” he effectively asked, “Don’t we all love God? Can’t we accept that we will see some things differently yet still respect each other’s integrity and not, in our insecurity, seek to undermine and demonise those who disagree with us?”

Later in the epistle, Paul confronted what he saw as truly destructive: the fact of people being treated differently on the basis of their social standing: (Specifically those well-off were insensitive to those less so). To celebrate Eucharist, and not to do anything about addressing that issue, was for him to make a mockery of Eucharist. For Paul, what mattered were not external irrelevancies but hearts open in practical love. In fact, he saw that the greatest gift of the Spirit, and the proof of the presence of the Spirit, in the desire and the capacity to love: that is, to respect, to listen, to speak and to serve. History shows that unity has always been a knotty problem within the Christian community. It is still a real difficulty in the Church today. I find it a challenge myself – to genuinely respect those I disagree with.

Jesus had said earlier in John’s gospel: God so loved the world that he sent his only Son, so that all who believe in him may not be lost but may have eternal life. God’s initiative in face of the sin in the world, the sin of the world, was not to condemn or to punish, but to send Jesus, the truth-speaker, the one who loved par excellence, so that all who would open themselves to him and to his message, (that is, all who would follow the truth in love) might enjoy eternal life, might live authentically, be truly alive. In the process they would be saved from untruth and half-truth: and, along with that, they would be saved also from the loneliness and the destructiveness of life without love.

Let us listen again to the risen Jesus as, filled with hope and anticipation, he commissions and empowers us: As the Father sent me, so I send you. Receive the holy Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive they are forgiven... for those whose sins you retain they are retained. Effectively he is saying: “The mission now is yours..  Speak the truth, love the truth, be real, live in love. Accept your power to confront a world wrapped in darkness’’.

And yet the haunting possibility is also there that, if we hold back from our mission, fearful and without love, our world remains engulfed in its sin. Well might we pray: “Come, holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in us the fire of your love.”