Pentecost Sunday - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2008

The Gospel we have just read told us: The doors were closed in the room where the disciples were for fear of the Jews. It was the same fear that had led Peter to deny he ever knew Jesus, and the other ten to clear out and leave him to be executed alone. But their fear wasn’t the whole story. Really, they had loved him, too. Their friendship had been genuine. But, under pressure, fear took over, and they had abandoned him – except for a few of the women. And then, the discovery of the empty tomb – no body! Whether that discovery increased their fear and panic, we don’t know. All that the text said was that fear still gripped them. Have you ever sinned seriously? Have you ever felt the fear of God rejecting you? …. You would have some idea of how the disciples felt.

And then, Jesus came and stood among them… Not a word of condemnation, not a word of recrimination – just: Peace be with you. And a second time: Peace be with you. Have you ever experienced God getting across to you the message: Peace be with you? - without a word of condemnation? or recrimination? with no mention at all of sin? ... That’s salvation! That’s what Jesus came to assure us of… That’s why the Father sent him. We’re such slow learners that we needed to kill him first, and then to hear him saying to us, simply: Peace be with you.

Earlier in the Gospel, we were told: God so loved the world so that he sent his only son, so that all who believe in him might not die, but might have eternal life. God loves this world of you, and me, and them… sinners! All God wants is not his pound of flesh, his revenge, but our salvation – that we might be truly alive.

To confirm the point, Jesus breathed on them, just as the creating God had breathed on the Adam of clay and made of him a living person. Jesus clarified what he was doing. He said: Receive the Holy Spirit – (The Spirit is the one who has taken over the role of the historical Jesus in the world since Jesus returned to the Father.) Just as Jesus, while he was around, had been the creating, loving God-made-flesh, now the Spirit is the love of God abroad and at work in the world today… indeed, there, within our own hearts – if only we would wake up to it.

Then Jesus said: As the Father sent me, so I now send you. Filled with, alive with, saturated in the love of God, the Holy Spirit, there in your hearts, go into the world -  the world of sinners like yourselves – and say: Peace be with you. Love people; respect people; live justly; set them free from their fear, from their despair and their emptiness. Set them free from their sin. Bring them peace, through your own love for them.

Not everyone will respond favourably to us – as they didn’t to Jesus. Some can’t face the price of changing, of growing, of breaking free. But others will. So, out we go … not alone and unsupported, but together, with each other, and, not just with each other, but, more wonderfully, with the Spirit of the loving God alive in us!