©2025 The Rev. Seth Olson
Holy God, let my words be your words—and when my words are not your words, may your people be wise enough to know the same. Amen.
When we think of Pentecost, most of us probably first go to the story from Acts we heard today as our first lesson.
The disciples are gathered together. Suddenly, the house is filled with the sound of a violent wind. Tongues like fire appear among them. They begin speaking in languages they did not know before, and people hear God’s mighty works proclaimed in their own native tongues.
It is public. Dramatic. Loud. Expansive.The Spirit rushes into the house and pushes the disciples beyond it. But today our Gospel gives us another story of the Spirit being imparted by God, and this one feels very different.
It is evening on the day of the Resurrection. The disciples are gathered behind locked doors. They are afraid. Mary Magdalene has already announced, “I have seen the Lord,” but they are not yet living as though Jesus’ Resurrection has changed everything.
They are still hiding. And Jesus comes and stands among them. He does not shame them for their fear. His first words are simply, “Peace be with you.”
Then Jesus shows them his hands and his side: the wounds he still carries in his risen body. And then he says again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
Then Jesus breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” In John’s Gospel, account Pentecost does not begin with wind filling a house. It begins with breath in a locked room.
In Acts, the Spirit comes publicly, drawing people together across nations and languages. In John, the Spirit comes tenderly, breathing new life into frightened disciples and entrusting them with the holy work of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Together, they reveal something essential: the Spirit of God comes to us in manifold ways.
Sometimes the Spirit comes like fire.
Sometimes the Spirit comes like breath.
Sometimes the Spirit moves through a crowd.
Sometimes the Spirit meets us behind locked doors.
Sometimes the Spirit gives us words to speak.
Sometimes the Spirit gives us enough peace to take the next faithful step.
And so we should be careful not to discount another person’s experience of the Spirit because it does not look like our own.
Some encounter God in music that lifts their hearts until they cannot help but sing. Some encounter God in silence, when the noise quiets enough for them to know that they are loved. Some encounter the Spirit in serving someone in need, in bread and wine, in recovery, or in a conversation that becomes holy.
The Spirit is free. The Spirit blows where she will. The Spirit is not ours to control or contain. Our calling is not to decide in advance how God must appear. Our calling is to pay attention when God does.
Yet, for all their differences, the Pentecost accounts from John and Acts share a common direction. In both stories, the Spirit does not come merely for spiritual experience. The Spirit comes to send them into the world.
In John, Jesus says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” In Acts, the Spirit enables the disciples to proclaim good news to people from every nation under heaven. So, the Spirit does not breathe upon us merely so that we can feel peaceful for ourselves. The Spirit does not set our hearts on fire merely so that we can admire the warmth. The Spirit draws us into the mission and ministry of Jesus: mercy, healing, truth, justice, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
John makes that especially clear. As soon as Jesus breathes the Spirit upon the disciples, he speaks about forgiving and retaining sins.
Now reconciliation does not mean pretending harm never happened. It does not mean avoiding difficult truth or allowing injustice to continue.
After all, the risen Jesus shows the disciples his wounds before he sends them out.
The wounds are real. But the wounds no longer have the final word. The crucified and risen Christ stands among frightened people, bearing the marks of violence, abandonment, betrayal, and death, and says, “Peace be with you.” That is reconciliation: not the erasure of wounds, but God bringing new life and new relationship through them.
And, Acts tells the same story in a different way. At Pentecost, people from many cultures and nations hear the Gospel in their own languages. Notice what the Spirit does not do. The Spirit does not require everyone to abandon their language and speak one official holy language. The Spirit does not erase difference or flatten humanity into uniformity. Each person hears God’s mighty works in the language of home.
Pentecost is not sameness. Pentecost is communion across difference.
If Babel is humanity divided by its attempt to grasp power and climb their way to the seat of God, then Pentecost is God’s response: not human beings climbing toward heaven through domination, but heaven pouring itself out upon human beings in grace.
Sons and daughters shall prophesy. Young people shall see visions. Old people shall dream dreams. Those the world considers powerless shall receive the Spirit. The Spirit is poured out upon all flesh.
Paul says something similar to the Corinthians. There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And then he gives us the key: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” The gifts of the Spirit are not given to make us impressive. They are given to make us useful to one another in love.
That is no small task, because the world is noisy. Every day, voices compete for our attention: politics, companies, screens, anxieties, outrage, productivity, and endless possibility. No wonder it can feel difficult to discern the Spirit, especially when we are choosing not between obvious good and evil, but between good and good, necessary and necessary, difficult and difficult.
And yet, even now, the Spirit is moving. The Spirit is moving here, at Holy Apostles, as we discern how to serve, love, forgive, heal, and become the community God is calling us to be.
The Spirit is calling us into a future we cannot see and certainly cannot control. We might prefer the Spirit to hand us a complete plan. But the Spirit rarely works that way.
Sometimes the Spirit blows us beyond doors we locked for security.
Sometimes the Spirit breathes life into places in us we thought were too wounded and she calls us to serve from there. Sometimes the Spirit burns away something we thought we needed. Sometimes the Spirit speaks through someone whose experience is different from our own. So perhaps the invitation of Pentecost is simple: slow down enough to listen.
Listen for the Spirit moving in your own life. Listen for the Spirit moving in this community. Listen for the Spirit speaking through gifts unlike your own. Listen for the Spirit calling you toward reconciliation. Listen for the Spirit pushing us beyond fear and into freedom.
Because our salvation does not come from political might, economic security, productivity, popularity, being right, or controlling the future. Our salvation comes from the God who breathes life into dust, raises the wounded Christ from the dead, pours out the Spirit upon all flesh, and sends ordinary people into the world carrying extraordinary love.
I want to close with a blessing from William Sloane Coffin who was a Chaplain at Yale for several decades including during the tumultuous 1960s. His witness of God’s reconciling love for all was evidenced not only by his care for his students, but also in organizing freedom riders to travel south to help with voter registration. This benediction, “A Blessing of Grace,” feels right for Pentecost:
May God give you the grace never to sell yourself short;
Grace to risk something big for something good; and
Grace to remember the world is now
too dangerous for anything but the truth and
too small for anything but love.
So come, Holy Spirit. Breathe upon us behind our locked doors. Set fire to whatever in us needs to be made new. Give each of us gifts for the common good. Draw us together without erasing who you have made us to be. And send us out, in the peace of Christ, to participate in the reconciliation and renewal of the whole world.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment