Pentecost 2007

The period between Ascension and Pentecost is a time of waiting for the disciples. They’d been through the tumult of Holy Week; they’d known the joy of Easter; they’d known more than once the presence of the Risen Lord; their meals continued their communion with him. The Acts of the Apostles, in the chapter before the story of Pentecost, tells of the Ascension, which presents some cosmological difficulties for those of us who are overly right-brained. But the point of the story isn’t cosmological; it’s theological. And it’s the counterpoise to the Incarnation. In the Incarnation, God takes on humanity; in the Ascension humanity is taken into God. The circle is complete. Now humanity—our humanity—is forever part of the Godhead. But it took awhile to figure all that out. Even the disciples, the witnesses of all these things, couldn’t articulate it yet. They went back to Jerusalem, did some community housekeeping, replacing Judas with Matthias to bring the number of the Twelve back to Twelve. They said their prayers. And they waited. They were filled with hope, not quite knowing what their hopes were or how to live into them. They were living in between: between earth-shattering events and who knows what. The German language has a lovely word for where they were. It was a Zwischenzeit, a time between. They gathered again in the Upper Room—you remember that place, the supper place. It was sort of their headquarters. They waited there. And then Whoosh! Wind, Spirit, Fire! They were filled with the Spirit, on fire, possessed, changed forever. No more Zwischenzeit for them. The event that changed them had come. They knew what to do now. They were to take on Christ’s work of changing the world. They were to bring hope into the world. The gospel on Pentecost is also a Spirit story, this one set on the evening of Easter Day. Jesus appears in the midst of the disciples—perhaps in that same Upper Room. He breathes on them, breathes the Spirit into them, the breath of God. This Pentecost our congregation gathered in Lower Room—the lower level of Canterbury House. It’s become our headquarters, our hang-out, our place of communion during our own time between: the Zwischenzeit between old Chapel and Completion. We’ve been through the excitement of planning and the completion campaign. Now we wait. We’re a little anxious, not knowing quite what’s next. But we’re filled with hope for what is to come and what it will mean for our ministry. We hope it will help us bring more hope to the world. We’re waiting to see. Except that Pentecost won’t let us wait. Here we are in our Lower Room and Whoosh! Wind, Spirit, Fire! We’re baptized with the Spirit and fire. And we can’t pretend we don’t know what to do; and the Spirit won’t let us wait to get started. Postponing things doesn’t lead to completion. Our ministry isn’t in the future. It’s here. Now. Remember that moment in the baptismal rite when we’re anointed, christened? The priest says, “N., you are sealed with the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.” It means we’re not only our own anymore. We’re possessed, Christ’s own, the Spirit’s own. Possessed. In baptism, we also promise to seek Christ in all persons. But to do that we need to remember to seek Christ in ourselves, Christ in us. We won’t do very well at identifying Christ in others until we get a grip on the fact that Christ is in us. Christ is in you and don’t you dare doubt or forget it. William Porcher Du Bose, perhaps the greatest theologian the Episcopal Church has produced puts it this way: “God in Christ is only half the truth and mystery of the incarnation; Christ in us is the full other half.” Christ in us is the full other half. The breath of God is hot upon you friends, and has lit a candle that shall not be put out. There’s a world that needs changing out there. Do it. There’s a world that needs hope. Give it. Christ in you is the other half of the incarnation, full circle. Make Christ’s work complete.