READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Genesis 11:1-9
Acts 2:1-13
St. John 14:23-31
To you all who are baptized into the fiery and powerful
Spirit of the true Son of God:
To you all, my true children in the common faith: Grace and
peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.
Who speaks to you today, saying,
“If anyone loves
me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him
and make our home with him.”
In its own small way, Pentecost marks the end of the
official Easter season and is its climax, in that God, in Christ, hands over
the Keys to His kingdom to His Church. And not just any Church, but the One
Body, One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism Church. In fact, unity is what makes the
Church Church. For there are many talents, many members, but only one Spirit.
Note that all the men at Pentecost, in Acts today, spoke
every language. It was not “to this man one language and to this one, another”,
dividing the tongues, as it were. In the Gift of the Holy Ghost, Jesus gathers
and unifies the entire world, causing His Word to be spoken in every language.
On top of that, He also gives to us a new language: His own.
In one of my favorite things the Holy Ghost does for us, He
forces the broken and corrupt things of this world to do His Will. In the midst
of the multiplicity and degeneration of language, God does not forsake, but
rather sanctifies our words for His churchly use. This is why we don’t all have
to know and speak Hebrew or some other heaven-language in order to know,
understand, and hear God.
Though the Holy Ghost caused the multiplication of language,
He did so in order to reveal our hatred of Him and to prove that He is a merciful
God by bringing us back together, in spite of language barriers. All this to
prove that He is the God Who forgives and creates unity, even in a world that
is undividedly against Him.
However, unifying languages is one thing, but sanctifying
them is quite another. So it is that speaking about God only through the
crucified Christ, becomes a foreign language to the world. Despite the fact
that God uses words we understand, talking about a self-sacrificing God is an
other-worldly topic.
This is why, when first coming into the Church, it is
discomforting and off-putting. Because in the Church of the Holy Ghost, a new
song is sung with words that we aren’t used to. Its not that we don’t know the
words or understand them, its that we can’t believe that God acts in the way
that the words say He does.
And since God acts in unbelievable ways, Word and Sacrament,
faith must be given in order to believe. As Judas, not Iscariot, asks Jesus
today in v.22 of John 14, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself
to us, and not to the world?” Which is what prompts Jesus’s answer in
today’s Gospel and He answers with the unity of the Holy Ghost.
Repent. How is Jesus going to accomplish unity? You barely
make friends with other people, much less those who claim to be Christian. It
is usually your mode of operation to anti-socially distance people. You find
one thing to agree on and are immediately repelled by others. If the Christians
can’t find unity, what hope is there for the rest of the world?
Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when He was betrayed
took bread and prayed for our unity saying, “I am no longer in the world,
but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in
your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one”
(Jn 17:11). He also said whoever does not gather with Him, scatters (Matt
12:30).
And according to Jesus’ prayer, this unity is achieved by
Jesus giving us His glory (Jn. 17:22), by Him dwelling in us (v.23), and us
dwelling in the Trinity (v.21). All this so that there may be one flock and one
Shepherd (John 10:16), for there is only one way to forgiveness, life, and
salvation: Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6).
What we see and hear from Jesus is His usage of the
preposition “in”. Jesus has introduced this peculiar phrase before where
something physical dwells or is in something else physical. If we page
back to St. John 15, we find Jesus talking about the vine and the branches.
Back further still, St. John 10:38, Jesus says that the Father is in Him and He
in the Father.
Now, this would be easy to understand if Jesus had stopped
there. Since we know that the Father did not take on flesh as the Son did, it
is easy for us to picture a spirit dwelling in a body such as Jesus’ body. But
He takes this phrase even further. In John 6:56 and also in his first epistle,
chapter 4, St. John continues this line of thinking.
And in both places, we are left with a quandary. No longer
is it simply a spirit, but a man dwelling in us, for I John 4:2 says, “Jesus
Christ has come in the flesh” and John 6:56 says, “Whoever feeds
on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” This also does
not go unheard by St. Paul as he says in 2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore if
any man be in Christ, he is a new creature”. And, Galatians 3:27 “For as
many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”
The New Testament is littered with phrases like these so
that we do not make the mistake of believing that the unity Jesus is praying
that His Church be in, is simply intellectual or spiritual unity. Instead, the
Word of God causes us to believe in a true union of the flesh with God. That,
just as Jesus was both God and man, a full union of both, so in Christ, are
believers assumed into God, body and soul. Being baptized into Jesus is
not only a public and symbolic way of saying, “We agree with Jesus”, but being
baptized is to be placed, body and soul, into the crucified and resurrected
Body of Christ.
If it were simply a matter of spirituality, St. Paul could
have said so as he does in Galatians 3:26 “For ye are all the children of
God by faith”. There was no need for the Apostle’s to be putting the
idea of “corporeal” or “bodily habitation” within the minds of their hearers,
but there it is.
So then, reading passages such as Romans 6:3 “Know ye
not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into
his death” takes on a completely physical and bodily meaning. Being in
Jesus and believing in Jesus now must take on a fleshly tone. No longer are we
separated from God as the heavens are from the earth, but we are joined to Him,
bodily. As our own flesh is close to us, so are we to God, in Jesus.
In the Incarnation of God, Jesus causes all things to bow
towards His Will of salavation for all. True unity, therefore, comes as a gift
from God through His Crucified Son. Just so, Faith and Salvation must be
given by Jesus, for it is only He that possesses all things from the Father
(Jn. 17:10).
So where do we find this “corporeal salvation” to be given
by God? It is found in the very promises of God. In Baptism first, as that is
the Christian’s primary reception of Faith and Salvation (Mk. 16:16) into his
body. But we also have passages about hearing God’s Word and being saved that
way, which is great. The embodied Word of God does not just act, but He also
speaks, preaching His Gospel of the forgiveness of sins, so we would then agree
with St. Paul that “Faith comes by hearing and hearing [comes through] the
word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17; c.f. Jn. 8:51); “word” of course meaning His
Gospel preached.
And the final, ultimate expression of God’s physical
indwelling and gift giving comes in the form of the Body and Blood of Christ
Himself! Jesus doesn’t simply speak of washing, or of forgiveness, or of
feeding His Flock, but He physically does these things. Salvation, found in the
Body of Christ alone, is now given through the Body and Blood of Christ on our
lips and on our tongues.
We must conclude then, that true unity, found in believing
what God says, through His Son, is true and so these physical means of
salvation are what unifies His Church on earth. This is how we “keep Jesus
words” and find an answer for St. Judas and for us.
So how does Jesus manifest Himself to us and not to the
world? If we Love Jesus we will be treasuring His Word, baptizing, and
Communing, at His Word. You will not find this unity, nor the Holy Ghost,
outside the Church. The outward forms of this unity: baptism, the Creed, and
the Supper are not charms, but ways of life. They are the manifestation of
Jesus Christ in our midst and evidence of the Holy Ghost among us and not the
world.
[For] Today the Spirit of God who brooded over the waters
of a lightless creation
Swoops down with tongues of fire to kindle faith in the
re-creating work of Christ.
Today the Spirit of God who made the tower-builders into
foolish babblers
Unites believers in the univocal language of the
church-building grace of Christ.
Today the Spirit of God who came mightily upon the
deliverers of Israel
Falls upon the apostles to proclaim the deliverance from
sin we enjoy in Christ.
Today the Spirit of God who endowed with wisdom the
builders of the tabernacle
Imparts the saving wisdom of the Word made flesh who
tabernacled among us.
Today the Spirit who gave the law to Israel on two
tablets of stone
Gives hearts of flesh for hearts of stone in the [sacrament
of His Table].
Today the Spirit whom unfaithful David prayed the Lord
would not take from him
Pours himself into sinners that they might sing of the
faithful love of their Husband.
Today is Pentecost, the fiftieth day after the Passover
resurrection of our Lord
When we are made holy by the holy-ing Spirit of the
Christ who gives us the Father.
Today is Pentecost.
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
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