Day of Pentecost A - I Cor 12. 3b-13 A Deffinitive Demonstration of a Distinct Power of the Word"

Alleluia.  Christ is risen.  The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia.

 Come Holy Spirit.  Come fill the hearts of your faithful people, and set them on fire with your love.

Pentecost concludes the festival of the week of weeks, the final day of celebrating Easter.
Pentecost isn't particularly the birth of the church - as far as I know, the church was born at Jesus' abandoned tomb.  Pentecost was the coming out of the church and the church's Holy Spirit.
The Spirit is Here to manifest Jesus' Wordly presence, God declaring that "grace and truth came through our Lord Jesus Christ - the Wounded Guy Who breaks through every door, even the locked doors of fear, fear of others, fear of the events of the world, fear of actually being forgiven of our sins!  Such an event is just almost unimaginable for daily life as we seek power for our grievances.
But the Holy Spirit's intervention is the way of Pentecost, revealing, strengthening, setting captive sinners free!" ( per LBW 523)

This is not the birthday of the church!  This is not the Sunday of Lutheran dolor about not having any or enough of the Holy Spirit.  Our particular movement, as least as far as it has heard of the Small Catechism, can claim a Spirit sufficient to the proclaiming of the gospel.  Martin Luther and even the New Testament declares there is no proclamation of the Gospel without the Spirit.  If our Lutheran congregation has no Spirit, then let's stop right no and go away.  No message that's a message of the victory over death - at least in Christian terms! 

On Pentecost Day, accounted for in our second reading for today, out in front of visitors from every corner of the world, Holy Wind announces and definitively demonstrates the power of God's world in the word. We treat the Holy Spirit often as a commodity - something I got and you don't, a wish that if only I could have so much of this or that spiritual gift, for example. But if the Holy Spirit is in fact the power of God's world in the Word, then what we could well see that His gifts are activated in the interest of hope, in the interest of God's future, when God's world and God Himself is "all in all."  Meanwhile, the church is Christ's Body - we the arms, legs, hands, and feet - (perhaps tonsils, adenoids, gall bladders. . .(LOL)). We God's gifts that makes the body function to bring God's world through the word to this world bent on our own human ways and therefore encountering human sin expressed in addiction to pleasure(s) and wanton self destruction. 

So here is the Spirit's main work in the economy of God in today's world -- Baptism(!)
The Spirit's pledge and promise that gifts are given - in faith

The Body of Christ, gathers as the body of Christ, to take the body into ourselves in communion. We do so because of our trust in God that through Christ in the Holy Spirit - the power that brings the Gospel of Jesus to our world, we can see the signs of the day of the Lord, when all that is left of the day is the LORD, and we united with Him in unending praise and thanksgiving for His great glory.

Alleluia. Christ is risen..  The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5a Easter - I Peter 2. 2-10 Resurrection: An Invitation to a New Identity

 Alleluia.  Christ is risen.  The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia . On Easter morning, Christ burst from the tomb. Since Christ has defeated death on the cross, His resurrection is the event that reveals God to us, and knowing Who God is, we discover who we are. In this morning's Gospel, we have heard Jesus' definitive assertion to Philip, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." Jesus' rising from the dead is God the Father's expression of His solidarity with us through His Son.  As these so called "farewell discourses of the next few chapters explain, God the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, comes to empower our faith and unite us in the Church's witness  as it "daily and richly forgives all of our sins."  Our Lutheran insight is a Holy Spirit is not some optional part of God that shows up when we get excited, motivated, or particularly filled with pious thoughts. The Holy Spirit is the power that makes believing the Gospel possible at al...
Read more

Fourth Sunday in Lent - Series A Eph. 5.8-14

Covid- 19, the new corona virus was not a phrase known to us a couple of months ago.  Never before singled out, never contracted by humans, its newness in our population meaning we are without treatment or immunity. Thankfully, it's only a small fraction of folks that die from it.  The disease is relentless, unstoppable.  It must avoided by action on our part.  Our medical system inadequate to combat it due to our Now let's flip this whole thing on its' ear referring to "anastasisitus.a thanatos"or Iroughly speaking} the resurrection of the dead.  In case you hadn't noticed, light has this way of being visible.  The world we see around us is light to us, much more than my vision made out of light.  "You were once darkness," writes the author, " but now you are light." Faith reveals light. At issue is existence.  Light reveals.  Darkness is nonexistence.  Such is the physics and metaphysics of the Bible.  Therefore our identity...
Read more

Vigil of Pentecost - Rom 8. 14-17, 22-27 Now (and) Venn the Diagram

Alleluia.  Christ is risen.  The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia.   In our last adventure into proclamation we spoke of "Venn the Diagram?" The Vigil of Pentecost brings us "Now, Venn the Diagram" The apostles had the Holy Spirit set upon them, giving them "utterance" ( per NRSV) in the languages of their world.  According to the story of Jesus according to Dr Luke, they were waiting until the festival of Succoth, the Harvest festival in Jerusalem.  If they expected the festival to bring God's Spirit it was hard to say, but that's when the Spirit struck with His signature sign, "the howling of a fierce wind." Each apostle was filled with this holy wind, evidenced - I suppose - with flames of fire "alighting" on their heads and holy breath was given voice to announce the good news of Jesus to an audience of pilgrims from every region of the Roman empire. Ever since the lot fell on Matthias to complete the compliment of th...
Read more