Pentecost Sunday A B C

 

Pentecost Sunday A B C

Readings: Acts 2:1-11 1 Corinthians 12:3-7,12-13  

 John 20:19-23

“Lord send out your spirit, and renew the face of the earth” (Ps 104).  In remembering the first Christian Pentecost, we fervently pray in the refrain of the responsorial psalm that God’s Holy Spirit renew the world and the church with the gifts of unity, peace, joy and forgiveness.

The Acts reading describes the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples at the Jewish pilgrimage feast of Pentecost (Shavuoth) in fulfillment of prophetic expectations of the final age when all the nations will know the God of Israel.  Isaiah 66 speaks of God’s coming in the following way: “For behold the Lord will come as a fire . . . with a flame of fire . . . I am coming to gather all the nations and tongues” (Is 66:15.18).  As Peter will affirm in his Pentecost sermon, the prophet Joel announced: “God says: ‘It will come to pass in the last days,/ that I will pour out a portion of my spirit upon all flesh’” (Acts 2:17).  Luke’s account of Pentecost has all of these elements.  The Spirit descends upon the gathered group of one hundred and twenty would-be witnesses with a noise “like a strong driving wind.”  Tongues “as of fire” part and rest on each of them, and the Holy Spirit enables them to speak in different languages to Jewish pilgrims from most of the known world.  In a symbolic reversal of the confusion of tongues at the tower of Babel incident (Genesis11), the disciples speak in understandable languages of “the mighty works of God.”  As Peter will proclaim in his Pentecost sermon, Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension have begun the final age when all are called to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:14-41).

In the reading from 1 Corinthians, Paul insists that the Holy Spirit’s various gifts are meant for the common good of the community and for the unity of what were previously divided groups.  In Corinth some were using the possession of spectacular gifts like tongues as a basis for claiming superiority within the community.  Paul reminds the Corinthians that one Spirit gives various gifts--wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, working miracles, prophecy, tongues and interpreting tongues--for the building up of the whole community, and not for the exaltation of the individual (12:4-11).  He also uses the body of Christ metaphor to express the interdependence of all members--Jews or Greeks, slave or free--upon one another because they share a common baptism “into one body.”

The Gospel selection is John’s account of the gift of the Holy Spirit to the apostles on Easter night.  John places all the key saving events--the Resurrection, the ascent to the Father and the bestowal of the Spirit--on Easter (John 20:1-23).  When Jesus appears to the disciples on the evening of that first day of the week, he has already ascended to the Father as he had announced to Mary Magdalene (John 20:17).  He can now give them the gifts he had promised in the farewell discourse: peace, joy, and the Spirit/Paraclete (John 14-17).  Twice he greets the apostles with “Peace be with you” (cf. John 14:27).  When they see his hands and his side as proof that he was crucified and has now returned to the Father, the disciples experience the joy that Jesus had promised them (cf. 16:20-24).  Finally, Jesus sends them into the world as he was sent by the Father.  He breathes on them and says: “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive men’s sins, they are forgiven them; if you hold them bound, they are held bound.”  As God “breathed” life into Adam in Genesis, Jesus is recreating the community of disciples with the life of God’s forgiving love.

The Ascension B

                                               Gebhard Fugel

The Ascension B

Readings: Acts 1:1-11    Ephesians 1:17-23   

Mark 16:15-20

            The Feast of the Ascension celebrates both the resurrected Jesus’ triumph over the power of sin and evil by his ascension to the right hand of the Father and also the apostles’ mission, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to witness to the Christ’s victory throughout the world.  Let us rejoice in Jesus’ enthronement in the refrain of our responsorial psalm: “God mounts his throne to shouts of joy; a blare of trumpets for the Lord” (Ps 48).

            The account of Jesus’ ascension in the first reading comes from the introduction to Luke’s second volume, the Acts of the Apostles.  As with his Gospel, Luke addresses Acts to Theophilus (“lover of God”).  Our reading recapitulates the events of the Gospel with special emphasis on Jesus’ commissioning of the apostles to wait in Jerusalem to receive the power of the Holy Spirit which will send them as his witnesses to the whole world. Luke begins by summarizing what he narrated in his Gospel: Jesus’ actions and teachings until his ascension, his choice of the apostles, his suffering and death, his resurrection appearances over a forty day period in which he spoke of the kingdom of God and proved that he was alive, and his command not to depart from Jerusalem, but to await the Father’s promise of their baptism with the Holy Spirit.  He prefaces his second account of the ascension (see Luke 24:50-53) with a dialogue between the apostles and Jesus at their last meeting.  They ask, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” But Jesus says that it is not for them to know “the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority.”  Instead he promises: “. . . you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  Then like Elijah in 2 Kings 2 and certain traditions associated with Moses, Jesus is “lifted up, and a cloud takes him from their sight.”  For Luke this is Jesus’ enthronement as the triumphant Messiah King and Son of Man at God’s right hand (see Daniel 7:13 and Luke 1:32; Acts 2:22-36; 7:56).  His exodus or departure has been a part of God’s plan from the beginning (see Luke 9:28-36; 9:51).  Like the prophets Moses and Elijah who appeared with him in glory at his transfiguration to talk of his exodus (9:28-36), Jesus must leave physically for the Holy Spirit to be poured out on his successors who will carry on his work (see Deuteronomy 34 and 2 Kings 2).  The “two men dressed in white garments” who stand beside the apostles as they witness the ascension may be Moses and Elijah (cf. Luke 9:28-36; 24:1-8).  They do not allow the apostles to continue to gawk at Jesus’ ascension, but rather assure them of Jesus’ return as the Messiah/Son of Man who will establish his kingdom after their work of witnessing to him throughout the earth.

            The Epistle reading is taken from the thanksgiving section of Ephesians in which the Pauline author prays that God through the resurrected and ascended Christ will give the Christian community, his body on earth, “a Spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of him.”  In Christ’s resurrection from the dead, ascension, and enthronement at his right hand, God has defeated the powers of evil that formerly ruled the world--“every principality, authority, power, and dominion and every name that is named.”   God has put all things beneath Christ’s feet and given him “as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.”  Paul’s prayer is that the Christian community will have the eyes of their hearts enlightened by the risen and triumphant Christ so that they know “the hope that belongs to his (God the Father’s) call, what are the riches of glory in his inheritance among the holy ones, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power for us who believe.”

            The Gospel reading is taken from the so-called longer ending of Mark (16:9-20).  Some manuscripts have Mark’s Gospel ending with 16:1-8, the story of the women’s discovery of the empty tomb and a young man clothed in a white robe telling them that Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified has been raised and is going to Galilee where his disciples are to see him.  This longer ending is not in the style of Mark, but it is part of the canonical Gospel and was apparently added to the text by the second century A.D.  It contains resurrection traditions found in the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John. 

Like our first two readings it proclaims both the mission of the disciples to the world and Jesus’ ascension and enthronement at the right hand of God as a basis for hope and confidence for its success.  The resurrected Jesus first commissions his disciples to go into the whole world, proclaim the gospel to every creature, and baptize believers.  He goes on to assure them of the power to work signs in his name: driving out demons, speaking new languages, healing the sick, even being protected from serpents and deadly things.    Jesus is then taken up into heaven and takes his seat at the right hand of God.  Assured of his protection, his disciples go forth and preach everywhere, while the Lord works through them, confirming the signs he had promised.   

7th Sunday of Easter B

Tissot (detail)

 7^th Sunday of Easter B

Readings:  Acts 1:15-17,20-26   1 John 4:11-16    

John 17:11-19

The readings for this last Sunday of the Easter season prepare the disciples for the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost who will send them into a hostile world.  In the gospel selection, Jesus prays to his Father: “I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but to guard them from the evil one” (John 17:15).

The reading from Acts recounts the choice of Matthias to replace Judas as a member of the twelve who had been chosen by Jesus to renew the twelve tribes of Israel (see Luke 6:12-16; 22:24-30) and to witness to his resurrection (Luke 24:44-49).  Before the descent of the Spirit, this important symbolic group must be reconstituted.  Judas’ betrayal is a sobering reminder that the power of evil had penetrated into the very heart of Jesus’ apostolic band.  Peter reminds the group of approximately 120 who are gathered in the upper room in Jerusalem: “He (Judas) was one of our number and had been given a share in this ministry of ours” (Acts 1:17).  Luke understands Judas’ betrayal as due to the power of Satan (Luke 22:3) and as part of Jesus’ destiny in fulfillment of a prophecy spoken by David in Psalm 41:10: “Even my friend who had my trust/ and partook of my bread/ has raised his hand against me.”  At the last supper in Luke, Jesus had announced: “And yet behold, the hand of the one who is to betray me is with me on the table; for the Son of Man indeed goes as it has been determined; but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed” (22:21-22).  Now Peter, continuing to follow the divine plan marked out in the psalms, quotes Psalm 109:8, “May another take his office,” and suggests that one of those who has been in the Jesus’ company from the baptism of John to the ascension “should be named as witness with us to his resurrection.”  Two men meet these qualifications: Joseph, called Barsabbas/Justus, and Matthias.  The community prayerfully leaves the final choice to God, and the lot falls to Matthias.

The second reading from 1 John continues last week’s epistle reading and addresses the most important question of how we can know if “we remain in” God.  This was vital concern for John’s church which had been rent by secession over how to understand Christ.  Some apparently thought the verbal confession that “Jesus is the Son of God” was enough.  John’s answer is at once simple and profound.  “Beloved, if God has loved us so (in Jesus’ death on the cross), we must have the same love for one another.”  In John’s theology God’s gift of the Spirit is the power to share in the very love of God.  Because we have not seen God, we can only demonstrate that God dwells in us by having love for one another.  This brings to perfection God’s love in us.  In 1 John’s unsurpassable words: “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God in him.”       

The Gospel is Jesus’ prayer for his disciples at the conclusion of his farewell discourse in John.  As he is about to depart to his Father, Jesus prays for two things: that the disciples be protected from “the evil one” and that they be consecrated in God’s word of love which is “truth.” Jesus’ language in this prayer is coded in key terms of Johannine theology.  He prays that the Father “protect them with your name which you have given me.”  God’s name, “I Am,” is repeatedly used by Jesus in John (see 6:22-66; 8:12-59; 10:1-21; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1-17; 18:5-6).  In John’s theology, this name reveals the unity of the Father and Son as the source of life and unity for all who come in faith to Jesus, the revelation of the Father’s love.  Jesus says to the Father, “I guarded them with your name which you gave me.”  The only one who was lost was Judas, “who was destined to be lost in fulfillment of Scripture.”  Now Jesus prays that the Father continue to protect the disciples “from the evil one” in a world opposed to the truth of God’s love.  As he sends his disciples into this hostile world, Jesus consecrates himself for their sakes by submitting to his Father’s plan by laying down his life.  As we await the descent of the Spirit on Pentecost and the renewal of its mission to the world, Jesus assures us of the Father’s loving protection and consecrates us to live the truth of God’s love in him.

“Consecrate them by means of truth—‘Your word is truth.’ As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world; I consecrate myself for their sakes now,that they may be consecrated in truth.”