Editor’s note: This is the second of many scheduled lectionary weekly living columns to be written by clergy in the Diocese of Central Florida. This column is about the Day of Pentecost.
Pentecost (Greek for 50 days) commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, 50 days after the resurrection of Christ. The Day of Pentecost in 2018 falls on Sunday, May 20. – The Episcopal Church
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Acts 2:42
When it comes to the Day of Pentecost, we are usually so overwhelmed by the event, the details, the thought of having “a sound like the blowing of a violent wind from heaven” blow into our lives that we often forget about the result. One result of this new movement of the Holy Spirit was to empower the people who were open to its reception, to become the church. Acts 2 gives us insight into how this new group of people acted, how they “lived out” this new Holy Spirit life. They devoted themselves to it. They opened themselves to this new teaching. They found a common fellowship of people who were also “cut to the heart” by the eloquent words that, somehow, came out of this uneducated fisherman named Peter. They were moved to reinterpret the Seder through the lens of the Resurrection in a way that, not only honored their past, but also gave new hope to their future! And they prayed. I bet they did!
What is our response to this Pentecost? Does it make a difference in our lives, or is it just a day to wear our best red shirt or blouse to church? Do we, as the Church, open our hearts and lives to a new movement of the Holy Spirit in a way that moves us to action, to grace, to love and to a message of redemption? Does it move us to risk a new way of living that allows God’s love to shine in and through our hearts? Only you can answer that.
The Crucifixion, obviously, is about death, and we don’t like death. A room once called the “parlor” is now called “the living room.” We sequester ourselves from the experience of death, and not just physical death, but spiritual death, emotional death, relational death. We often ignore those dynamics in our lives that are dying because we can’t imagine what might be on the other side of it. So how do we get our minds around the fact that “we were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life”?
Try this: I invite you this year to allow that which does not work in your life, that which does not add but only subtracts from a Holy Spirit-driven life; I invite you to risk letting that die so that something new can be born in you. Through Christ’s death and resurrection and through the power of the Holy Spirit, God gives us the opportunity to live new lives. But you have to be willing to step out and risk something new, something different. “Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day” … imagine that!
Fr. Jim Sorvillo
Rector, Church of the Ascension, Orlando