Homily for Sunday 25 May 2015--Holy and Glorious Pentecost Sunday

Jesus Changed the Meaning of Pentecost:  Not the Law, but the Holy Spirit

Homily for Pentecost (Seventh Sunday after Pascha) (25 May 2015, 8 June 2003)

Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11…………….John 7:37-8:12

 

Today we celebrate the Great Feast of Pentecost, the day when the promise of God the Father to send the Holy Spirit was fulfilled.

The two readings from the Holy Bible for today both mention this feast, because it was a Jewish holy day before it became a Christian holy day, and Jesus and His disciples celebrated it.

It still is a Jewish holy day—Shavuot, the celebration of the giving of the Torah, the Law, to Moses and the Hebrew people.  It comes 50 days after Passover—just as for us Christians the feast of the giving of the Holy Spirit comes 50 days after Pascha.  The Greek word Pentecost means “50 days.”

When the disciples were all together in one place to celebrate on the 50^th day after Passover, as described in the Acts of the Apostles, they had no idea of what was going to happen to them.  They were simply gathered for the holy day like all the other Jews.

And when Jesus stood in the Temple on the last day of the festival and proclaimed that He was the light of the world and also that anyone thirsty should come to Him and drink, no one knew that He was talking about the Holy Spirit that He would send from the Father—the Paraclete, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, who would lead believers into all the truth.

And that is the crucial difference between the Jewish Pentecost and the Christian Pentecost.  Both are from God, but the Jewish Pentecost is about the Law and the Christian Pentecost is about the Holy Spirit.  I often say that the coming of Jesus changed everything—and this is another example of that.

For the Jews, the Law given by God to them through Moses guided every aspect of their lives.  It was God’s way of showing them what to do in order to live in good relationship with God and with each other.  Understand and obey the Torah and you will have favor with God.  This is what they celebrate at Pentecost.

But for us Christians, it is the Holy Spirit given to us by the Father through the asking of Jesus that guides every aspect of our lives.  The Holy Spirit shows us what to do in order to live in right relationship with God and with each other.  The Holy Spirit empowered the disciples to speak all languages so that they could preach and teach Jesus’ message of salvation to all peoples.

In his Letter to the Galatians, St Paul writes that the Spirit brings “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”  In the First Letter to the Corinthians, he says that the Spirit gives various gifts to people to use for the good of everyone, such as wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, and so on.  This is what Jesus meant when He told the disciples to wait for the promise of the Father, and when He said, “I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

Jesus promises us enlightenment and wisdom—the ability to see clearly and to make good choices.  He doesn’t promise us rules that we can follow without thinking.  He didn’t say that when the Holy Spirit comes it will lead you to the Law; he said that the Holy Spirit “will lead you into all truth.”  He changed the meaning of Pentecost, setting us free from the Law and giving us the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

And so, for this great gift, we give thanks and praise and glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, unto the ages of ages.  Amen.

Homily for 17 May 2015--Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council

Our Fathers in Faith Established the Basic Beliefs of Christian Faith

Homily for the Sixth Sunday after Pascha (17 May 2015, 1 June 2003)

Acts of the Apostles 16:16-34…………….John 9:1-38

 

On the sixth Sunday after Pascha every year, the Church celebrates the memory of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council, which was held at Nicea in the year 325.  In 2015, 1690 years later, we might wonder what was so important about the Fathers, or Bishops, who attended that council.  Why should we remember them today?  Why should we have a Sunday dedicated to honoring them?

We can’t really answer these questions without knowing something about the time and the circumstances.  In 325 Jesus had been gone from the earth less than 300 years.  For example, that’s about the same length of time that has passed since the American Declaration of Independence.

In 325, Christianity had been legal only 12 years!  The capital of the Roman Empire had moved to Constantinople only one year before.  It was an amazing time for Christians.  We no longer had to hide our faith and celebrate the Eucharist in houses and caves and even tombs.  We no longer had to worry about being forced to worship the pagan gods or the Roman emperors.  We no longer had to be afraid of persecution and torture and gruesome executions.

On the other hand, Christianity became the official religion of the Empire.  The Emperor and his bureaucrats expected the Church to support the government; they expected bishops to keep the people in order and loyal to the Emperor.  Yet there was no huge, well-developed Church bureaucracy to step in and do these things.  There was no standard liturgy—bishops and priests improvised the prayers according to the custom of their town or city or province.  There wasn’t even a basic agreed-upon statement of what Christians believed.

Of course this led to confusion and arguments and divisions.  People accused each other of being heretics simply because they didn’t agree about things we now take for granted as the Truth.

The hot argument of the early 4^th century was whether Jesus Christ was actually God, equal to the Father, or whether He was a created being given special power and status by God.  Arius, a priest from Alexandria, claimed that Jesus was inferior to God the Father—that He was the greatest of creatures, sort of adopted by God to do God’s work on earth.  Not knowing any better, and not being able to find out by studying the Gospels for themselves, a lot of people accepted Arius’s ideas and followed him.  In some places, they threw out or even killed bishops and priests who believed otherwise.

Obviously, this threatened the peace and unity of the Empire.

So the Emperor Constantine called all 318 bishops in the world to a meeting and told them that if this was going to be a Christian Empire they had to decide what Christians believed.

Today’s readings from the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of St John help us understand the bishops’ actions and decisions.

In the Acts, St Paul warns the priests and bishops of Ephesus that they must take care of the church and guard it against “fierce wolves” who would try to attack the people and against false teacher speaking twisted words who would try to lure the people away from the true faith.  Obviously, for the Fathers at Nicea Arius and other heretics were such fierce wolves and false teachers.

In the reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus makes it clear again and again that He and the Father share divine identity.  He says that the Father gave Him God’s name.  He says that He and the Father are one.  He says He lost none of those entrusted to Him except the son of perdition.  Of course, Jesus was talking about Judas, who betrayed Him and then, realizing his sin, killed himself.  But the Holy Fathers at Nicea saw that this description also applied to Arius, who was also betraying Jesus by denying His divinity.  From this passage, we can see that the unity of the Church mirrors the unity of God.

So the Fathers of Nicea condemned Arius and his heresy.  They wrote the Creed, which says clearly that Jesus is “true God from true God, begotten not made, one in essence with the Father.”  They established the basic beliefs of the Christian faith.  They are truly our Fathers in the faith.  And that is why we remember and honor them, because they taught us how praise and glorify the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, unto the ages of ages.  Amen.

Homily for 10 May 2015--The 5th Sunday after Pascha: "See the Glory of God or Find Someone to Blame?"

See the Glory of God or Find Someone to Blame?

Homily for the Fifth Sunday after Pascha (10 May 2015)

Acts of the Apostles 16:16-34…………….John 9:1-38

 

In today’s Gospel reading, St John shows us two very different ways of looking at life.  One is to look at things that happen and see how they reveal the glory of God.  The other is to look at things that happen and try to find someone to blame.

Unfortunately, that second attitude seems to be more common.  When something goes wrong, or something bad happens, people everywhere look for someone to blame.  It’s the Jews.  It’s the Muslims.  It’s the Americans.  It’s the North Koreans.  It’s the immigrants.  It’s the rednecks.  It’s the pointy-headed intellectuals.  It’s the feminists.  It’s the religious right.  It’s the gays.  And so on.  When I was growing up, we knew who to blame for everything—the Communists.  Now I see things more clearly and blame the Republicans.  (No offense to those of you who may be Republicans--you know I don't talk politics in church.)

Of course, when life is good and things go right, people will sometimes say, “Thank God.”  But generally we are like the disciples, who want to blame either the blind man or his parents for his blindness.  We are like the Pharisees, who do not rejoice that the blind man has been given the ability to see, but instead want to find out who has undermined their power by healing the blind man and has broken the Law by healing on the Sabbath.  They know what they want to see, and don’t need to be bothered by the facts.  Finally, when they can’t get the answers they want, they turn to making personal attacks on the man who had been born blind.

But Jesus and the man born blind see things very differently.  Jesus tells the disciples that the man was born blind not because of sin, but so that the works of God might be revealed in him.  And the man born blind answers all of the Pharisees’ questions with the simple declaration, “If this man were not from God, he couldn’t do anything.”

In every situation, we can see God at work or we can look for someone to blame.  We can rejoice that someone was healed or we can blame someone for breaking the rules.  We can feel sorry for ourselves in sickness or in hard times, or we can thank God for what we do have and trust in God’s help to deal with our problems.  We can complain about the people who don’t come to church or we can give glory to God for bringing enough people to church so that there is a church to come to.  We can be happy that people love each other and want to get married, or we can denounce them for being the wrong religion or the wrong race or the wrong nationality or the wrong gender.

What we cannot do is refuse to see God at work in the world.

Everything we are, everything we do, everything we have comes from God.  All creation reveals the glory of God.  Sometimes it’s not easy to see.  Sometimes it’s hard to understand.  But our job is to believe in God’s love and goodness and mercy at work in the world and in us.  Jesus is the light of the world, and God opens our eyes to see that light.

So let us live in Jesus’ light and see the glorious works of God and give thanks and praise and glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, unto the ages of ages.  Amen.