A Spirit That Drives Out Fear

I really love the feast of Pentecost. I think the reason is that celebrating the Church means celebrating all the things that people have done all through the ages in order to build up the kingdom of God, as well as celebrating all those things that people are doing right now. I also love this feast's focus on the Holy Spirit; I love all those things that are associated with the Spirit: wind, fire, passion, enthusiasm, courage and boldness, new life, adventure... it's fun even to think about other words that would go along on that list.

So it was fun thinking about this homily. Of course, though, it's always very intense actually deciding exactly what to say -- that's the stressful part.


Pentecost Sunday, May 27th, 2007

Today is Pentecost Sunday, one of the great feast days of the Church. We Christians borrowed Pentecost from the Jewish celebration of Fifty Days after Passover, and for us today it likewise marks the Church’s celebration of the end of fifty days of Eastertime. We celebrate today as the “birthday of the Church,” brought about by the coming of the Holy Spirit upon a group of frightened disciples, changing them into bold, joy-filled apostles.

Appropriately, our scriptures are filled today with vivid signs of the movement and action of the Spirit. In our first reading we hear the rush of Spirit as a wild, unexplainable wind blowing through the room where the disciples are gathered… we feel the passion of the Spirit as fire parting and emblazoning its touch on every one of those gathered … we witness the Spirit’s effect on the apostles as this Pentecost experience moves and carries them out into the streets to proclaim the gospel with strange sounds that astonish the crowd because all those present hear the message in their native language. It’s a remarkable and dramatic episode, this story of our birth as a Church.

And our gospel recounts a different but closely related episode, where the risen Jesus breathes on his disciples. If the idea of breathing on a group of people sounds a little odd and hard to envision for you, imagine Jesus, risen from the dead, entering a locked room, coming right up to each apostle with an intensely powerful look, almost nose to nose, so that they literally breathed the same breath … “Receive the Holy Spirit”

The events of Pentecost are so dramatic. The apostles emerge from their hiding place as changed people, filled with spirit and enthusiasm so bold and contagious that not only do they fearlessly address all the Jews gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish feast day, but they convert and baptize two thousand of them that very day! And it is all the more remarkable because they had all been so very afraid. As John put it, “The disciples had locked the doors of the place where they were for fear of the Jews.”

Probably everyone here can relate to that experience. Maybe we have never gone into hiding behind locked doors, but we all know what it is like to be afraid. Fear is a common denominator of the human race. In some form it dogs the heels of every living human being. With a few if becomes a morbid obsession that completely controls their lives. With most of us, it never goes that far – but for all of us, fear is a fact of life, and how we deal with it plays a large part in the quality of our living.

It’s important to recognize that their fear was rooted in solid realities – as is ours. They were living in a dangerous world -- so are we. Probably none of us has ever witnessed a literal crucifixion, but make no mistake, the same prejudice, greed, hatred, and cruelty that nailed Jesus to the cross are still very much a part of our modern scene. Just read the newspaper. Innocent people are bombed, bodies are maimed, prisoners are tortured. There are refugees all over the globe, fleeing violence, persecution, and poverty. Every day it seems you read about a parent who does something unspeakable to a child, or one spouse to another, or one young person to a random sampling of classmates. Danger in our world is not an illusion. Those disciples who sought safety behind closed and bolted doors had good reason to be afraid, and sometimes so do we.

But the story doesn’t end there. Those frightened disciples were visited by the risen Christ, and with his help and the gift of the Holy Spirit they overcame their fears, no longer cowering but instead proclaiming the good news. The transformation is remarkable – the same people in the same world. The dangers were still there and very real. But the fear was gone, or at least it was under control. They were controlling it, instead of it controlling them. What happened to change them?

It seems that there were two factors involved in overcoming those fears. The first was a change in their focus. Jesus said to them, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” That put everything in a totally different light. Up to that point, their chief concern had been survival – and that’s why they were hiding. They were all afraid that the Jews would do to them what they had done to Jesus. And that possibility did exist and continued to exist – in fact, many of them eventually died a martyr’s death. But their focus had shifted.

My friends, if our main business in this life is our own personal survival and comfort, then we have very good reason to be afraid, because we are hooked up with a losing cause -- that purpose is bound to fail! Our fear can be paralyzing; it can rule our lives. We might spend a fortune trying to make ourselves safe, walling out crime and violence, or whatever terrors might trouble us. But if violence or accident or disease doesn’t get us, then old age will. There has got to be a bigger and better reason for living than to simply stay alive, and Jesus offers that. Jesus sends us forth just as he did the first apostles, on a mission worth living for and even dying for.

And secondly, of course, Jesus gave them the resources necessary for carrying out that mission. This is what we celebrate so lavishly today! Jesus breathed on them and said “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The wind and fire and electricity of the Holy Spirit came upon them all. And though the signs of the Spirit’s presence may not be quite so dramatic today, that very same Spirit is given to us, with all its power, with all its many gifts.

We all have fears that are particular and personal to ourselves, but one of the most frightening things about life can be a sense of inadequacy. We have responsibilities to meet and we’re not sure we can meet them. Burdens come that must be borne, and we’re not at all certain that we can bear them. Well, whatever our fear, the good news of Pentecost is that we’re not in this thing alone, by ourselves. God is with us; the Holy Spirit is given to us.

That’s what Pentecost is all about. It celebrates the truth of God’s Life and Spirit with us and within us.

This may be a dangerous world. But we do not have to meet our fears and challenges alone. God is here, and the enabling power of the Holy Spirit is sent upon us.

Deacon Denny Duffell