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+In the Name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
“And suddenly a sound came
from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house
where they were sitting (Acts 2:2).
The Season of Easter ends today.
This is the last time for another year that you and I will exchange
the Easter acclamation, “Alleluia. Christ is Risen. The Lord is Risen
indeed. Alleluia.” But you and I know that whether we state it or
not, Christ IS Risen, He is alive. He has defeated the grip of sin and
death, and He reigns as the Head of the Church.
The Church for which He is
the Head was established this day over 2000 years ago when He sent the
Holy Spirit from heaven where He had returned at His Ascension. He had
charged the Apostles (as we heard last Sunday) “while staying with
them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the
Father.” And that promise was that the Holy Spirit was to come down
upon them for them to “receive power.” The Greek word is dunamis,
from which we get “dynamic” and “dynamite’!
So for nine days after His
Ascension, the Apostles “together with the women and Mary the mother
of Jesus, and with his brothers”…”devoted themselves to prayer.”
They held the first Novena – a time of prayer and waiting for what
had been promised to them.
On the tenth day after our
Lord’s Ascension, the promise of the Father was fulfilled when the
Holy Spirit came down upon them from heaven like the rush of a mighty
wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. Tongues of
fire appeared upon the heads of the Apostles – the fire of the Holy
Spirit’s power to burn itself into frozen hearts, and to burn away
sin and fear. Everything had now changed for them and the world.
They spoke in tongues, that
ecstatic manifestation of the Holy Spirit that has come upon Christians
throughout the life of the Church, and they were gifted with speaking
in a way of the mighty works of God that people from many nations who
had come to Jerusalem for the Feast of Pentecost understood. These people
from so many nations exclaimed, “…we hear them telling in our own
tongues the mighty works of God.”
The Holy Spirit had come to
empower the Apostles and the disciples gathered with them to be strong
for the Lord and to now begin to speak boldly of His mighty works, and
they were able to do so in a way that was understood by people of different
races and cultures.
The Church’s mission has
begun, and the world would never be the same because what Jesus had
done through his death and resurrection was now something very much
beyond Himself and fully alive in those who had followed Him. Power
had come upon them that would show itself as they stepped out in faith.
What I ask you to consider
today is not so much the coming of the Holy Spirit and the power of
it which has come upon each of you in baptism and confirmation, and
for your clergy in their ordinations, but rather the time of waiting
that preceded the Holy Spirit’s coming with power.
For nine days, the Apostles
and the women with them (including the Mother of our Lord) waited for
something to happen. Nine days is a goodly period of time to wait for
something that has been promised, but sometimes the wait for something
we hope will come is much longer.
You and I believe, in the words
of St. Paul, that “in everything God works for good with those who
love him, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).
We know that God is for us because we believe in His Son Jesus Christ.
God is well pleased that we have accepted His revelation, and have decided
to strive to serve His Son Jesus Christ in faith and works. But this
is not a magic formula for things to happen for our good when we want
them to happen, or think that they should happen. Just as God chose
to act in Christ Jesus at a particular moment in history, He chooses
to act in our own lives as He chooses — for our good — when we’re ready, when we are free
from ourselves to respond to His giving.
The group who was gathered
in the Upper Room in Jerusalem, where the majority of them had been
the night before Jesus was arrested, obeyed the Lord’s command to
stay in Jerusalem and wait. He had not instructed them to pray as they
waited, but St. Luke has told us in the Book of Acts as I have already
cited that they “with one accord devoted themselves to prayer.”
I would say that if one is called to wait, one should be praying.
They obviously ate and talked
to one another, and certainly expressed their feelings about how they
understood the promise of the Holy Spirit that was to come, but they
devoted themselves to prayer.
You and I are often faced with
waiting for things, guidance in and for many things, resolution of things
that have gone on for a period of time and for which we want relief.
Our posture should be foremost that of prayer.
We pray to God for our faith
to be maintained by His grace. We pray for wisdom to know where we stand
in our relationship with God, and in what remains in the way for the
relationship we should have with Him. We pray for trust in His ways,
and for the grace to be patient. We pray as we wait to know what we
should be attending to and focused upon, instead of cutting out the
world and others we need to care for.
When I review what has troubled
the Church in my own life, those things for which I have been moved
to respond, and those things in the life of the Church that just shouldn’t
be and which have caused so much pain, confusion, fracturing, and frustration,
I often think that if prayer had been the exercise to which people had
been intentionally and passionately devoted, so many things would be
different. I am convinced of this.
Prayer is that action of the
Christian soul which invites God into the situation. An intentional
action that a Christian does to relinquish control in order that God
is given control. As I understand God as revealed in the scriptures
and in the writings of the great saints of the Church throughout the
ages, it is clear that God waits upon us to allow Him to take control.
He rarely steps in to take control uninvited.
We fail so often to hand the
reins over to Him because we think we can handle things and make them
turn out the way we want them to, or we don’t trust God enough to
believe that He can and will handle things for our good and the good
of others if we let Him.
On this Feast of Pentecost
when the Holy Spirit took charge of those whom Jesus had called to be
His voice and power to all nations (the Apostles), and those who had
vital and supportive ministries for the Church to move forward, let
us realize that we are all vital for the Lord’s work, for the extension
of His Kingdom on earth, but that at the source of this calling is prayer.
Prayer that is humble, open, constant, patient, and expectant — prayer
that daily flows from our lips and hearts and rises to heaven like clouds
of incense, fragrant with the spiritual odor of complete trust in and
dependence upon God.
+In the Name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
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