The lectionary does a funny thing with this incident in the life of the church. Even though Pentecost will come several days after the Ascension, we are reading this passage, which we call the Great Commission, after we've read the story of Pentecost.
We don't always see the U-turn because for us, both events are part of history. We know that Jesus' leaving opens the door for the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the believers. We know that this outline of the mission of the church will be made possible by the coming of the Spirit. But they didn't know that. And from our perspective two millennia later, the events of those amazing days seem pretty much like they happened all at once -- but they didn't to the people living them. We last worshipped in person on March 15, 84 days ago. From the point of view of someone hearing this story in, say, 2040, that will seem like not much time. For those who hear it in 2120, the gap between the two will look almost as small as the gap between the Resurrection and Pentecost does to us. But for those of us who have lived it, it's 84 long days.
Even though the lectionary gives them to us out of order, when we reflect on these words of Jesus we see how necessary Pentecost is to understanding and fulfilling them. "You shall be my witnesses," Jesus says to a group of simple fishermen, peasant women and laborers. "In Judea, Samaria and the ends of the Earth!" he says to people who probably haven't been more than ten miles from their villages in their lives, except for a Passover now and again. "Baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit!" They know who the Father is and they've come to realize who's the Son, but Holy Spirit? "I am with you always, even to the end of the age!" Just how long will he be gone then? That sounds like a long way off.
In the calendar of the church year, we call today Trinity Sunday. It marks one of the greatest doctrines -- and greatest mysteries -- of Christianity, that of the Trinity. We say that God is Three in One, or sometimes Three and One. We mean that we worship one God, not three. But that one God is expressed in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Sometimes people will try to explain the three persons based on their spheres of activity. We do this when we label them Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. God the Father is the Creator. Jesus, through his actions on the cross, redeemed fallen humanity. And the Holy Spirit sustains believers as they try to follow Jesus. But the gospel of John makes clear that the work of the Word, the second person of the Trinity we call the Son, is essential to creation. And during their time of exile and before that, in the wilderness, the Israelites were sustained by God as the person we call the Father. And so on.
What we know is that all three persons are present in any work called the work of God. It's why we say God is Three in One -- any work of one of the Trinity is the work of all of the Trinity.
Here in Galilee, the Son tells the disciples of the work they are called to do, saying he has the authority to do so because it has been given to him -- by the Father. Even though the disciples do not yet know about the Holy Spirit or what the Spirit's presence will mean to them, they can sense something is missing. Some of them have doubts about what they see and hear and about what it means.
Something is missing, and that something is the presence of the Holy Spirit. The coming of the Spirit at Pentecost empowers the disciples to carry out the Great Commission Jesus gives them.
And the presence of the Holy Spirit empowers us to carry out the Great Commission Jesus gives us. Of course we have to carry it out with wisdom and common sense, with perception and awareness of our context -- but carry it out we are to do. The Commission worries a lot of us and we sometimes, as the joke goes, think the translation is wrong and the original Greek talked about a Great Suggestion. How could we share the gospel? We're not eloquent, knowledgeable, courageous, holy, whatever enough. But that's wrong. We're much less qualified than that. We think we'd do a mediocre job but the truth is we'd be lucky to get to mediocre.
Which is where the Holy Spirit comes in. Always, and forever. To the ends of the earth and the end of time, and beyond.
No comments:
Post a Comment