Year C

John 14: 8-17 (25-27)

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

God’s Couriers

In the Acts story of the day of Pentecost, there is no lack of drama. No human-made machines are required for wind, fire and inspired speech. The old days are gone. A new time is begun. God’s promises are fulfilled with the full display of God’s Spirit. Jesus mentioned this promise in the Gospel text today when he said, “When the Advocate, the Holy Spirit comes whom I will send to you from the Father…the Spirit of truth will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you.”  Today we celebrate this promise, a miraculous event in the life of the church.

If Epiphany is the showing forth of God’s powerful humility in a babe in a manger, Pentecost is the showing forth of Christ’s gracious power in people of every age, gender, and class. The work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church is to equip it with the power to reach out in the amazing miracles of compassion, reconciliation, and forgiveness. Pentecost then and now invites the church to imagine tearing down all walls of division between people. It is the story of the reversal of Babel. The scattered people of God come together, they had been separated by language, but now God’s own words unite them. 

Ignatius, the third bishop of the congregation at Antioch, while being transported to Rome where he was to be martyred for his faith sometime before 108 AD, wrote letters to congregation’s that had hosted him on his journey. In his letter to the famed Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, he asked this deeply respected Christian leader to appoint a courier, a Theodromos, or God’s courier, to hasten spreading a witness to faith among the Syrians. In the Mediterranean world of that era, such runners, couriers were the source for all news, good or bad. Ignatius wrote, this courier should, “glorify your zealous love to the glory of God.”

One way we can understand Luke’s story of Pentecost in the book of Acts is to think of the Spirit, as God’s courier, witnessing to the “mighty works and love of God, expressed by the barrier breaking testimony to God’s grace in many languages. Pentecost is the Spirit courier, empowering people to become Spirit-empowered couriers of the message of God’s love. These are people through the Spirit who find the means to go and tell of God’s saving purposes in Christ in order to tear down the walls of division the world builds up. To do this, the couriers of God are people who know they are dependent upon God and God’s Spirit.

The Holy Spirit on Pentecost fills Peter and the other disciples in a powerful and supernatural way and they cannot even begin to pretend that this is their own doing. If the builders of the Tower of Babel are guilty of trying to be like God, the disciples are very aware that they need God’s power. Here are simple men, not trained speakers making themselves heard and understood in many languages to a great diverse crowd. Peter reminds his hearers of the Old Testament promises of the coming of God’s Spirit in power, and claims that this is what they are now witnessing. He goes on to connect the power of God, with the crucified and risen Christ, and he speaks of the way the Spirit, now gifted to God’s people, will tear down the former divisions of age, class, and gender. Today’s reading from Acts picks up the theme that we hear throughout the scriptures from the beginning to the end that God empowers couriers who seem inadequate and wholly unsuited for their great task, to change the world.

This is one reason why reading the story of the Tower of Babel today, along with the story of Pentecost, to help us to see that nothing divides people more quickly from God and God’s power than a desire for the world’s power, and a determination to rely on themselves.  Perhaps that is why Jesus tells his disciples in John’s gospel that the world cannot receive the Spirit of truth. Perhaps it is because the world is so obsessed with its own truth, its own systems it cannot receive the Spirit whose job it is to unite us to God and the Son, and to return us to our true dependence upon God. Those who aware of their need for God, are the ones who turn to God and ask for help and God gives us a power, and the whole point of this power we receive from the Spirit, is to point to the Son and through the Son, to the Father through great works.

Jesus tells Phillip, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and in fact, will do greater works than these.” Starting at Pentecost, the rest of the book of Acts shows us the kind of works that the disciples are able to do in the name of Jesus with the help of God’s Spirit. It was not easy and the story of the earliest Christian communities, of which Paul writes about in his letters, demonstrate the fact that it was never easy to overcome differences. Yet, they continued to be intentional about seeking ways to tear down those things that divided them. My friend’s, the wind of God is again blowing on our world. We, the Christian denominations, have a lot of work to do to tear down the things that divide us but at least we have resumed speaking to one another as brothers and sisters in the Lord!

The challenge for the Church in the twenty-first century is the degree to which we can live into overcoming age, class, gender, and other differences, and live into the vision of Pentecost. The journey won’t be easy. But we are empowered by God’s Spirit who lives in us giving us all we need to love and to serve. The key lies in that God to whom we pray on this day: “Lord, make us couriers of the good news that, through the power of your Spirit, everyone everywhere may unite in one song of praise, through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.