Homily for Sunday, 8 June 2014‒ Pentecost

Mass during the Day

Readings of the day: Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; Pentecost Sequence; John 20:19-23

“Peace be with you… Receive the Holy Spirit.”

When we hear these words from Jesus in our Gospel reading today, how many of us think, “We are receiving something or, better yet, someone, very special in our celebration of Pentecost”?

There is no shame in thinking this, since now in our Pentecost we are in fact receiving God’s own peace; God’s own Holy Spirit into our hearts and into our Church. This is indeed a very special gift from our God!

My second question is this: How many of us remember a birthday (or, if not a birthday, maybe another special occasion) when we received a very special gift? Maybe it was a gift for which we had not asked; a completely unexpected gift; maybe even a strange or scary kind of gift…

Today is the Church’s birthday; Pentecost, fifty days after Easter, and so we as the Church receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is the best birthday gift that we as Church could ever receive!

But is not the Holy Spirit also a somewhat unexpected gift? In our Gospel reading, where are the disciples when Jesus shows up with this gift of the Holy Spirit? They have locked themselves away in a small room. They had experienced, not long before this, the death of Jesus on a cross; the death of the one they called Lord; Teacher, and so they are very afraid, even after they realize that he had risen from the dead. The disciples might have been thinking that they were in danger of dying as Christ died, forgotten; in shame; as a common criminal. But then Jesus enters the room where the disciples are through a locked door and says, “Peace be with you… Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Now imagine the disciples’ reaction to Jesus’ gift. This gift of the Holy Spirit, brought by someone who is able to rise from the dead and walk through locked doors, is just plain strange, not to mention a bit scary. And there is more: Jesus asks the disciples (including all of us) to do something with this precious gift; to give the Holy Spirit away.

When we receive a great birthday gift, how many of us think of giving it away? Most of us probably would want to hold on to this gift; to treasure it for ourselves. And yet Jesus says to his disciples, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you… Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”

Jesus sends us out with this gift of the Holy Spirit; this gift of God’s peace; this gift of God’s forgiveness; the best gift ever; and invites us to give this gift away to other people who are most in need of it.

Who, then, are the people most in need of the gift of God’s Holy Spirit? Many of us already respond generously to the need for God’s Spirit of peace in our world. For example many of us already support groups that work toward peace; toward an end to war and violence; people who provide children and families with shelter; clean water; food; education… Many of us respond to the need for the gift of God’s Spirit more locally. The people most in need of the gift of God’s Holy Spirit include our city’s poor, homeless, unemployed and underemployed, its migrants and its refugees.

Right here among us, there is the person experiencing breakdown within family or other relationships, the person in need of forgiveness, the person we are invited to ask to forgive us, the person in the next pew from us who longs to hear those words of Jesus that we will have a chance to speak in a few moments during our Mass: “Peace be with you.”

Let us not hold on guardedly to God’s gift of the Holy Spirit that we receive this Pentecost, but let us selflessly give it away. To give away God’s gift of the Holy Spirit, the best birthday gift ever to us as Church, may seem to us to be ridiculous. What if the people to whom we give the Holy Spirit do not or cannot return this gift to us? This is the risk Jesus invites us to take, and yet this risk involves a promise in return.

What is this promise in return should we give away our gift of the Holy Spirit freely? This promise is that the gift of the Holy Spirit that we give away will return to us and make us richer than we could have imagined. The gift of the Holy Spirit may return to us in a different way. Someone, once a stranger, may become a friend to us; someone else may have the gifts of patience and knowledge to teach us; someone may bring us peace and forgiveness exactly when we need these; someone’s heart may be moved in ways we cannot perceive, or our hearts may be moved by another’s words or actions of kindness toward us. These, as St. Paul says to the Corinthians in our second reading today, are all “different spiritual gifts but” the work of “the same Spirit.”

We see that the practice of “re-gifting” began well before it became socially popular! It began with Jesus’ words to his disciples at the first Pentecost, “Peace be with you… Receive the Holy Spirit.” Now, because we are Church; because we are “all one body”; “many parts” but gifted with “the same Spirit,” this first “re-gifting has become among us a lively gift exchange!

Let us then exchange this gift among us and beyond our Church’s boundaries; out to our world’s periphery; out to those most in need of God’s gift of the Holy Spirit: “Peace be with you… Receive the Holy Spirit.”

If we as Church give and give again this best birthday gift ever, God’s Pentecost gift to us of the Holy Spirit, the effects of our holy gift exchange; of the movement of the Holy Spirit in our world, may well be unexpected, strange, or even scary, but our world will be richer for it. 

And so we might say to one another, “Peace be with you… Receive the Holy Spirit,” and may we as Church have a holy and happy birthday!