Pentecost (A, B, C)

Readings:

1. Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11
   Psalm 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34   Response:  “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.”
2. 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13 (or Galatians 5.16-25 or Romans 8.8-17)
   Sequence: Come, Holy Spirit, come!
3. John 20:19-23 (or John 15.26-27, 16.12-15 or John 14.15-16, 23b-26)

Reflections on the Gospel Reading

Today’s liturgy is part of the Easter Season in which we celebrate the glorification of Jesus.  In addition to Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, this Sunday we reflect on one particular aspect of that glorification, the gift of the Holy Spirit.  We ponder this mystery through the eyes of John the Evangelist and the community for whom he wrote.

The date for our liturgical celebration of the gift of the Holy Spirit (seven weeks after Easter) is based on the chronology found in volume two of Luke’s Gospel, the Acts of the Apostles. The first reading for Pentecost Sunday reflects this chronology.  It is surprising, then, to read in John’s Gospel that the risen Lord confers the Spirit on his disciples at his first appearance to them “on the evening of that first day of the week.”  With our modern historical consciousness we are quick to ask:  When did Jesus send the Holy Spirit, on Easter or on Pentecost?

To answer that question we must try to step back in time and get into the mind-set of ancient writers and their audiences.  Both Luke and John were more interested in the meaning of the events related to the glorification of Jesus than in a precise time-line.  In fact, the chronology each adopts becomes a vehicle for the message each one is trying to convey.

Pentecost (from the Greek word for “fifty”) was the second of three great Jewish feasts that involved a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.  (The other two were Passover [Hebrew, “Pesach”] and The Feast of Booths [Hebrew, “Sukkoth”].¹ In Hebrew, Pentecost was called “Shavuoth” or the Feast of Weeks.  It occurred a week of weeks after Passover to celebrate the end of the spring grain harvest. (7 x 7 = 49 days, counting both the beginning and the end of the series = 50 days)

In Luke’s chronology the gift of the Spirit comes after forty days of appearances by the risen Jesus and ten days after his ascension.  This chronology is highly influenced by stories about Moses and Elijah in the First Testament.² The number forty is associated with both of them.  Moses traveled with the People of Israel for forty years, saw the promised land from Mt. Nebo, but did not accompany the Israelites into it.  Elijah traveled forty days to Mount Horeb (=Sinai).  Both ascended Mount Sinai (Horeb), both experienced wind and fire, both were thought to have ascended into heaven, and both left an enduring legacy.  Moses left the Torah, the loving instructions of the God of the covenant.  Elijah left Elisha a double portion of his own spirit.  This was symbolic of the continuing institution of prophecy among the People of Israel.

By adopting the Pentecost chronology, Luke seems to be saying that amid signs and wonders (wind and fire) the ascended Jesus is sending his own Spirit to guide his disciples just as Moses left the Torah to guide the Israelites after his death and ascension and just as Elijah passed on the gift of prophecy to Elisha after his death and ascension.  In other words, Luke is proclaiming that the ascended Jesus is still present with us, especially in his teachings and in the renewal of prophecy among his disciples.

John the Evangelist adopts a different chronology that reflects a different theological perspective.  In today’s passage from his Gospel the ascended Jesus also gives his Spirit to his disciples.  However, for John and his community the ascension of Jesus and the handing over of the Spirit to the symbolic community of his mother and the Beloved Disciple took place from the cross at the moment of his death.³ The first appearance to the disciples takes place on “day one” of the week.

Most English translations miss this nuance, but in the Greek text John uses the cardinal number (one) rather than the ordinal number (first) to designate the day of the week.  This seems to be a reference to the Greek text of Genesis 1.5 which literally reads:  “. . . and there was evening and there was morning, day one.”  This is a verbal clue.  John sees the giving of the Spirit as part of the work of the first day of the new creation.  It is not surprising, then, that John views the sending of the Spirit against the background of the various creation accounts in the First Testament.

It is important to remember that chronologically the first use of the Hebrew word for creation (bara’) occurs in the later part of the prophecy of Isaiah. (See, for example, Isaiah 65.17-18.) There, “creation of new heavens and a new earth” refers primarily to the re-establishment of the People of Israel after the Babylonian exile.  This restoration would be even more miraculous than the creation of the People in the Exodus account.  Writing somewhat later, the author(s) of the Book of Genesis picked up this theme.  They used this concept of the creation of the People of God to criticize and revise the Babylonian stories about the origins of the physical world.  The ancient Israelites thought that the creation of the universe must have been something like the creation of the People, not the other way around.

The Spirit plays two important roles in the Genesis creation accounts.  In the first creation account (Genesis 1.1-2:4a) in the beginning, “the earth was a formless void [literally: trackless waste and emptiness], there was darkness over the deep, and God’s spirit hovered over the water.” (Genesis 1.2, The Jerusalem Bible translation)  This recapitulates Jeremiah’s description of the situation of the People after the destruction of Jerusalem:  “I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light.”  (Jeremiah 4.23)  It also reflects the story of the exodus from Egypt where God was portrayed as the guide of Israel through the wasteland and howling desert of the wilderness (Deuteronomy 32.10-12).  Finally, it echoes the story of the strong wind [spirit] that divided the waters of the Red Sea and allowed the Israelites to pass through into freedom.  (Exodus 14.21)

In the second creation account (Genesis 2.4b-25) “the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” (Genesis 2.7)  This echoes Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones, an allegory for the People in exile.  God orders Ezekiel to prophesy:  “Thus says the Lord God to these bones:  I will cause breath [spirit] to enter you, and you shall live.”  (Ezekiel 37.5)

In both cases the Spirit is the principle of new life.  The new life of the People of Israel after the exile is the model for understanding the origins of life for all living things, including human beings.  Thus, by having the risen and ascended Jesus breathe on the disciples and say “Receive the Holy Spirit.” John was conveying a very definite message about the situation of Jesus’ disciples after Jesus’ glorification.

As Raymond Brown puts it:  “Symbolically . . . John is proclaiming that, just as in the first creation God breathed a living spirit into [the] man, so now in the moment of the new creation Jesus breathes his own Holy Spirit into the disciples, giving them eternal life.” (Brown 1970, 1037)

Today’s liturgy, then, conveys several messages about the outpouring of the Spirit of Jesus on his followers, including us.  By celebrating this symbolically on the Jewish Feast of Weeks (Pentecost) we proclaim that the Spirit of Jesus continues to guide the Church in a way that is similar to the guidance that the Torah gives to the People of Israel and that Elijah’s spirit gives to all subsequent prophets.  By reading John’s account of the giving of the Spirit we acknowledge that we are God’s new creation enjoying eternal life through the gift of the Spirit in baptism.

Both of these teachings are cause for rejoicing.

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Afterword:  When did God send the Holy Spirit upon the followers of Jesus?

First of all, it is clear that when John and the other authors of the canonical Gospels refer to aspects of Jesus’ glorification they are not establishing a strictly historical chronology of events.  For example, none of the Gospel writers points to the exact moment of Jesus’ resurrection.  In the gospel narratives the disciples become aware of the resurrection/glorification of Jesus only after discovery of the empty tomb and after experiencing his appearances.

Jesus is portrayed as having risen on “the third day” or on “day one of the week.”  Both are eschatological terms for the “time” of God’s saving action and/or the beginning of God’s new creation.  Like the Kingdom of God they are both “already now” and “yet to come.”  By placing the discovery of the empty tomb and the first apparition of Jesus on a Sunday (the first day of the Jewish week and three days after the Friday crucifixion if you count Friday as the first day) the Gospel writers were using chronological indicators in a symbolic way to refer to eschatological time.  As John Dominic Crossan is fond of saying, they were historicizing prophecy.

With regard to the ascension/glorification of Jesus, the most ancient versions of Mark don’t mention it at all.  Matthew doesn’t mention the ascension specifically, but he places Jesus’ farewell to his disciples on a mountain in Galilee at an unspecified time. (Mt 28.16-20) In his Gospel Luke places the ascension in Judea on Easter Sunday (Lk 24.50-53), but in the Acts of the Apostles he places the ascension forty days after Easter. (Acts 1.1-11) Still, there are numerous appearances of Jesus related in the Acts of the Apostles after Jesus’ ascension, e.g. to Stephen (Acts 7.55-56), Saul (Acts 9.5), Ananias (Acts 9.10-15), possibly Peter (Acts 10.14), Paul (Acts 18.9-10), and Paul again. (Acts 23.11)

Finally, for John the Evangelist the ascension/glorification of Jesus takes place when he is lifted up on the cross. (John 3.13-15, 12.31-34)  In the background is the image of the Son of Man, a symbol of the once persecuted but now vindicated People of Israel. (See Daniel 7.) All the appearances of the risen Jesus in John’s Gospel (John 20-21) are appearances from heaven, and the Gospel concludes not with a reference to Jesus’ ascension but to his second coming.

Given all of this, it is not surprising that Luke and John have varying symbolic chronologies for the glorification of Jesus manifested by the sending of the Spirit.  Luke ties it into the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost) with all it symbolism.  John places it primarily at the death of Jesus when “he bowed his head and handed over his spirit” to the nascent community of Mary and the Beloved Disciple. (19.30) Secondarily, he places it on day one of the new creation.  Once again, these are eschatological/symbolic indicators rather than indicators of clock time.

Further, John’s account of the giving of the Spirit on “day one of the week” appears to be influenced by the ancient liturgical practice (very likely going back to Jesus himself) of meeting on the evening of the first day of the week (what we would call Saturday night).  By an awkward connection with the previous accounts of the discovery of the empty tomb, John stages the first appearance of Jesus to his disciples “on the evening of the first day of the week.”  Only here the phrase seems to indicate what we would call Sunday evening.

Still, one can rightly ask:  What actually happened?  What observable events gave rise to Luke and John’s deeply symbolic stories of the sending of the Spirit? Here one is on very shaky ground, and I can only offer a tentative suggestion.

It is important to remember that these two Gospels were written at the end of the first century, some fifty to seventy years after Jesus’ crucifixion.  Two observable events stood out at that time – the remarkable success of the Gentile mission and the renewal of prophecy dormant for many centuries.  The latter was expressed in oracles uttered by women and men disciples as well as in writings such as the letters of Paul and Mark’s Gospel.  Followers of Jesus attributed these events to the outpouring of God’s Spirit in the end times related in some way to the death and glorification of Jesus.

In John’s theological perspective Jesus, glorified on the cross, hands over his Spirit to his disciples at the moment of his death.  The effects of this handing over were not immediately evident until later in the history of the nascent Church.

The stories of Moses on Mount Sinai and the ascension of Elijah control Luke’s theological perspective.  Thus, it is the ascended Jesus amid wind and fire (Sinai and Horeb) who sends a double portion of his spirit (Elijah/Elisha) on his disciples. There may well have been a charismatic event around the time of the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost) that became the nucleus of Luke’s account of the gift of tongues, but the story as a whole is symbolic of the rapid spread of the Jesus movement throughout much of the Roman Empire.

Thus, although the gospel narratives locate the sending of the Spirit at a particular point in time (crucifixion or Pentecost), this was a symbolic reference to gospel writers’ own experience and to an experience that continues into our own time.

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In preparing these reflections, in addition to the biblical texts, I consulted the following works:

Bradshaw 1996 – Paul Bradshaw, Early Christian Worship .  A Basic Introduction to Ideas and Practice.  A Liturgical Press Book (Collegeville, MN:  The Liturgical Press, 1996), pp. 75-79.

Brown 1970 – Raymond E. Brown, S.S., The Gospel according to John (xiii-xxi), Volume 29A of the Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY:  Doubleday & Company,  Inc., 1970), pp. 1018-1045.

Dillon 1990 – Richard J. Dillon, “Acts of the Apostles” in Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J. and Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm., Editors, The New Jerome Biblical Commentary  (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:  Prentice Hall, 1990), pp. 730-731.

Dodd 1968 – C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel  (Cambridge:  The Cambridge University Press, 1968 [originally published 1953]), pp.

Fuller & Westberg 2006 – Reginald H. Fuller and Daniel Westberg, Preaching the Lectionary:  The Word of God for the Church Today, Third Edition (Collegeville, MN:  The Liturgical Press, 2006)

Malina & Rohrbaugh 1998 – Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Gospel of John  (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998), pp. 281-285.

Moloney 1998 – Francis J. Moloney, S.D.B. The Gospel of John.  Sacra Pagina Series Volume 4, A Michael Glazier Book (Collegeville [MN]:  Liturgical Press1998), pp. 96-100, 105-109.

Pilch 1997 – John J. Pilch, The Cultural World of Jesus, Sunday by Sunday,  Cycle  C .  A Liturgical Press Book (Collegeville, MN:  The Liturgical Press, 1997), pp. 88-90.

VanderKam 1992 – James C. VanderKam, “Weeks, Festival of” in David Noel Freedman, Editor-in-Chief, The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Six Volumes (New York:  Doubleday, 1992), vol. 6, pp. 895-897.

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