Pentecost Sunday ----- 8 June 2014

1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

3b And no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit. 4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. 12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. 

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

• On this festival of Pentecost, we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples as well as the continued presence of the Holy Spirit with the entire church. In remembering the event so many years ago, we sometimes forget about the presence of the Spirit in our own time and in our own experience.
• For the Jewish people, Pentecost has been a celebration of the giving of the Law, the Law with sets the people of Israel apart from the rest of the nations and the Law the Jewish people take as the Word of God and a joy to have. Both the Jewish and Christian understandings of Pentecost have an interesting correlation: the Jewish people live by the Law that they see as a manifestation of God with them and Christians live by the Spirit which is God manifested among us.
• We hear the story of Pentecost and remark how strange it sounds to our ears. The tongues of fire; the speaking of various languages from provinces and nations that evoke wonder since we don't always don't know where they are... or were; the spontaneous sermon by Peter that both explains their situation (“We're not drunk and you're hearing the prophets fulfilled.”); all these things might cause us to wonder what exactly went on at the festival of Pentecost back at the beginning of the church. It might also make us wonder what's going on in our own day.
• In Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, he lists many of the gifts of the Spirit. He found these manifested withing the Corinthian church and does compliment them on their presence and their use. He doesn't make any reference to these gifts being uncommon or rare; he notes that they are present and that they are to be used for the good of the entire church.
• That those gifts were to be used for the good of the entire church is the key. How the Spirit works with the Christian Church and with each Christian is often a mysterious thing. We don't always understand it. We may wonder why we don't speak in tongues, why we don't experience healings, why we don't we experience miracles and prophecy. The answer to that is not easy to come by.
• But even if those spectacular gifts are not often seen, the Spirit remains with the church nonetheless and the gifts that are given are given for the good of the church.
• Even if we don't know of any situations where we might be involved in the gift of tongues, or healing, miracles, or prophecy, the Spirit is here. There are those among us who are teachers, a role in the Church that has long been held in high esteem. We have leaders and administrators, those who keep the church going from day to day and provide direction for congregations. We see people among us who call us to deeper prayer, to the works of justice and peace, as well as those who call us to closer and more solid relationships within our congregation; these people could be called prophets in our own day. Remember prophets speak to the present as they find it, not simply of a future that is yet to come.
• It is all these gifts working together for the good of all that shows the working of the Spirit in our day. Shortly after the passage from Paul that we've read today, Paul goes on to tell his readers of “a more perfect way.” The passage that follows speaks of the perfect way of love, the passage we all know so well. Paul says “Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.” It would seem that the witness of the church that the Spirit still calls us to – the witness that echoes and supports Jesus' commandment to “Love one another.” - is the witness that will make a difference in the world. Tongues and prophecies are for the church; love is for the church and the world.
• There's another gift in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles that is a bit tougher to see, probably because it is too obvious. In response to the bewilderment of the crowd over the evidence of the Pentecost event, Peter gets up to speak; But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, Here a man with no rabbinical training, who had denied knowing his friend Jesus a little more than a month before, now speaks out to a large, cosmopolitan crowd and tells them of presence of the Spirit and the salvation received through Jesus Christ. Just a short time before, he had acted in a cowardly way; now he speaks out without showing fear. We don't know if he was fearful or not, but despite anything else, Peter spoke out and never stopped! The Spirit was present and allowed him to speak despite criticism, shyness, or personal fear.
• That Spirit is with us today. All of our gifts together are given for the good of all the church. The gifts are given to the church for the good of the world. The love we are to share is a glimpse of the Kingdom of God that is with us and is yet to come. As the Spirit gives us ability, we have within us both the courage and the words to tell all those around us of the presence of God in our world and in our lives.
• Let us pray that the same Holy Spirit whose descent on the apostles we remember today will come to us in fresh, new, and powerful ways today and every day.
• For it is now at it was then - To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.