New Beginnings and Enduring Hope

Message for the Day of Pentecost, Year B (5/23/2021)

Acts 2:1-21

Romans 8:22-27

John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Pentecost is a story of new beginnings. For fifty days following Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, his disciples sit huddled in prayer and conversation in Jerusalem. “Stay here in the city,” Jesus had instructed them on Easter, “until you have been clothed with power from on high.”[1] So, there they are as Jewish pilgrims from around the known world flock to the holy city to celebrate Pentecost. What a prime occasion for the Spirit of God to do something new: “Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where [the apostles] were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”

The witnesses to this event are bewildered. “How is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language… [these Galileans] speaking about God’s deeds of power? …What does this mean?” It’s a miracle of communication. The peoples of the world don’t need to learn a new language in order to hear the good news of God’s reign come near; rather, the Spirit enables the apostles to translate that news so that others can hear it. And, the rest is history.

At Pentecost, God calls the followers of Jesus to partake in new beginnings. And even in Jesus’ bodily absence, since that inaugural event in Jerusalem the church has continued to grow and change, made new in every generation by the Holy Spirit who forms and reforms us as the living body of Christ for the sake of the world.

This Pentecost is no exception. The growing diversity of our church’s leadership is one instance of the Spirit’s ongoing call to new beginnings. Just this month, the Sierra Pacific Synod of the ELCA elected the first openly transgender bishop in any major Christian tradition in American history, the Rev. Dr. Megan Rohrer, whose sense of call resonates with the story of Pentecost in our first reading from Acts: “[I’m] interested in figuring out how I [can] translate good news to people who [are] curious about how God [is] using people beyond the scope of their imagination.”[2] What an encouragement to see God make good on the promise to pour out God’s Spirit on all flesh!

As we anticipate coming together again as a congregation in the time after COVID-19, what new beginnings do you imagine the Holy Spirit has in store for us? This season after Pentecost will give us plenty of reasons to be excited. We’ll begin our relationship with a new pastoral intern, Kendall Jeske, who will complete his training in the ministry arts over two years at Peace. We’ll welcome new members into our congregation, people who will bless us with the gifts and passions they’ve received from the Spirit. And, together we’ll envision and develop and support new ministries as the Spirit leads us.

Yet, even as we trust the Holy Spirit to invite us into new beginnings, we also pray that she continue to sustain us in hope now and into the future. Consider our congregation’s 123-year history on 3^rd and Pioneer. Imagine all the ways the Spirit has accompanied this congregation before through seasons of both strength and struggle. Think of the countless prayers and songs, the joys and griefs, the dreams and disappointments.

As people of faith, we live in the time between the advent of God’s reign and its ultimate fulfillment. And, as we dwell in the interim, from one season to the next the excitement of new beginnings is bound to give way to weariness and yearning. “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now,” the Apostle Paul writes in our second reading from Romans, “and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” The gift of the Spirit at Pentecost is the “first fruits” of God’s final harvest, the pledge that God will realize God’s dream for the world in the fullness of time. So, as we long for an end to suffering, an end to weeping, an end to death,[3] the Spirit will continue to comfort and encourage us.

In the words of Paul Achtemeier, “God’s future… already gives meaning to our present.”[4] That future is both near to us in the new beginnings we anticipate in the weeks and months to come, and far away in a time we can only imagine. The Spirit who sweeps us up into new beginnings now is the same Spirit who instills in us an enduring hope for all that will someday be.

Consider this beautiful image of the life of faith: “We are like people on a drought-parched land, who hear the distant thunder of the approaching storm. The freshening wind brings with it the smell of rain and the first few drops of moisture. We rejoice as we stand on that barren land, knowing it will soon be washed with the life-giving rain whose presence we already sense.”[5] Friends, can we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit today as a freshening wind, like the wind that swept in among the first disciples at Pentecost? What do those first drops of moisture foretell? What new life will the coming rains nurture?

This Pentecost, may the Spirit of God declare to us the things that are to come, guiding us into all truth for the sake of the abundant life God intends for us and for the world.

[1] Luke 24:49.

[2] Emily McFarlan Miller, “First ELCA transgender bishop, Megan Rohrer, hopes to ‘translate good news’ for the curious,” www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2021/05/12/first-elca-transgender-bishop-megan-rohrer-hopes-to-translate-good-news-for-the-curious/.

[3] Revelation 21:1-5.

[4] Interpretation: Romans, 147-8.

[5] Ibid. 148.