Category: Pentecost Sunday

Acts 2:1-21

This text is used for the Lectionary Year C on May 15, 2016.

Pentecost - El Greco
Pentecost – El Greco

It has been said that often we are in the midst of a history-making, life-altering moment and do not realize the full impact of it until much later.  Certainly, the Americans who were alive on November 22, 1963 instantly were aware that a horrific tragedy had occurred.  However, they never could have dreamed that the assassin’s bullet that pierced the bright Texas morning would also shatter the foundation of trust and comfort on which American culture rested.  The iconic photographs of an American President and First Lady hugging strangers and then riding in an unprotected vehicle with Secret Service agents nowhere near them would never be repeated.  Rules changed, laws were passed, and Presidential limousines would henceforth be fortified to withstand bombs and equipped with everything from a self-sustaining oxygen supply to several units of blood matching the President’s blood type.  The same lack of awareness of history-writing moments could be said of September 11, 2001.  All Americans knew they were witnessing the unthinkable as they watched two airplanes obliterate two towers and almost 3,000 lives.  However, they did not know that within hours armed soldiers would be patrolling every airport in America.  They did not know that the airplane rides they casually used for business or family vacations would forever become tedious hours of scrutiny, security screening, and unending stress.  In a matter of minutes—in 1963 and again in 2001 and many times before and since—life changed, and nothing would ever be the same.  The same is true for individual lives.  A child learns to walk or talk, a job is lost, a tumor is found, a promotion is awarded—for good and for bad, life changes in an instant, and nothing is ever the same again.

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John 14:8-17, (25-27)

This text is used for the Lectionary Year C on May 15, 2016.

Hermano Leon
Hermano Leon

Our text falls near the beginning of the so-called Farewell Discourse in John’s Gospel (chapters 14-17). Just before this, Jesus has washed the feet of his disciples, announced his coming betrayal, eaten the Last Supper with them, given them the “new” commandment that they love one another as he has loved them, and predicted Peter’s coming denial. At the start of the Farewell Discourse, Jesus has promised to prepare a place for them, to come again and take them to himself and to a place where he is going. He has answered Thomas’s question about the way to where he is going by pointing to himself and saying that he is “the way, the truth and the life.” That is, Jesus is the true way of life that leads to the Father.

The first part of what follows in verses 8-14 takes us deep into the identification of Jesus with the Father. This passage lays the groundwork for a more developed doctrine of the Trinity that would take nearly three hundred years to work out. What John repeatedly wants us to see is the oneness of Jesus with the Father. This oneness is a unity of persons, not a singularity. Think of it this way: When we are talking about God being one—and this is a common conversation among the three great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam—we mean there are no other gods but God. There is one and only one God. That singularity, however, is not the issue of our text. Jesus uses the intimate language of Father to talk about what we would come to understand as the interpersonal inner character of the one Triune God.

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John 16:4b-15

This text is used as one of the texts for the Lectionary Year B on May 24, 2015.

Suffering for one’s faith oftentimes challenges one’s commitment to one’s beliefs and values.  Though we American Christians do not suffer the privations of religious liberty and persecution of the early Church or of our contemporaries in anti-Christian countries, we are engaged in the same spiritual, cosmic war.  Many of us feel increasingly out of place in a society that is becoming less Christian.  We feel outnumbered, our values and morals abandoned as the Church has an increasingly diminished role in the public forum.  The Western Church feels defeated, despairing, and grieving the loss of its former glory.  Continue reading

Acts 2:1-21

This text is used as one of the texts for the Lectionary Year B on May 24, 2015.

Peter’s Pentecostal message sets the bar pretty high for all sermons that follow.  He took advantage of current events and cultural context in order to relate the news about Jesus of Nazareth and its significance for all within earshot.  And the response he received, about 3,000 people joining the community of disciples, was not too shabby at all.  His example should inform our own preaching, but it can also inform every Christian’s efforts to communicate the gospel in relevant and captivating ways in everyday conversation.  But lest we think this homily to end all homilies was solely the product of hard work, bountiful commentary consultation, and extensive creative planning, Luke prefaces Peter’s sermon, along with every other spiritual advancement in Acts, with the arrival of the much anticipated “helper” promised by Jesus.  If the resurrection of Jesus is the key moment of Luke’s gospel, surely the advent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples of Jesus is the defining moment of Acts.

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