Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit's fiery power. Amen.

We have come to Pentecost Sunday again. It seems rather ironic to me that we close out our Choir (and next week, the Sunday School) season near the day which marks not an ending, but the very birth and continuing sustenance of the Christian Church.

It's also a bit surprising that in John's version of the story of Pentecost, the giving of the Holy Spirit occurs on the day of the Resurrection. If the liturgical calendar followed John, we would have none of the traditional 50 days between Easter and Pentecost. Indeed, we might have to come back on Easter evening for yet another worship service during Holy Week. Heaven forbid!

Just between you and me, I'm glad we follow the ancient pattern established within Judaism. Fifty days after the Passover comes the "feast of weeks, booths, or tabernacles" celebrating the giving of the Law and the first harvest of new grain, two of the great blessings of God.

Pentecost, with its source in Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles, calls to mind not so much endings as beginnings. The new law—the Ten Commandments—given as a revelation of God's will for human beings. The first of a season's harvest, marking anew the grace of God in feeding the people of God.

And so, my spirit moves to beginnings this morning, to Genesis (which means "beginnings") and to reflections of that story in the ones that are set before us today. Jesus, whose life and post-Resurrection appearances did indeed come to an end with Ascension Day, just ten days ago—this Jesus sends today among us the power of the Holy Spirit. A new thing is happening to us. A new start, a second chance, has been granted to us. The Spirit is moving among us as actively as it does through today's readings.

The stories of Pentecost are stories of new life, of Genesis revisited.

The Spirit comes as a mighty wind and tongues of fire. Those images call to mind Genesis and more. At the very beginning of our holy scriptures, a wind from God sweeps over the face of the waters. In Exodus, the law comes from the God who speaks from a burning bush and who protects with a pillar of fire. Primeval chaos and Sinai, places of God's powerful presence, are transmuted into Jerusalem, city of peace, where the law-giving God now deals with human hearts with the fire of the spirit. Water is not the medium. Nor is stone. Flesh is the subject of God's fiery power, working in those so touched the mighty purposes that we are privileged to know. Those fledgling disciples in Jerusalem didn't have a clue what great things this new creation would bring to life.

John's reference to "breath" also turns me back to the first pages of the Bible. When John tells us that Jesus "breathed upon" his disciples, he uses the same word that is used in the first Greek translation of the Old Testament (Septuagint) to describe God's action in creation. At the world's first dawning, God, working like a potter (Isaiah 45:9; Romans 9:20), shaped a figure from the clay of the earth. Then God breathed into that earthen vessel, so that it became a living human being (Genesis 2:7). The same word is used in Ezekiel's vision of the valley of the dry bones, a vision in which God's breath or Spirit from the four winds of the earth breathed upon those bones, and that vast multitude stood upright and lived (Ezekiel 37:9-10).

So today, in a sudden and bewildering way, Jesus manifests himself in the presence of his disciples. He appears to them and breathes new life into them, so that they stand up and live as a new creation. (Sundays and Seasons, 205, adapted)

The breath of Jesus powerfully effects a re-creation. Something begun at the dawn of time is being done again, but in an entirely different way. This is a new kind of creation. It goes deeper because the One who accomplishes it was once one of us, because the One who brings it about has conquered the enemy that has been with us from the beginning—death. This creation goes to the heart, to the soul, to the spirit.

Even the act of Jesus breathing on his disciples, as an act of self-giving, reminds us of how unlike Adam Jesus is. Adam and Eve grasped at equality with God. Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and humbled himself, even unto death on the cross (Phil. 2). What Adam and Eve undid in disobedience and covetousness, Jesus restored. Breath for breath. Act for act.

Raymond Brown relates a story inspired by the imagery John has employed. It was long the custom for the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria in Egypt to fill a skin bag with his own holy breath, tie up that bag tightly, and then send it up river to Ethiopia. There the bag was opened, and the patriarch's breath was released onto the person who had been designated as the new abuna, or head of the Ethiopian church. (Sundays and Seasons, 205)

We don't know what John would have thought if he could have foreseen such a use of his narrative. He is, however, most certainly describing how the resurrected Jesus came to his own shattered community, brought that fellowship to new life, and commissioned all of them-and all of us-to be emissaries of his peace.

And now, back to the telling of this story in Acts. Yes, it's about wind and fire, but it's also about language. Again, we are returned to Genesis. Long ago, as judgment against the will of humanity to be like God, languages were confused. A people, united in its proud achievements, is scattered in the story of the Tower of Babel.

Now, with the coming of the Holy Spirit, everyone is given understanding. The confusion is transformed into comprehension. What was once scattered by folly is gathered by the Spirit of God in Christ. A new community is created.

The true foundations of human community are discovered not in the fragile orders and abilities of human beings. Human ways are the ways of intolerance, prejudice, and division. True community is forged upon the foundation of Jesus Christ. Left to our own devices, humanity fragments. In Christ, we are held together.

Pentecost is the remedy to the Tower of Babel story, as a gathering of what has been scattered. Pentecost is the undoing of Babel, and a fulfillment of the prophecies that God would gather the scattered people together. The presence to that apostolic group of the crucified and risen Lord began to forge a new unity of the whole of humanity from out of every race and tribe and nation and tongue. (James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, 167)

Isn't it striking that Acts chooses not to use the common symbol of the peaceful dove for the Holy Spirit. Acts has nothing to do with the innocence and purity and peace that are associated with the Spirit as dove. On the contrary, Acts gives us the stunningly powerful imagery of a raging wind and flames of fire—elements of nature to be respected and handled with care, for they can be dangerous and destructive, as well as cleansing and comforting.

The author of Acts knows that Genesis begins God's mighty work in us. It is continued in the Resurrection, and now is brought to a new fullness in our being charged with energy and fired up with the power of the Holy Spirit. The disciples and we are created anew today. By the Spirit, we are caught up in God's work and purposes. Through these forceful images of breath, wind, and fire, we are clued in to God's amazing new purpose. God is finished with commanding, cajoling, and shouting. Through the very personal and communal gift of new life in Christ, the Spirit of God involves us all God's work. The Spirit takes a new step in the work begun in Genesis.

Filled with the Spirit of God, the disciples can now speak, preach, teach, and communicate in such a way that they are understood by all sorts of different people in many different languages. The power of God to recreate human community in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit breaks through human boundaries of language and culture. It does so just as effectively as that same mighty power of God in Christ broke through death, the ultimate boundary of human life on earth.

And, you know, this is pretty important for us. It is essentially the same message as that of Christmas and Easter. What is especially important is that it is not only the message of God acting anew for a new level of creation and redemption, but that this newest manifestation of God's creative-redemptive power is so intimately personal. God has come to our hearts and our souls. We are being re-created by the very power of God in us.

This means no less than that God's power is at work in us in the world. And when we have so many leaders who work to define their nation as good and others as evil, we must keep in mind that Jesus Christ has died for all, that we are transformed by the Spirit into emissaries of peace.

We are surely living in a time when we have to pray that the Spirit of God will descend with wisdom, knowledge, and discernment upon the political and military leaders of our world, to change the ways nations and peoples deal with one another in the small world where we live.

The power and the implied responsibilities of this day are almost overwhelming. God invites us to receive the Holy Spirit into our hearts and minds to build us up individually. God also invites us to receive the same Holy Spirit into our lives in the body of Christ to build up the community of faith. But perhaps most importantly in these days, God invites us to receive the Holy Spirit in order that we might bring reconciliation and peace to all the communities of the earth.

But then, this is God we're talking about, offering the powerful presence of the Spirit of Christ. God with us, God for us, God in us; God involving and engaging us in God's work. And with God, all things are possible, even a new creation for our world and its leaders. (Worship That Works, Angela V. Askew, adapted) The transforming breath, wind, and fire of God move still among us.  —  Amen.