The Gospel of the Day – 2017.06.04
The
Gospel of John 20:19-23
Gospel
Acclamation
Second
Reading 1 Corinthians 12:3-7, 12, 13 ©
Psalm 103(104):1-2,24,27-30,35 ©
First
Reading Genesis 11:1-9 ©
Faith,
and Beginnings
It is the feast of
Pentecost.
Christians throughout the
world celebrate this day.
It is the commemoration
of the gift of the Holy Spirit, given by Jesus, Joshua son of Joseph, to the
church that was founded in his name.
For the Church, this
moment marks the beginning of a new era. Jesus has gone, the care for community
of believers is now in the hands of his disciples
The departure of Jesus, the
gift of the Holy Spirit, this is the beginning of the age of prophecy in the
early church. It is a time of discernment. It is the Apostolic age.
In this time, the Church
evolves. It becomes a new creation. It is no longer merely a sect of Judaism. It
becomes an international movement, transcending Palestine, it spreads
throughout the Roman Empire.
The way of Jesus, the new
way, is preached in new languages, in new tongues, and told through new stories.
In this stories Jesus became something new, a myth, a man of power, godlike, God’s
own self, the creator of the universe.
Jesus preached the way of
love, of service, of caring, of justice, of mercy. The way of Jesus can be
lived in silence, it does not require words.
The myth of Pentecost, as
related here in the Gospel of Saint John, narrates some of the struggles of the
early Church. It was written more than one hundred years after the death of
Jesus, and decades after the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. It was
written for the Church, for John’s community, in an era when the
differentiation among Christians and Jews had concretized, when the leaders in
the new Christian movement were trying to establish their bona fides, as the true heirs of Jesus’ ministry.
These new Christians
imagined the gift of the Holy Spirit, released in a breath of ritual
remembering, they imagined it as something new, new to them, but they were
wrong. The Holy Spirit was always with them, has always been with humanity, it
was not at this time the reception of something new.
As
Paul taught, God is the creator of the universe, the eternal God is the first
source and center of all things. The infinite God engenders all potentialities,
and yet interferes with none of them, having created the universe in freedom. The
universe that God created, God created free from coercion. God does not coerce
creation. And yet the entirety of what is moves according to God’s eternal
purpose, and there is no contradiction in this mystery.
The
Spirit of God animates all living beings, sustains all of creation, and has
sustained it throughout all time. Pentecost is a feast that celebrates the
acknowledgement of this reality, not the instantiation of it at this point in
time.
The
mission and ministry passed on through this revelation is the heard in the
calling, to love and care for, to serve those in greatest need, to love justice
and be merciful in the face of the world’s horrors.
As the Psalmist wrote:
God’s salvation is close. Have no fear.
The glory of God does not come and go
according to our deeds and merits. God is always present, in all times and all
places.
Have no fear. God’s salvation reaches
everyone.
God, the creator of the Universe, the God
of Jesus Christ, is the God of all people. Pentecost reveals this. The Feast of
Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the ritual of baptism are rites
which tie the members of the church to an affirmation of this revelation. They
tie us to Jesus, and his mission in symbolic way, binding us to his life, his
death, and his ascension.
These are ritual of reflection,
acknowledging the actuality of our unity prefigured in creation. It celebrates
our divine unity as children of God.
All of those things which we imagine, which
we hold in hearts and minds, that divide us one from another, these are
illusions born of fear, a lack of trust (faith) in our neighbors, in ourselves,
and in God.
Our fears bring us back to, or keep us
locked in a place of toil, and division, such as is reflected in the book of
Genesis, in the story of Babel.
This is the story of the beginning of agrarianism. It
details an understanding about how cities came to be built, and became large
agricultural centers.
This marked the beginning of the caste system, slavery,
and all of the hierarchical structures of social sin.
Where the agrarian life was established, larger and
larger population of people came to be supported. As such, they were able to
build larger communities, sustaining greater populations, hoarding more wealth.
To protect themselves against others they were able to
build walls around their cities, and other monumental structures.
The narrative surrounding the construction of the
first tower, marks the beginning of state sponsored religion.
In Mesopotamia these towers were called ziggurats. A
ziggurat served a variety of purposes. They were built as granaries. They functioned
as temples. They were under the management of a priestly caste, and from the
top of these towers the astronomers watched the movements of the heavens. From
that they planned the seasons, the planting and the harvest.
The move to agrarianism created divided the social
order. The division of labor ensued, a caste system came to be, people were
separated into stations; laborers, merchants, priests and royal warriors. As
time passed these castes became increasingly more rigid, and movement between
them became nearly impossible.
We are still burdened by these systems, they are rife
with social injustice.
Jesus confronted these injustices in his day, he
taught his disciples to do the same.
First
Reading Genesis 11:1-9 ©
Throughout
the earth men spoke the same language, with the same vocabulary. Now as they
moved eastwards they found a plain in the land of Shinar where they settled.
They said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and bake them in the fire.’
(For stone they used bricks, and for mortar they used bitumen). ‘Come,’ they
said ‘let us build ourselves a town and a tower with its top reaching heaven.
Let us make a name for ourselves, so that we may not be scattered about the
whole earth.’
Now
the Lord came down to see the town and the tower that the sons of man had
built. ‘So they are all a single people with a single language!’ said the Lord.
‘This is but the start of their undertakings! There will be nothing too hard
for them to do. Come, let us go down and confuse their language on the spot so
that they can no longer understand one another.’ The Lord scattered them thence
over the whole face of the earth, and they stopped building the town. It was
named Babel therefore, because there the Lord confused the language of the
whole earth. It was from there that the Lord scattered them over the whole face
of the earth.
Send
forth your spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth.
or
Alleluia!
Bless the Lord, my soul!
Lord God, how great you are,
clothed in majesty and glory,
wrapped in light as in a robe!
Send
forth your spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth.
or
Alleluia!
How many are your works, O Lord!
In wisdom you have made them
all.
The earth is full of your riches.
Bless the Lord, my soul.
Send
forth your spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth.
or
Alleluia!
All of these look to you
to give them their food in due
season.
You give it, they gather it up:
you open your hand, they have
their fill.
Send
forth your spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth.
or
Alleluia!
You take back your spirit, they die,
returning to the dust from
which they came.
You send forth your spirit, they are
created;
and you renew the face of the
earth.
Send
forth your spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth.
or
Alleluia!
1
Corinthians 12:3-7,12-13 ©
No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ unless he
is under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
There is a variety of gifts
but always the same Spirit; there are all sorts of service to be done, but
always to the same Lord; working in all sorts of different ways in different
people, it is the same God who is working in all of them. The particular way in
which the Spirit is given to each person is for a good purpose.
Just as a human body, though
it is made up of many parts, is a single unit because all these parts, though
many, make one body, so it is with Christ. In the one Spirit we were all
baptised, Jews as well as Greeks, slaves as well as citizens, and one Spirit
was given to us all to drink.
Gospel
Acclamation
Alleluia, alleluia!
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your
faithful
and kindle in them the fire of your love.
Alleluia!
The
Gospel of John 20:19-23
As
the Father sent me, so am I sending you: receive the Holy Spirit
In the evening of the
first day of the week, the doors were closed in the room where the disciples
were, for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood among them. He said to them,
‘Peace be with you’, and showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were
filled with joy when they saw the Lord, and he said to them again, ‘Peace be
with you.
‘As the Father sent me,
so am I sending you.’
After saying this he
breathed on them and said:
‘Receive the Holy Spirit.
For those whose sins you
forgive,
they are forgiven;
for those whose sins you
retain,
they are retained.’
(NJB)
1st
Sunday of Ordinary Time (Pentecost)