INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURES

Year B - PENTECOST SUNDAY

 

ACTS 2:1-21.   Pentecost celebrates the climax of the Good News.  On this day all the benefits of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ rush into our lives and into the church through the gift of the Holy Spirit. The coming of the Spirit makes this Good News available to the whole world.

     Note how this turbulent account differs from the quiet breathing of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples in John 20:22.  The early church also experienced many other ways in which the Holy Spirit came to the gathered community. Yet all descriptions of the coming of the Spirit tell us of the special relationship God establishes through Jesus Christ with all of humanity.  This is the true definition of the third person of the Trinity: God with us and at work in the world right now.

 

EZEKIEL 37:1-14..  (Alternate)  The Book of Ezekiel was so compellingly imaginative that in strict Jewish circles young people were not permitted to read it alone.

          The haunting passage comes from a long section expressing hope for a new age initiated by God. It was probably written soon after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in 586 BC. The prophet urged his devastated nation to look beyond that catastrophe to a future that vindicated God's justice and promised the restoration of the nation by the action of Gods spirit.

 

PSALM 104:24-34.  This psalm celebrated the work of Spirit of God in creation and providence through the Spirit.  It is possible that this hymn had a parallel in an ancient Egyptian hymn to the sun.

 

ROMANS 8:22-27.  Paul clarifies some of the distinctive work of the Spirit in us.  By entering into our deepest longings, the Spirit serves as intercessor for us and the whole creation.

     Note the emphasis on the Spirit as "helper," the same function brought out in our Gospel lesson.  Paul's understanding of the work of the Spirit arose out of his own personal experience, not theoretical analysis.

 

JOHN 15:26-27; 16:4b-15.  In his table talk at the last supper, Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to the disciples.  The Spirit would carry on Jesus' work and constitute his continuing presence in the world.

     Many different names have been given to the Spirit, each one defining a different role. In each case, the work of the Spirit is to glorify Jesus, i.e. to make him known as the Son of God, the One who reveals God completely and so shares God's glory.

 

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

 

ACTS 2:1-21.   For Christians, Pentecost celebrates the climax of the Good News.  On this day all the benefits of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ rush into our lives and into the church through the gift of the Holy Spirit. The coming of the Spirit makes this Good News available to the whole world.

 

This was not what Pentecost meant to Jews before and after the time of Jesus. Originally, it was a harvest festival (Exod. 23:16; 34:22; Lev. 23:17; Jer. 5:24) recognizing Yahweh as the source of rain and agricultural fertility. Greek-speaking Jews gave it the name of Pentecost referring to the seven week period of the harvest. It was also known as the Feast of First Fruits (Num. 28:26) and the Feast of Weeks. J.D. Rylaarsdam, in his article  in The Interpreter’s Bible (4:828) comments: “The day of the feast was one of solemn joy and thanksgiving that God’s protection had watched over and brought to a successful completion the activities of the cereal harvest season begun seven weeks before. It was a day of ‘holy convocation’ (Lev. 23:21). Work was to cease; through its male representatives, and, especially in later periods, through the temple priesthood, the whole community of Israel presented itself before the Lord.”

 

Following the destruction of the temple in 586 BCE, a gradual transformation took place into a feast commemorating the gift of the law. But it was not until after 200 CE that this became fixed in the Jewish religious tradition. Rylaarsdam regards it as “historically incorrect to describe Weeks as a ‘feast of revelation’ at the time of Jesus ... and consequently misleading to attempt an interpretation of Acts 2 and the meaning of Pentecost in the Christian church on the assumption that it constitutes a literal displacement of, or substitution for, a feast of the law.” He claims that there is no evidence of this in the NT.

 

This view, however, does not take into account the possibility that Acts 2 is an

interpretative midrash on the celebration of the Jewish festival of the first fruits. There are compelling elements of the Pentecost narrative in Acts 2 as such a midrash: The assembled pilgrims from many lands in Jerusalem (vs. 5); the assembled twelve representative of the New Israel (vs. 1); the witnessing to “God’s deeds of power;” the festive atmosphere in which some were thought to be inebriated (vs. 13).

 

Note how this turbulent account differs from the quiet breathing of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples in John 20:22.  Paul also wrote of what many assume was the Pentecost experience in 1 Cor. 15:6 when Jesus appeared “to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive.” Although not present in Jerusalem at the time, Paul would have known those living witnesses and undoubtedly have heard the story directly from them, including Peter himself. Paul’s account may be from the earliest tradition and the Lukan version a more formal reflection on its meaning.

 

The early church experienced many other ways in which the Holy Spirit came to the gathered community. All descriptions of the coming of the Spirit tell us of the special relationship God establishes with all of humanity through faith in Jesus Christ, not one exclusive group of believers.  This is the true definition of the third person of the Trinity: God with us and at work in the world right now. None of us can claim to have exclusive control of the countless ways the Spirit of God works to bring the whole world to faith.

 

EZEKIEL 37:1-14.  (Alternate)   The Book of Ezekiel was so compellingly imaginative that in strict Jewish circles young people were not permitted to read it alone. This passage contains one of the best known of the prophet’s visions. It comes from a long section (33:1-39:29) expressing hope for the restoration of Israel initiated by Yahweh.  Probably experienced soon after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in 586 BC, it urges the devastated nation to look beyond that catastrophe to a future that vindicates God's justice and promises redemption.

 

The image of the valley of dry bones may well have come from an actual battle site. The location of this site cannot be determined and may well be imaginary. Some scholars relate it to the plain in 3:22-23. Although Ezekiel is thought to have spent most of his ministry in Babylon, the vision could also have been a memory from the destruction of Jerusalem. This vision is also thought to have influenced a similar experience in Revelation 11:7-10 although a scene of a massacre such as this was not unfamiliar in ancient times. Or, tragically, even now.

Bones had a special meaning in ancient Hebrew thought. The Hebrew word hetsem, repeated eight times in this passage, derived from a root meaning to be powerful and hence indicated stability and firmness. If the bones were strong and firm, then the soul was also strong. Because of this relationship, careful attention was given to the burial of bones. That these bones lay exposed long after death accentuated the spiritual tragedy which had befallen Israel.

 

The promised resurrection was more than the enfleshing of skeletons and resuscitation of the dead. It included the restoration of the whole community. The prophet’s conversation with Yahweh (vss. 3-10) emphasizes that it is the Lord who takes the initiative to restore life to the skeletons. Whereas the people had lost all hope of restoration (vs. 11), Yahweh insists that not only will they be raised from death and given a new life, but also will return to their homeland (vss.12-14).

 

The effective agent of this resurrection is the Spirit of Yahweh (vs. 14). Remembering that the Hebrew word ruach means breath, wind and spirit, we can see the play on the word throughout the passage in vss. 4, 6, 9, 10 and 14. This recalls the creation stories of Genesis 1:2ff and 2:7ff. The same vibrant Spirit infused the apostles on Pentecost, equipped them for their mission, led to the creative assembling of the NT, and still inspires and empowers the Christian community so created.

 

 

PSALM 104:24-34.  For many Christians it is anathema to suggest that any part of the Bible could have been influenced by literature from another culture. This attitude ignores the obvious historical fact that Israel lay on the main route along which nearly all commerce and military action of the ancient Middle East occurred. Theologically, the Israelites may have been a special people, but racially and culturally they were part of the same milieu as their neighbours around the Fertile Crescent from the Nile to the Tigris-Euphrates valleys. Like all ancient and modern peoples, they were also wholly dependent on the fruitfulness of nature. This psalm reflects the careful observations of nature’s wonders. Unlike other observers of the same natural environment, as a devout Yahwist the psalmist celebrates these as the creativity and providence of Yahweh.

 

The viewpoint of the psalmist is similar to that of the Priestly document’s hymn of creation in Genesis 1. There is a strong possibility that it also had a parallel in an earlier Egyptian hymn to the sun described more fully below. Keen observer that he was, the psalmist knew that everything that grew depended on the sun. Unlike the Egyptians millennia earlier, however, he did not worship the sun. It too he saw as part of creation obedient to the divine will (vs. 19).

 

The psalm’s many similarities to the Hymn to the Aton date from the time of Akhenaton in the 14th century BCE. That pharaoh was unique among Egyptian monarchs in that he disavowed ancient traditions and adopted a new religious system based on the worship the sun as the sole deity. Preoccupation with building a new capital, the arts, literature and his new religious system proved disastrous to Akhenaton’s Asian empire which included Palestine. Hittites from Asia Minor seized most of those territories. During the reign of his son-in-law, the famous Tutankhamon, the movement was branded as heresy, but it left lasting results. However tempting it may be to speculate, no literary evidence has ever been found to show that the monotheism of Moses or later Israelites was influenced by this Egyptian heresy. On the other hand, it would not have been impossible for oral legends of Akhenaton’s revisionist views to have circulated widely for centuries afterward.

 

References to Leviathan, a sea monster, (vs. 26) may seem unusual for a Hebrew. They were not known as a sea-going people. There is ample evidence also that the Israelites were not as ethnically or culturally distinct from their Canaanite neighbours as previously assumed from the biblical record. This was likely an accretion from Canaanite traditions in which the myth of Baal defeating Lothan (a variation of Leviathan) had a significant role in creation. The mythical creature was described as a seven-headed serpent. Others have proposed that the crocodile is intended. It also appeared in Ps. 74:14, Job 3:8, 41:1, and in later apocalyptic literature.

 

However, the point of the psalm cannot be mistaken. Everything that lives is dependent on Yahweh whom the psalmist vows to praise “as long as I live” (vs. 33).

 

 

ROMANS 8:22-27.  “The Holy Spirit is what the Holy Spirit does,” a senior seminarian wrote in an essay on the work of the Spirit. “God the Spirit,”  Trinitarian theologians of the 4th century named what they understood this spiritual phenomenon to be. Language fails us when we try to describe more specifically the experience to which countless Christians have witnessed in their lives since the day of Pentecost. In this brief excerpt from one of his most significant passages about the Spirit, Paul clarifies some of the distinctive work of the Spirit in us. Note the emphasis on the Spirit as "helper," the same function brought out in our Gospel lesson.  Paul's understanding of the work of the Spirit arose out of his own personal experience, not theoretical analysis.

 

By entering into our deepest longings, the Spirit serves as intercessor for us and the whole of creation. As often in his letters, Paul’s metaphors are vivid, if somewhat contorted. The whole creation groans as a woman in labor (vs. 23). Then focusing on Christians ourselves, he identified us as those “who have the first fruits of the Spirit.” The phrase was one he had written in Galatians 5:22-23, one of his earliest letters.  One can assume that this must represent a favorite way he lifted up the ethical aspects of Christian spirituality.

 

Suddenly the metaphor changes; the groaning has a new cause, not the pains of childbirth, but waiting for adoption. That referred to the anticipated physical resurrection at the Messiah’s coming. As a Pharisee, Paul had believed in resurrection long before he became a believer in the risen Christ. Now, after he had come face to face with Christ himself, he had all the more reason to believe in it; but the general resurrection would now occur at the return of Christ. That miracle must wait for some future time, so it becomes the object of hope. If it had already been realized, it would not still be anticipated. Waiting in hope engenders patience, one of the fruits of the Spirit he had named in Galatians 5:22-23.

 

Paul knew that from long experience that patience is a gift, not something achieved or developed. The vigorous drive with which he pursued in his apostolic mission stands out in his letters. They consistently voice impatience, a failing he may well have regarded as his “thorn in the flesh.” He proclaimed his message so persistently and argued his interpretations of the gospel so vehemently that he may well have driven some people away. Was this the “weakness” of vs. 26? Yet when his most fervent prayers went unanswered how did he react? When he could no longer rattle the gates of heaven with his prayers, he found an alternative for the silence in the intercession of the Spirit.

 

In vs. 27, we find an interesting identification of both God and the Spirit as distinct personalities. No easy, mysterious monism here. God and the Spirit are two very unique realities, each with a mind of its own. Nonetheless, there also is a commonality of purpose and will. “The Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” This is not a case of either/or, but of both/and. The Spirit, however distinct it may be in some respects, is still the Spirit of the living God.

 

Bruce Chilton in his Rabbi Paul: An Intellectual Biography, (Image Books, Doubleday, Random House, 2004) presents a relatively new study of the apostle. Many aspects of this reading illustrate the special contribution Chilton believes that Paul contributed the Christian proclamation of the Gospel. For Paul, faith in Jesus Christ and baptism in that faith brought an infusion of the Holy Spirit result in a transformation “whose meaning was infinite, beyond the capacity of the human mind to grasp.... Paul’s Christianity was a religion of the  Spirit and of the Spirit’s power in the community of believers.” (Chilton, 180). In his correspondence with the faith communities he founded Paul articulated his belief that the indwelling Christ by the Spirit enabled all who had been baptized to live in fellowship with God here and hereafter.

 

 

JOHN 15:26-27; 16:4b-15.  As John related Jesus’ table talk at the last supper, Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to the disciples.  The Spirit would carry on Jesus' work and constitute his continuing presence in the world. Again in this passage, the distinctiveness of the personalities stands out; but the persons are not the same as in the Romans passage. Here it is Jesus and the Spirit who are distinguished one from the other. One can quickly see how the eminent bishops of the 4th and 5th centuries felt it absolutely essential to express this spiritual reality in the Trinitarian formulae. In particular, the Chalcedonian phrases of homousios, “of the same substance,” and “proceeding from the Father and the Son” became the sine quae non of the doctrine of the Spirit.

    

Many different names have been given to the Spirit, each one defining a different function. In each case, the work of the Spirit is to glorify Jesus by what the Spirit does, i.e. to make Jesus known as Christ, the Son of God, the one who reveals God completely and so shares God's glory. Here the name given to the Spirit is Advocate or Helper (vs. 26) “who comes from the Father” and “will testify on my behalf.” The name in Greek (parakleptos) has quasi-legal meaning, as in “one who is called to the side of,” denoting one who pleads for another. 1 John 2:1 applies the term to Christ himself. Hebrews 7:25-27 also regards Christ’s high priestly role in the same way. William Barclay has an enlightening comment on the word in his Daily Bible Readings: The Gospel of John (vol.2, 219):

 

“When the story of Jesus is told to us, when the picture of Jesus is set before us, when the teaching of Jesus is unfolded to us, what makes us feel that this picture is none other than the picture of the Son of God, what makes us feel - as we say, instinctively, - that here is wisdom that is divine? That reaction of the human mind, that answer of the human heart is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit within us that moves us to respond to Jesus Christ.”

 

It should be noted, however, that for John the Spirit could not come to the disciples while Jesus was still with them (16:4b-7). The Spirit could come to reveal Christ to them only after the resurrection. Then, as vss. 12-13 emphasizes, the Spirit will also have a teaching and interpretative role. But it will be the things of Christ which he will teach and interpret (vss. 15-16). As G.W.H. Lampe wrote in The Interpreter’s Bible Dictionary, (3: 655) “It is the Paraclete who will inspire the preaching of Christ’s disciples and enable them to testify to him; and their testimony, which is that of the Paraclete himself, is directly related to martyrdom and the confession of Christ under persecution.”

 

Vss. 8-10 contains a somewhat complex description of yet another function of the Spirit: convicting the world of sin, righteousness and judgment. The sin was the lack of faith that Jesus is the Messiah, a challenge to the Jews that John had Jesus utter throughout the gospel. The righteousness of which John spoke referred the total reversal of the shame and curse of the crucifixion. As Paul noted in Galatians 3:13, quoting Deuteronomy 21:23, the law of Moses regarded anyone hung on a tree as especially cursed by God. According to this law, the crucifixion placed Jesus under just such a curse. The judgment came about through the resurrection which revealed that the powers of evil in the world had done their worst in crucifying the Lord of glory; but the resurrection had totally defeated them.

 

This theological reflection attributed to Jesus may say more about the Christian confession of John’s era at the end of the 1st century than on the night before the crucifixion, sixty or more years earlier. It may have been directed in particular at the Jewish element in John’s community. By the last decade of the century, Christian Jews had been banished from their synagogues for their confession that Jesus, crucified and risen, is the Messiah/Christ. Jewish families no longer acknowledged their members who had accepted the new messianic tradition. In essence, therefore, this somewhat cryptic statement is an almost complete confession of faith designed to encourage those who had already sacrificed so much for their convictions.

 

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