Homily for Pentecost Sunday, C

In the Acts of the Apostles, on the day of Pentecost, THEY were all in one place together. A few verses earlier Luke told us exactly who THEY are: Mary the Mother of Jesus was there, along with about 120 persons.

I have Mass on Sunday, June 8 at St. Isidore @ 9:30/11:30 am

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Transcript

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. 

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace, be with you." When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace, be with you. 

As the Father has sent me, so I send you." And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit, whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained." 

The Gospel of the Lord. 

On the evening of the first day of the week, the doors were locked, where the disciples were. Who is in this locked room? I usually imagine the twelve apostles. In the next verse after our reading, though, John tells us Thomas, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. John doesn't say "apostles" or "the twelve" in today's Gospel. He said, "Where the disciples were." Mary Magdalene, a disciple who was mentioned earlier in this chapter, was probably there. Maybe the whole church was there. 

In the Acts of the Apostles, on the day of Pentecost, they were all in one place together. A few verses earlier, Luke told us exactly who they are. Mary, the mother of Jesus, was there, along with about 120 persons. Before the day was over, the church had grown from 120 to more than 3,000. 

We rightly call Pentecost the birthday of the church because something new is being born in us. Just as Jesus' birth was an event marked by a proclamation of "good news of great joy" that will be for all the people, so would the birth of the church result in the proclamation of "good news and joy" for all the world. 

In Genesis, chapter 2, human life begins with the gift of breath. Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Breath belongs to God. All of this is a gift of God. As we prayed in the words of Psalm 104, "If you take away their breath, they perish and return to their dust." 

Walter Brueggemann, the preeminent Old Testament biblical scholar, died this week at the age of 92. Brueggemann wrote, "The people of God are a people of the second wind, the recovery of breath after the loss of breath. The God who gave the first breath in Genesis is the God who gives a second wind to those who are willing and able to inhale the goodness of God that yields courage, stamina, and steadfastness." 

The psalmist continues, "When you send forth your spirit, they are created." St. Paul describes this new creation, "for those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God, for you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption through which we cry, 'Abba, Father.'" 

The risen Christ enters into the room where the church is locked in fear and said to them, "Peace, be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. The church in its fearful hiding, like Israel, is given a second wind." 

All Jesus does is breathe forgiveness. Jesus identifies forgiveness with breathing, the one thing we've done constantly since we were born and will do until we die. God's forgiveness is like breathing. Forgiveness is not apparently something God does. It is who God is. God can do no other. 

"Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained." We Catholics tend to hear these words through the language of the sacrament of confession or penance. If there are only twelve apostles in the upper room, then Jesus might be entrusting this work of forgiveness to the ordained leadership of the church. But if there are more than the twelve in the upper room, then this passage is about the commissioning of the whole church, the community of Jesus' disciples. 

Jesus entrusts this ministry of reconciliation to all of us. You is plural. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven. But the next line doesn't seem to follow. Whose sins you retain are retained. Are there some people we don't have to forgive? Can we hold some people in their sins as if Jesus only died for some but not for all? Although our translation reads, "Whose sins you retain," the word "sins" is not in the original Greek. 

Matthew's Gospel speaks about "binding" and "loosing," and the translators likely apply these opposites when they translated this verse in John's Gospel. I. H. M. sister Sandra Schneider, an expert in the Gospel of John, translates the second line, "Any you hold fast are held fast." The phrases are parallel, Schneider says, but they're progressive, not opposite. 

Whose sins you forgive, they're forgiven by God and will remain forgiven. Those you hold, embrace even, will be held, embraced by God, and they will continue to be held, embraced by God. 

At Pentecost, the Church is sent out. This mirrors the movement of birth from inside the womb outward to life in the world. Pentecost then is not so much about the power of God coming from outside us down onto us, but a releasing of the power that's already within us, breathed into us by God at creation and by the risen Christ still among us. 

It is particularly through acts of forgiveness that we can harness for God the energies of love, setting a contagious fire for the recreation that is groaning to emerge.