Eucharistic Readings for Day of Pentecost: Year A
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13 Psalm 104:25-35, 37 Acts 2:1-21 John 20:19-23
“Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Acts 2: 21)
I’ve been noticing the prophecies from the Hebrew Testament; Jeremiah, Isaiah, and now Joel, but as presented through Peter of the Christian Testament. Peter speaks from Joel of the Hebrew Testament (That’s all he had in his day). He says;
“In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.” Such days are upon us.
How is it that these unlearned, mostly fishermen of Galilee, can speak foreign tongues? It is the Holy Spirit of God Almighty that does this, and it truly is marvelous in our eyes.
Today, we are suffering from a lack of good parenting or from neglected parenting. We suffer from the violence of out-of-control youth who use the internet to organize and perpetrate negative social actions in our stores and other businesses . To this suffering there are, and have been, people among us whose words we should listen to.
Keisha Lance Bottoms was the 60th Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia. She was elected mayor in 2017, served her term and she has moved on. She says to the trouble makers, “Go Home.” The mayor said “we are better than this.” The truth is, we are all better than this.
“Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic theologian. Pascal said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Each of us has a soul that is in conversation with God. Too many of us would rather listen to the rhetoric of others who are also not listening to their souls and thus we have soulless reactions to whatever happens to us. This is especially true among our youth. We/they, need God involved and we don’t know how to ask for it.
Our former Presiding Bishop (The Most Reverend Michael Curry) says the most earnest prayer we can pray is: “Help.” Our help is in the name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.
I have tried to teach my listeners over these last 20 years that you don’t need a priest to be your contact with God. Perhaps we do as a Celebrant at the Mass. But God, as revealed through the prophets of the Hebrew and Christian Testaments, has already written love on our hearts and minds. And God wants to talk with you. Once I have told you this, I have done my job as your preacher. Each of us needs to go to God for help; not as a mob, but as God’s loving child, and especially the parent of a child.
This weekend we remember those who paid with their lives the price for us to worship our preferred way. This weekend we celebrate our new and preferred Bishop of the Diocese of East Carolina, the Rite Reverend Sarah Fisher. This day we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is with us and speaks to us. We just need to call on the Lord for help and remember, Joel through Peter, “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
As we listen to what the Spirit of God is saying to us, let us live to love and to serve, and to teach others to love and to serve, while pondering anew what the Almighty can do. John
Let us pray: The Day of Pentecost: Whitsunday (BCP p.227)
O God, who on this day taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
onewhoponders 