Pentecost

June 8, 2025

John 20: 19-23

It may be strange to say, but the feast of Pentecost is all about unity. It is about unity in two ways: First, the possibility of unity is brought back to a world that had become un-unified and divided; and, Second, the very different individuals who make up the Church are brought into a unified whole.

At the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the Spirit hovered over the waters and made sense out of chaos; the Spirit made a unity of all the different things that made up the earth, the seas and all that is in them. But since the Fall of Adam and Eve, the division and chaos reentered the world. Even the cleansing and reordering of the world after the flood and Noah did not last long. The chaos returned when the tower of Babel was thrown down and the many different languages came about which then divided the peoples and created mistrust and envy. The Spirit never abandoned the world, but fewer and fewer people could recognize his presence. The Hebrew people and some others managed to keep in touch with the Spirit, but not clearly. Then Jesus Christ came; God and humankind were united. This great event was the beginning of the unification of the world. And as we have seen in our celebration of Easter, Ascension, and now Pentecost, Jesus has sent to us through his Father, the Spirit who will teach us all things and brings the possibility of unity in the world again.

In today’s Gospel from John, Jesus comes to his disciple in upper room and says, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you shall forgive are forgiven them, whose sins you shall retain, are retained.” Here Jesus does two things. First, he gives them a mission to go out. He is telling the disciples that just as he is sent by his Father, in the same way he sends them out. They share, then, in the mission of Christ himself. And what are they and us sent to do? To continue Jesus’ mission of forgiving sins and preaching the coming of the Kingdom of God. Here the mission of the Church is born.

In the first reading from Acts of the Apostles, Jesus sends the Spirit to the apostles and others gathered in the upper room which gives them the power to carry out Jesus mission to the ends of the earth. They are to be part of Jesus mission to bring unity once again into the world, a unity that has been lost since the Fall of Adam and Eve, and the chaos at the tower of Babel. They received the Holy Spirit as a great wind entered the house and tongues of fire came to rest on each on of them. Naturally, at all the noise people from all over the world gather outside the house. The apostles came out and true to the mission, began telling all these people the good news of the Lord. And, guess what? Each person could understand in his or her own language what the apostles were saying. This is a sign of unity coming back into the world. This is a sign of what Christianity can accomplish. In order for us to be sent as the Father sent Jesus, we also need unity among ourselves.

This is the message of our second reading of Paul to the Corinthians. We cannot proclaim “Jesus is Lord,” except through the unifying presence of the Holy Spirit. Paul tells us that no matter what the differences among us are, we are united in the Spirit. We do not need to let our different talent divide us or make us jealous of one another. We can be Church only in the unity of the Spirit. In Him, the many different talents each of us has, are used to make the one Body of Christ. We are all part of this one body whether we are “Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, through our baptism into the Body of Christ through the unity of the Holy Spirit. This is our promise, “If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit that dwells in you.” And this Spirit allows us to cry, “Abba, Father,” with Jesus and become children of God. But as the Father’s children, we are to live as Jesus and bring Christ to the world, each in our own way, according to our own talent.

This is the challenge to each one of us here today. We do not bear the name Christian just to belong to some social club. We are not now children of the Father simply to come to church once a week. We are both of these to wake up the world as Jesus did. We do this each in our own way, but together we are strong. The Spirit lives within each of us, not just when we want to figure something out, but every moment, guiding us, if we will listen. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

Fr. John Tran