Today we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit, that all important gift which marked the beginning of the Church and continues to this day to guide the Church toward being what it is: the body of Christ in the world of human beings.

We’ve heard two quite different takes on the bestowal of this gift upon the Church. First we heard Luke’s story from Acts. His is by far the more dramatic of the two, filled as it is with special optical effects and stereophonic sound. Fifty days have passed since the women at the tomb first reported the Resurrection to the disciples. Jerusalem is again filled with tourists who have made a pilgrimage there to celebrate the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost, fifty days after Passover. The twelve, their number made whole by the election of Matthias, are together in house when, all of a sudden, Wham!— a sound like a hurricane sweeps through the house, loud enough to draw people in the city to the place. What looked like tongues of flame appeared among the twelve, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit, enabled now to be Christ’s witnesses to the farthest ends of the earth. And so the Church was born.

John’s story is quieter, more hushed, more subdued. The disciples—not just the Twelve, but for John all those who had seen in Jesus the likeness of the Father, who had known through Jesus the unfathomable ocean of love which is God— are hiding out behind locked doors on the night of Easter Day. Then, without any ado, there is among them a presence quiet, still, gentle, calming, saying, “Peace be with you.” That was, of course, an ordinary enough greeting; it remains the common greeting among Semitic peoples to this day: Shalom. Salaam. Peace. And the craven, daunted crowd in that upper room suddenly recognize the Crucified One vibrantly and vitally with them again. Their hearts burst with joy.

A second time he says to them, “Peace be with you.” But this time it is more than a mere greeting; it is now the bestowal of the gift which is the fruit of openness and dialog, the fruit of understanding and love, the peace of God which passes all understanding. Then the Lord commissions them, he sends them out to continue his work among the haunts of humankind. And to enable them to do this, he breathes upon them the Holy Spirit, the Counsellor, the Comforter, the Strengthener.

Two very different stories, two very different takes on the same momentous event, but each sharing with the other some vital truths. First of all, we should note that the Spirit is not given to individuals in isolation but in community. There are Christians, as we know, who look for evidence of an individual infusion of the Holy Spirit as a sign of God’s favor toward that individual— perhaps an ecstatic outburst or an unexpected healing or the revelation of a new talent; but this understanding has no place in either John or Luke’s depiction. For them it is people in community who areaffected, it is the community that is strenthened and enabled to go out and do Christ’s will in the world.

In the second place, the gift of the Spirit is a call to action. Luke, not surprisingly, makes a big deal of this. The Twelve go straight to work. They burst out of the house enthusiastically and begin proclaiming good news about the wonderful works of God in Jesus Lord and Christ to the crowd who had gathered outside because of that frightful sound of roaring winds. John is, again, quieter and more indirect; we know that the disciples responded to their being sent only by the existence of John’s gospel itself and the existence of the community for which it was written. But that very reticence speaks volumes.

And finally, it is the Holy Spirit that enables men and women to do the will of God, to bear witness to the Good News, to act charitably out of love for others, to join themselves with others to form the family of God.

And so it is today. No one is asked to shoulder the gospel alone, for each of us is part of a family and community founded and sustained by the Holy Spirit: the community that is the Church, the Body of Christ. It is then as members of that Body, as the eyes and ears and mouths, as the hands and feet and minds of Christ that we are called upon to be witnesses of that great outpouring of love over his creation that is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is through our openness and inclusiveness in our dealings with others; it is through our willingness to talk and, even more importantly, to listen; it is through the love we show towards one another and to those we encounter as we move through the years of our lives that we follow the Holy Spirit’s lead and show forth that love which is God and bear witness to it. But not as indivuals, not as Lone Rangers of the Good News— always as folks who know we have with us and behind us, before us and beside us a great cloud of witnesses in heaven and on earth ever aiding and abeting; always as members of the family of God, always as Churchmen and Churchwomen, always as brothers and sisters of Christ!

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