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   The Jewish Feast of Weeks, so called because it was celebrated seven weeks after Passover, was known in Greek as Pentecost, the 50th Day. The Pentecost which followed Jesus’ death was remembered within the Christian community for two extraordinary events: the gift of the spirit and the beginning of the Christian mission.

   In the Bible the spirit of God is present at the beginning of things. On the first page of the Bible “the spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2) at the dawn of creation. On the last page of the Bible, as the new Jerusalem descends from heaven, the spirit gives the invitation, “Come! Let him who desires take the water of life without price” (Revelation 22:17).

   So it is not surprising that the extraordinary new beginning which was the Christian mission should be marked by a startling manifestion of the spirit’s presence. It is difficult for us to appreciate just how extraordinry this new beginning was. For a group of uneducated Galileans (cf. Acts 4:13), whose rabbi had been executed by the Roman authorities just a few weeks earlier, to proclaim him in Jerusalem as Messiah and Lord was indeed, in Paul’s words, “a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23)

   What is the mission of the church today? What is our mission? We are far removed from the situation of those first Christian evangelists whose sole concern was to proclaim the message of Christ’s death and resurrection throughout the known world, so that all men and women could repent and be saved, before the Lord returned.

   But for all the differences in the understanding of mission which have emerged over two millennia, during which the Lord has not returned, one thing remains the same: mission today, as on that first Pentecost, means outreach; it means going beyond ourselves, our parish, our diocese, our church, our country.

   I am old enough to remember the man who ran against Roosevelt in 1940, Wendell Wilkie. His campaign slogan was “One World.” How remote, how naïve and unrealistic this ideal appears today! The political polarization of the Cold War has given way to religious antagonisms which recall the Scopes trial in the U.S. and the battling armies in the Holy Land during the age of the Crusades.

   No message or programme can transcend these differences. But the divine love which was poured out upon the disciples on that first Pentecost shows itself more in deeds than in words.

   For us to be able to say or do anything to give hope to our world, the spirit of God, the new creation, must be at work in our hearts. Only through the action of the spirit can our minds be enlightened to see a new vision, as the disciples saw the risen Lord. Only through the action of the spirit can our hearts be enlarged, as the disciples abandoned the confines of national separatism, to embark on a mission to all nations (Matthew 28:19). Only through the action of the spirit can we overcome cynicism and self-interest in pursuit of the impossible dream revealed on that first Pentecost: “that they all may be one” (John 17:11).

May 15, 2005

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