Homily for Pentecost Sunday, 19 May 2024
Readings: Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 103; Galatians 5:16-25; John 15:26-27; 16:12-15
Fifty days on from Easter, we celebrate Pentecost Sunday. We give thanks for God’s spirit in our hearts. We are delighted that the gifts of the Spirit are available to all. Paul tells the Galatians that ‘the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control’. We could all do with a good serving of that fruit.
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Recalling that first Pentecost, we contemplate the apostles who had received the message at the Ascension: ‘you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and then you will be my witnesses not only in Jerusalem but throughout Judaea and Samaria, and indeed to the ends of the earth’.
Here they now are, being filled with the Spirit, empowered to proclaim the good news, and in a variety of tongues. Their hearers include devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem: ‘Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travellers from Rome’. What’s Luke, the author of Acts, up to, giving us this eclectic list of places? There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what places are in and what places are out.
You will recall that immediately after the baptism of Jesus when he received the gift of the Spirit, Luke gave a lengthy genealogy of Jesus ‘being the son, as it was thought, of Joseph’, who was son of X, who in turn was son of Y etc. The list seems to go on forever. In this way we’re told that Jesus was a descendant of David, a descendant of Abraham, a descendant of Adam who was son of God.
Scripture scholar Brendan Byrne tells us: ‘The genealogy makes the point that this special status in no way sets Jesus apart from the rest of the human race. He too is a child of Adam, who was himself the son of God. Jesus’ special status is a pledge and paradigm of the dignity intended by the Creator not merely for Israel but for the human race as a whole. It will be Jesus’ messianic role to confront and overthrow all the forces that seek to thwart that dignity and the destiny to which it leads.’[1]
Scripture scholar Luke Timothy Johnson then highlights what the evangelist Luke is up to with the parallelism of the lengthy genealogy in the gospel and now the Acts of the Apostles’ potpourri of nations and places from which devout Jews have gathered: ‘The parallelism fits the pattern of Luke’s story: Jesus is the prophet who sums up all the promises and hopes of the people before him; in his apostolic successors, that promise and hope (now sealed by the Spirit) will be carried to all the nations of the earth.’[2]
What are we to make of such a universal promise and hope at a time when all devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem live in fear of what will become of them should the Hamas terrorists have their way and should the cry ‘From the river to the sea’ be a prelude to their annihilation and the destruction of the state of Israel? What are we to make of such a universal promise and hope at a time when innocent Palestinians, including children in Rafah, are taking shelter from relentless bombing while they’re treated as human shields and proportionate collateral damage at one and the same time by the warring parties? What are we to make of such a universal promise and hope at a time when equality, democracy, human rights and the rule of law are extended only in the most discriminatory of ways in the Occupied Territories on the West Bank? What are we to make of such a universal promise and hope at a time when the extremes on both sides envisage only a one-state solution between the river and the sea, that state being their state and only their state?
What are we to make of such a universal promise and hope at a time when the UN General Assembly with Australia’s agreement indicates ‘unwavering support for the two-State solution of Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security within recognised borders’ with our government acknowledging: ‘We know this vote won’t resolve the immediate crisis’? What are we to make of such a universal promise and hope at a time when our Australian government affirms that ‘a future Palestinian state cannot be in a position to threaten Israel’s security’?[3]
As so often, this is not a matter of siding with the goodies and condemning the baddies. All of us – those on both sides, and those of us who don’t know what to make of it all – are steeped in a situation of evil, a situation with deep, intractable historic causes. Whatever our views about the war and about the protesters, all of us this Pentecost are offered the fruit of the Spirit.
We pray:
Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.
Bless the LORD, O my soul!
O LORD, my God, you are great indeed!
How manifold are your works, O LORD!
the earth is full of your creatures;
Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.
If you take away their breath, they perish
and return to their dust.
When you send forth your spirit, they are created,
and you renew the face of the earth.
Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.
From the start of 2024, Fr Frank Brennan SJ will serve as part of a Jesuit team of priests working within a new configuration of the Toowong, St Lucia and Indooroopilly parishes in the Archdiocese of Brisbane. Frank Brennan SJ is a former CEO of Catholic Social Services Australia (CSSA). Fr Frank’s latest book is An Indigenous Voice to Parliament: Considering a Constitutional Bridge, Garratt Publishing, 2023 and his forthcoming book is ‘Lessons from Our Failure to Build a Constitutional Bridge in the 2023 Referendum’ (Connor Court, 2024).
[1]Brendan Byrne, The Hospitality of God, St Paul’s, 2000, p. 41.
[2] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles, Sacra Pagina Series (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1992), p. 47.
[3] See https://www.dfat.gov.au/news/speech/un-general-assembly-tenth-emergency-special-session-illegal-israeli-actions-occupied-east-jerusalem-and-rest-occupied-palestinian-territory-explanation-vote
