To read the texts click on the texts: Acts 2:1--11; 1 Cor12:3b-7, 12-13; Jn 20:19-23
The little boy was taken to the
nursery school by his mother. Aware of his anxiety being abandoned, the boy’s
mother leaned down, kissed her son, and said, “Good bye, my love. No one is
leaving.” Each day, his mother would bid him farewell with those same words.
The boy was too young to recognize the paradox, and embraced his new existence
and quickly adjusted to new and frightening surroundings. Day after day, and
week after week, his mother bid the same farewell: “Good bye, my love. No one
is leaving.”
The boy grew into adulthood, and
there came a day when he was confronted with the reality of having to place his
mother in a nursing home. She – now elderly and frail, with advanced
Alzheimer’s disease – barely recognized him, often forgot to eat, and simply
could no longer care for herself. As he departed from her, leaving her in her
new and frightening surroundings, he remembered her words. He leaned down,
kissed his mother, and said, “Good bye, my love. No one is leaving” – words his
mother recognized even though she no longer recognized him. A tear appeared in
her eye, as she clasped his hand and repeated, ”Good bye, my love. No one is
leaving.”
This is Jesus’ message to his
disciples on his departure to the Father: “Good bye, my love. No one is
leaving”.
Jesus is departing from us, out
of our sight. We find ourselves in the new and frightening surroundings of this
life, in a place where we are uncomfortable and often feel ill-equipped to
carry on. And yet, Jesus continues to assure us of his continued presence
through his gift of the Holy Spirit. This is why, though he said good bye, he
is not leaving. This is shown in the Gospel text of today when he comes to the
frightened disciples after his Resurrection, with a twofold greeting of peace.
These disciples, who fled in fear at Jesus’ arrest, are now themselves forgiven
and told to continue his mission from the Father. Though they abandoned Jesus,
he will not abandon them though they failed him; God’s love will not fail them.
Then, reminiscent of God’s action at creation, Jesus breathes on them, and
gifts them the gift of the Spirit and with it the gift of new life. They have
become a new creation.
Along with the gift of the Spirit
is also a commission to forgive or retain sin.”Retaining sin” is not a
juridical act. It is not just the eleven but the “disciples” who are gathered in
the room. John uses the term ‘disciples’ for a much larger group than the
twelve or eleven. This group could also have included women and so the
commission has to do with something that is more than juridical. So this means
that through the gift of the Spirit, the disciples are given power to take away
the sin of the world and unmask and control the power of evil as Jesus himself
did. Through their just and loving actions in imitation of the Lord, they are
to communicate the unconditional love of the Father.
At Pentecost, as the Acts of the
Apostles narrates, the Spirit of God – and through the Spirit, God’s
unconditional love – comes down upon the disciples, resting on each of them and
thereby bringing them and us together once again. The disciples get a crash
course as it were in the language of God. After Pentecost the days of Babel and
confusion are over. The great differences among us, in culture and background,
wealth and poverty, are scattered in “the rush of a violent wind”. They are
burned away by tongues of fire. Their nationality or culture does not really
matter. Each one hears the same message in his/her native tongue simply because
it is a language of forgiveness and love, and the language of love is one.
The unity which this love brings
is summarized by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians. The Spirit is at
work in each of us, always fresh and always new, waiting to be translated into
the language of our own lives, into the language of love.
Our world, however, is still
tongue-tied. Babel, the parable of our first clash of cultures and failure to
communicate, is more than a mythic explanation of the differences among nations
and languages. It is an description of the human condition itself. We often do not
understand one another even when we speak the same language. We remain stymied
by our fundamental inability to accept the differences among us.
It is only to a extent that we
make an effort to accept the other, no matter how different or foreign, that we
come to understand the language of God. Only then is Babel turned to Pentecost.
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