Pentecost 2022 - The Primacy of Love

 

Pentecost 2022-The Primacy of Love

The essence of Pentecost and the Good News of Jesus is: We come from Love – We return to Love – We belong to Love – Love is All Around! God is Love. We belong to Love!

 

The feast of Pentecost was an Israelite spring harvest festival that also celebrated a renewal of the peoples’ Covenant with the God of the Passover-Exodus event. As a group of 120 frightened men and women from Galilee were hiding from the Jerusalem and Roman authorities, the Spirt arrives with a sound “like wind,” and something “like fire.” This recalls that the Spirit descended upon Jesus at his baptism “like a dove.” There was no dove, no wind or fire, and no words to describe what it was like that day in Jerusalem. Jesus’s baptism and Pentecost were such mighty and mysterious events that there are no words to adequately describe them! Storyteller Luke must resort to figures of speech that can only suggest the arrival of the Spirit is “like” wind, fire and a dove.

 

We also note that these events were not personal inner experiences – but rather an outpouring of God’s energy that touches everyone present! All those visitors from all those other countries were astonished!  Someone who attends our Noonday Prayer likened it all as “an astonishing miracle of overwhelming grace!” Like the crowd in Jerusalem at 9:00am that morning of Pentecost, we ask ourselves, “What does this mean?”

 

It means that all people from all over the world, from every nation, every tribe, every family, are people of the Spirit – the Spirit of Love! At his baptism, Jesus hears a voice declare, “You are my Beloved – I am well pleased with you!” I have long believed that when we are baptized, there are Seraphim and Cherubim whispering in our ears, “You are God’s Beloved! God is well pleased with you!” We are God’s Beloved! God is well pleased with us! This is the Good News! Every day we wake up we are forgiven, we are loved and can begin again – renewed, revived to return to God’s way of Love as described in our Covenant promises to seek and serve Christ in all persons, and to strive for justice and peace for all persons. All persons are worthy of God’s love.

 

Martyr and Saint, Archbishop Oscar Romero once said it like this: "Each of us has an individual greatness. God would not be our author if we were something worthless. 

You and I and all of us are worth very much, because we are creatures of God, 

and God has prodigally given his wonderful gifts to every person."

- Archbishop Oscar Romero, September 4, 1977

 

As we join Isabelle and Kaitlyn who are being baptized today and renew our own Baptismal Covenant, let us know that the essence of it all is that God loves us, and calls us to love one another – including strangers, enemies and people from all over the world. For all people and all creatures on earth come from Love, will return to love, and are sustained by the love that surrounds us on all sides! We belong to Love. For God is Love. We are God’s Beloved. God is well pleased with us. All of us are worth very much, because we are creatures of God! Amen.