Pentecost

Pentecost When the Advocate comes

Today is the feast of Pentecost. It marks ten days from Jesus’ Ascension into heaven. It also marks the coming of the Holy Spirit in a new way. That new way is the birth of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

Jesus did not appoint a single human being to hold absolute infallible authority over the Church. Jesus well knew that no human soul is capable of holding and wielding absolute infallible authority. Nevertheless, the Church needs such an authority to guide and direct and strengthen. The person Jesus sent was not a prophet, an apostle, a bishop, a saint or a theologian. The Person Jesus sent is the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the absolute infallible authority who governs the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

The Holy Spirit is the co eternal third person of the Trinity. He is a person not an energy field or a feeling. With the Father and the Son he forms the eternal community of Love and Holiness that is the One God.

The Holy Spirit has been active in the world from the beginning of time. He inspired Moses and the prophets. He accomplished the incarnation of the Son. For that reason He is some times referred to as the spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

But before the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit did not live within the hearts and minds and wills of all who seek God. This is the unique and powerful gift Jesus gave to the world on the day of Pentecost.

Pentecost initiated the Church Age. The Church Age is characterized by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in every human soul who accepts the gift of God in Jesus Christ.
Within that first generation of the Church the Holy Spirit accomplished several important tasks for the coming centuries.

First: He ordered the church in its three fold ministry of bishops, priests and deacons.
Second: He set the precedent for authority in the church with the Ecumenical Council.
Third: He inspired the apostles to develop our liturgical pattern of worship.
Fourth: He ordered the sacramental life of the church.
Fifth: He inspired the writing of the final books of the Bible. Those final books comprise the New Testament.
Sixth: He established the universal (catholic) mission and message of the Church to offer the gift of God in Jesus Christ to all people everywhere.,
Seventh: He inhabits the soul of every believer and unites us to the love and holiness of the Eternal Trinity. He helps us grow in grace.

Jesus taught that the Holy Spirit would convict the world of three important principles. Those principles involve sin, righteousness, and rule.

The Holy Spirit leads us to study the scriptures to discern the fundamental truth that sin is separation. It is separation from God, separation from other people, separation from the image of Christ that is implanted in every human soul. This teaching is not new. But it is seldom appreciated.

Most religion teaches that sin is the violation of external laws. That is what the Bible calls transgression. Transgression is a result of separation. The Law can only restrain our tendency to violate the commandments and to act as a mirror to our souls to convict us that there is a deeper problem underlying our tendency to rebel and disobey.

The Holy Spirit reveals and convicts that the problem humanity faces is not just breaking the law. The underlying problem facing humanity is separation.

Since sin is separation righteousness can only be reunification. Righteousness is right relationship. Most religion teaches that righteousness is right action and right belief. If you have right action and right belief God is obligated to give you what you want in this life and to reward you with the pleasures of heaven in the next life.

The Holy Spirit leads us into the truth that neither sin or righteousness are about the external actions we take or fail to take. Neither are they about the form of rational analysis we use to define God, other people and ourselves. Those things have their place only as a consequence of what is fundamentally true about sin and righteousness. What is fundamentally true is relationship.

Sin breaks the relationship God designed us to enjoy. Separation is a real choice humans made to re order our very existence on the principles of knowledge and power. Reunification is also a real choice. God has made the choice for reunification very simple. The choice for reunification is the real choice to enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

The choice to accept God’s offer of a personal relationship
with Jesus Christ is the choice of love and holiness.
We cannot have a personal relationship with a law, a ritual or a spiritual discipline. Those things lead us back into the three consequences of separation: fear, self will and pride. They engender reactions and rebellion even as they seek to impose submission.

In Christ, it is the relationship of love and holiness that sets us free from fear, self will and pride. The relationship itself then opens our minds and hearts and wills to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will use law, ritual and spiritual discipline from the place of eternal love. The Holy Spirit ever seeks to transform our thoughts, our emotions, our wills by the principles of love and holiness.

Law based religion always asks who is in charge and what is the minimum I have to do to avoid punishment and get my reward?
On an even more basic level the question is: what’s in it for me?

Love based religion always asks the question: how may I help? For love is its own reward. The soul that is immersed in the love of God in Jesus Christ is already participating in the infinite and eternal love of the blessed and Holy Trinity. There is no reward any greater than the infinite and eternal love of God.

The Church Age is the Age of the Holy Spirit. It is the Age of Grace. It is the Age of Evangelism. It is the time when God is offering all people everywhere the gift of love in Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit is speaking to everyone in the world. He invites all people everywhere to make a real choice to seek love and holiness. The choice is real because it is eternal. The choice is real because love can not be imposed. Love can only be a gift.

The Holy Spirit is speaking very clearly and simply to all people in many and varied ways. The problem is not that God has hidden himself from humanity. The problem is that humanity has hidden itself from God. The Solution is God coming to this planet in the person of Jesus Christ to seek us out and invite us back into the relationship we have rejected and continue to reject.
All choices are eternal choices. In Christ, the Holy Spirit will take the choices we make and fold them into the Divine Love and Compassion of the Beloved, Jesus Christ. Apart from Christ the Holy Spirit can only invite us to reconsider.

The Holy Spirit always, always, reveals the love of God in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit never imposes a religion or a law.

There are sixty seconds in minute. There are sixty minutes in an hour. There are 24 hours in a day. Every day we have 86,400 opportunities to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit offering us the love of God in Jesus Christ.

There are 365 days in a year. Every year we have 3,110,400
opportunities to make a real choice to receive the gift of reunification with eternal love. Every year we have 3,110,400 choices to grow in grace, to transform in love and holiness, to become more of who God created us to be and invites us to become.

In this age of grace every second is an eternal gift in a single moment of time. That is why all choices are eternal choices. That is why Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit into the world during this Age of Grace, during this Age of the Church. That is why there is eternity in the smallest unit of time. Eternal love comes in a single moment when the Advocate, the Holy Spirit comes.

The Holy Spirit has come. The Holy Spirit is here. How are you responding to His invitation to experience a new life in the love and compassion of Jesus Christ?