There are many feast days in the annual cycle of the church year, but three major ones stick out—Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. Each of the days, roughly, can be said to celebrate the glory of one of the three person’s of the Trinity. On Christmas, we celebrate the glory of God the Son, born among us for our sake in Jesus of Nazareth, fully God and fully human. On Easter, we celebrate the glory of God the Father, victorious over anything and everything that would stand in his way to create and sustain life, raising his very own Son from death to life again. And on Pentecost, we celebrate the glory of God the Holy Spirit, mysterious revealer of God’s love, mercy, and compassion for all creation, constantly at work to do God’s will in, with, through, and among creation. And so today, on this day of Pentecost, let us take a moment to once again consider God’s will for us, for all people, and for the whole creation. We pray weekly, hopefully even daily or many times a day, “thy will be done”—but what does that mean? What does it mean for us? What does it mean for the world? And do we actually, truly, really mean for God’s will to be done when pray that? What is God’s will? Consider that as we go forward.
Let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
I like to cook. I’ve liked to cook since I was a little kid. I used to help Grandma when she was cooking—although when I was a really little kid, I do have to wonder just how much help I am, given how I see my nephew “helping” my sister when she’s cooking today. But whatever the case, I was in the kitchen a lot with Grandma when she was preparing meals or baking pies or cakes or what have you. As time went along, I wanted not only to help Grandma when she was cooking, but I wanted to cook things on my own. The first thing that Grandma taught me to cook on my own was a fried egg—an important skill, really, for anyone to have. And from there, I started learning how to make other things from her wonderful repertoire of culinary goodness.
One such thing that I learned how to make was baked beans. Now—the baked beans that I make are different than baked beans here in New England. There seems to be a distinction. To me, it’s not that great, but to many of you, it’s significant. So let me explain. What counts as baked beans around here are, as I understand, are properly called Boston baked beans. What I make, what I learned to make from Grandma, are barbeque beans. Whatever the case may be, Grandma taught me to make baked beans her way. The whole family loves them—me included.
It’s a straightforward recipe. Great northern beans. Ketchup to taste. Brown sugar to taste. A few dashes of Worcestershire sauce. A few dashes of liquid smoke. Stir it all up, taste it, and if it needs more ketchup or brown sugar, you dump and pour til it tastes right. And then you sprinkle chopped bacon all over the top of the mixed up beans, and stick it in the oven at 350 degrees until looks done—about two or two-and-a-half hours. Halfway through, you stir the beans so the bacon on top, that’s crisped up now, mixes throughout and the smokey flavor gets mixed all around. As you can tell, this is a very exacting, scientific recipe! But it always produces those wonderful baked beans that we all love—Grandma’s baked beans. Just one of the many recipes that Grandma handed down to me so that I can make the food I grew up loving and can keep loving as an adult—and maybe pass on to others as well.
As many of you are aware, I moved in with Grandma when I was eleven. And one of the things Grandma and I did together was watch the Food Network. I love the Food Network. You can get so many good ideas from it! And as is often the case, I thought I could improve on Grandma’s recipes that she taught me—including the baked beans. I experimented. I added things to the beans. Onions. More spices—paprika and mustard. Other sweeteners—honey or molasses. All sorts of things. I’d try this. I’d try that. But it never satisfied. It just wasn’t right. I eventually realized that what I was looking for was the same satisfaction from the changed baked beans that I got from Grandma’s original simple recipe. But by their very nature, the beans were different. I had purposefully changed them, to make them better, or so I thought, and there was just no way that with the changes that it was going to be the same. I went back to doing it the way that I learned from Grandma, and I’ve been happy ever since. And I’ve made them here, because I love them so much, and share them with you, and I know that some of you like them too! See—sharing the love!
But it was about sharing the love as it was first given to me…not as I had changed it to make it “better.”
Today on this day of Pentecost, or fiftieth day, we celebrate the advent of Holy Spirit. Today marks the end of the Easter season, but the beginning of something new—the beginning of our life as people filled with the Holy Spirit, the power of God, the very breath of life that first called forth creation from nothingness. This same Holy Spirit that fills us was the same Spirit who raised Jesus from death to life again fifty days ago on the first day of a new creation, the first day of God’s doing a new thing. Today, God renews us by sending forth that same Holy Spirit and recreates us, as the psalmist sang today—“When you send forth your spirit, all things are created; and you renew the face of the ground.”
Like those disciples who gathered in Jerusalem some two thousand years ago, we receive the Spirit of God upon us anew today—not that it wasn’t already upon us, poured into us uniting us with Jesus in death and resurrection in our baptism—but afresh, anew, a re-creation for doing God’s will. We are commissioned today not only as disciples of Jesus, but sent by him with his work. “As the Father has sent me,” Jesus tells us, “so I send you.”
But what does this mean? As the Father has sent me, so I send you…Jesus tells us that clearly here as well—“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Our task is none other than the same work that Jesus was sent to do—the forgiveness of sins. Now—it can be easy for us to reduce this to merely thinking that our job is to absolve people of doing something wrong or failing to do something good, but that largely misses the point. Jesus’ task among us, and now our task, is so much larger than simply telling people this or that bad thing is forgiven. Remember that “sin” is more than just doing bad or failing to do good; sin is anything and everything that stands in the way of good relationship with God—for you, for other people, and for the whole creation. And so forgiveness of sins is likewise something far greater than mere acquittal or pardon. Jesus didn’t rise from the dead simply to erase the wrongs listed on your moral rap sheet. Jesus rose from the dead to right the fundamental wrongs deep within creation, to restore things to the way they are supposed to be, to reconcile us and God to the vision for relationship that God first had for all humanity when he created us from the dust of the very earth we walk upon. Jesus was sent to forgive, yes, but more than that, he was sent to restore, to reconcile, to renew, to recreate. Jesus rose from the dead in order that God’s will might be done. Jesus was sent to right the pervasive, penetrating wrong in God’s good creation and bring all things back to right relationship with God.
And today, as we once again celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit among us, we celebrate that Jesus empowers us to do this same work, to do God’s will. This is the work that God sent Jesus to do for our sake, and now the work that Jesus sends us to do for his sake. “For God so loved the world,” Jesus tells us, “that he sent his only Son so that whoever believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. For indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Jesus was sent into the world to fulfil his Father’s will—to share the abiding love of God with us, to fill us with the assurance that nothing will separate us from God’s love, not even death, and to live lives transformed by that love. This is God’s will for us and for all creation—a recipe for forgiveness of sins, for the restoration of creation, for the reconciliation of all things to good relationship, for renewal, for recreation. The recipe is love given with no strings attached—as simple as that.
We might be tempted to add to this simple recipe, skeptical that something so simple could be enough. We might think we need to declare the judgement of God, remind people of the potential of God’s wrath lest they continue in sin. How often I’ve heard that the love of God is a good thing, but the Bible also reminds us of God’s judgement! Disregard everything before the “but” when one speaks in such a way! You can be rest assured that if God didn’t send Jesus to condemn the world, he doesn’t send us, he doesn’t send you to do it either. “Mercy,” St. James, the brother of Jesus, reminds us, “triumphs over judgement.”
We don’t need to add to God’s recipe for forgiveness, to the purpose that Jesus has given us. Our task is a simple one—share the love that Jesus first shared with us, when we were dead in sin. First comes the love, then comes the recognition of the sin. Christ loved us first, and so we love first and allow the Holy Spirit to convict consciences to repentance. As the Father sent Jesus into the world, not to condemn the world, but to give himself in obedient love for our sake, so now Jesus sends us, not to condemn, but to love as we have first been loved.
This is a simple recipe for abundant, rich, full life as God first and always willed it to be. But it’s by no means an easy one. It’s recipe that takes all the power of God to follow as he has given us without us thinking we can improve it. And that power is given us by God himself, the power from on high, the very Holy Spirit of God herself—the same Spirit who moved over the face of the chaotic waters at creation, who accompanied God’s people through slavery, wilderness, and exile, who brought Jesus back from death to life again and unites us with him through water and a promise infinitely stronger Satan’s lies. That same Spirit fills us, daily reminds us of God’s love for us, and empowers us to follow God’s recipe for the love of creation just as it’s first been given us. Just follow the recipe.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Rev'd Daniel W. Spigelmyer, Jr. 