Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
The Feast of Pentecost. This is another feast day that I really like. Today is the day the church celebrates the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus has died, resurrected to hang out with his people for several weeks, and then has left them again, to return to God. But as he’s leaving, he says he’ll send another, the Holy Spirit to stay with them always.
Then we get the story of the multitudes gathered in the early church, and the spirit descends on them, looking like tongues of fire. The each hear and understand, even thought they speak different languages.
As he’s explaining that he’ll be leaving to his disciples, Jesus says that God will send the Holy Spirit to teach them everything, and remind them of what Jesus has said. Immediately after this, he says that he’s leaving them peace, his own peace.
For the feast of Pentecost, the reading that I normally gravitate towards is the reading in Acts where the tongues of fire alight on the gathered. It’s graphic and very physical. I can imagine it. I think this morning is the first time I’ve contemplated this section from John where Jesus explains that he’s leaving but the Spirit, also referred to as the Advocate, will be returning to them.
This morning I’m thinking about that next sentence, what he says right after saying the Advocate will be sent. My peace I leave with you, my own peace I give to you. This morning, I’m imagining that this peace Jesus is talking about is in fact the Holy Spirit.
Yes, Jesus was God incarnate, but it’s the Holy Spirit in Jesus that gave him peace, not the fact that he was super-human. For some reason, that’s really comforting to me. While I greatly value God incarnate as a model of how to be incarnate, I like the idea that it’s God the spirit that was Jesus’ peace. It’s that peace or Spirit that Jesus is leaving. My own peace I give to you. It’s at our baptism we are anointed with the Holy Spirit and claimed as God’s own, forever. Today, we celebrate that first gift of Jesus’ peace given to the gathered church.
Today, I’m thinking about the Holy Spirit, and all the ways it operates in my life and world.
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