Pentecost/Trinity Sunday – 2012 June 3

Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Pentecost/Trinity Sunday
3 June 2012

This is a day of great joy.  All that Christ imparted to us through His saving incarnation, defeat of sin and death, and glorious ascension, has its fulfillment on this day: We’re here today worshipping God the Holy Trinity, one in essence and undivided.  We’re here today proclaiming the truth of the Gospel and Orthodox Faith preserved in the Church for 2,000 years.  We’re here today because of the promise of love made by Christ God Himself, saying, “You shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:5), foretold by the prophets, that God would “pour out His Spirit on all flesh.”

There’s a lot of confusion today in some circles about the work of the Holy Spirit.  In some places, unintelligible tongues are spoken, prophecies are given that even contradict themselves—all attributed to the Holy Spirit.  Anyone familiar with the history of Christianity knows that challenges to the Orthodox Faith, to that which has been believed since the beginning, are nothing new.

Fr. Daniel Boyantoro, an Indonesian Archpriest, relates how as a charismatic, before he became an Orthodox Christian, he was in a prayer meeting where so-called ‘prophesies’ were being uttered.  Suddenly, he found himself face to face with another pastor ‘prophesying’ the exact opposite message to his.  This wake-up call led him to the Orthodox Church, where a consistent witness to the faith “once delivered to the Saints” continues to be proclaimed as it has since the beginning.

What we see on the day of Pentecost and thereafter in the Church is not disorder, confusion, or contradiction.  The descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is the exact opposite to that which occurred at Babel in which God scattered the peoples who were plotting evil in their vainglory; Babel led to a confusion of tongues, to disunity.  The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, leads us to unity in the faith of Christ’s holy Church and to understanding of God’s truth.

Indeed, Christ promises before ascending that the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth (John 16:13), this after proclaiming and demonstrating through His miracles that He is that Truth (John 16:4).  To be an Orthodox Christian means that we receive Him who is the Truth by being “born again,” born “anew” as Christ says to Nicodemus, through ‘water and the spirit’ without which, Christ says, we may not enter the Kingdom of God (John 3:5).

St. John the Baptist says, “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me… will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matt. 3:11).  This is the baptism and chrismation, i.e., ‘the sealing,’ of which St. Paul speaks and which he himself received from Ananias, “In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise (Eph. 1:13).

We rejoice this day that little Juliana has received this same baptism into Christ and sealing of the Holy Spirit.  Indeed, this is the meaning of the word, “baptizo,” in the Greek, “to put into.”  In the words of St. Paul, which we just sung, she is “baptized into Christ” and has “put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27).  Now recently born in body, she has been born again of water and the spirit to new life—a life she, along with us, will grow in as she lives out her baptism and partakes of the sacramental life of Christ’s Church, as we pray she will.  This is the most important day of her life because on this day, all that Christ assumed by taking on human nature as man and healing it as God is now accessible to her.  She’s a new creation, an adopted child of God, a co-heir with Christ (Eph. 1).

It’s the work of the Holy Spirit in Christ’s Church through baptism and chrismation, which enables us to get ourselves into the redeemed life in Christ.  Having put on Christ, we pray that Juliana will continue to grow in the life that Christ is, learning to cooperate with the work of the Holy Spirit.

God the Holy Trinity invites us all into a perfect relationship with Him who is Himself a perpetual relationship of love in perfect unity and oneness.  We can be in relationship (Communion) with God because God Himself is a ‘relationship.’  This koinonia (communion with God) is made possible by the work of the Holy Spirit who ministers to us the Sacraments of Christ’s Church, foremost the Eucharist by which we receive Christ’s holy Body and precious Blood, God with us.

Not coincidentally, this Sunday is also known as “Trinity Sunday.”  In His visitation to Abraham, which we see here before us, God prefigured through the angelic visitors His future redemption of man through communion with Him, participation in the life of the One God in three Persons.

If we’re to experience the fullness of life with Him, and find healing from sin-sickness and salvation, we can’t have Jesus on our terms.  To know Him, is to know God, to know Him, is eternal life.  The Apostles and their successors stress that it’s vital we keep to the Apostolic Faith—that which has been preserved by the Holy Spirit since the beginning.  And so, we submit ourselves to Christ and His Church, that we aren’t led astray “by every wind of doctrine” (Eph. 4:14).

Life in the Spirit after Pentecost is manifest not in chaos or confusion, but in order, in discipline in the truth.  St. Luke relates in Acts, “they continued steadfastly in the Apostles’ doctrine and fellowship in the breaking of the (Eucharistic) bread, and in the prayers “(as it is in the original Greek).  This same practice continues to be at the heart of Orthodox worship to this day!

This life in the Spirit is depicted in the traditional icon of Pentecost we have here before us.  We don’t see the descent of the Holy Spirit through the eyes of the unbelievers gathered in Jerusalem, who, St. Luke relates, mock the Apostles, saying they’re “full of new wine” (Acts 2:12).  Instead, we see the heavenly reality of the descent, what it means for us, for the Church.

The unity of common Orthodox (i.e., ‘right-believing’) faith is seen in the Apostles’ communal gathering.  The diversity of gifts of the Holy Spirit are depicted in their various gestures, the Gospel writers are shown Gospel in hand, others with scrolls, signifying their gift of teaching.  The space at top is left vacant, signifying that Christ has ascended and is now invisibly present with us through the Holy Spirit, whom God the Father has sent to empower them to minister in Christ’s name.

Likewise, it’s through the descent of the Holy Spirit, that conciliar authority in the Orthodox Church, as seen in Acts 15 at the Council of Jerusalem, is perpetuated to this day.  This conciliar authority preserves the faith, the fullness of life in Him. It’s through this authority that the Holy Spirit has enabled the Church to divide truth from heresy so that Orthodox today can know the same Jesus that has been proclaimed since the beginning.  This gift of authority, of unity and continuity in the faith, is the fulfillment of Christ’s promise that the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth.

Today is not only little Juliana’s ‘personal Pentecost;’ this Feast is for all flesh to rejoice.  This day, we renew our faith in God’s power by His Holy Spirit to continue His work of healing in our own lives.  We ask God this day to enable us to cooperate more fully with His dynamic work in us, we submit ourselves to Christ and His holy Church anew, so that we can correctly understand the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  We ask to see this Feast through the eyes of faith.

To those confused or led astray, to those wearied by sin, grudges, lack of faith, whatever passions, here represented as the old man, ‘the cosmos,’ ruled by sin, Christ proclaims today in His Gospel, “I am the light of the world.  He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life” (John 8:12).  The Apostles and their successors in Christ’s holy Church today proclaim this same truth: there’s freedom from slavery to sin, there’s healing from sin-sickness, there’s new life in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit working in us.

In this way, the prayer to the Holy Spirit becomes personal, our own Pentecost: “O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, who art everywhere present and fillest all things, treasury of blessings and giver of life, come and abide in us, and cleanse us of every impurity, and save our souls, O Good One!”  Amen.