Pentecost
JOHN 20:19-23
It was Sunday evening, or as John writes, "On the evening of the first day of the week." Jesus had been executed as a rebel king. Anyone associated with him was in danger of arrest and worse. The disciples had gathered behind locked doors. We leam from the Acts of Apostles how the leadership of the temple in Jerusalem hounded the disciples of Jesus. Therefore John writes, "The doors were locked for fear of the Jews." "Tor fear of the Jews" is a peculiar translation, since the disciples themselves were Jews. It would be better and more correct to translate, "for fear of the Judeans," specifically the temple hierarchy who had a major role in the betrayal, arrest, and "lynching" of Jesus.
Jesus suddenly stands among the disciples. He greets them with the traditional "Shalom alachem^ that is, "Peace be with you!" John adds a proof of the reality of Jesus9 risen body, when he writes, "He showed them his hands and his side^ In Luke's gospel Jesus shows them his hands and bis feet. Only the Gospel of John speaks of the piercing of Jesus' side. A solider pierced his side with a lance and blood and water issued from his side. John understands the opening of Jesus' side as a fulfillment o fZechariah 12:10, "They shall look on him whom they have pierced." So important was this detail in the theology of New Testament documents attributed to John, that it appears again in Revelation 1:7. John notes the reaction of the disciples to Jesus' appearance among them, "They rejoiced when they saw the Lord."
Jesus repeats his greeting, states his credentials, commissions them to carry on his work, and empowers them. His credentials: "As the Father has sent me...." Their commission, "...so do I send you." Their empowerment: "He breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit...." More on Jesus' credentials: throughout John's gospel there are many references to Jesus being sent by the Father. A few examples: John 3:17, "For God sent the Son into the world.. .that the world might be saved through him." John 5:37, "The Father who sent me has himself borne witness." More on the commissioning of the disciples: John 4:38, "I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor." John 17:18, "As you sent me into the world, so / have sent them into the world."
"He breathed on them," is of the greatest significance for understanding what John is teaching at this point. Breath and Spirit are the same word in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. It is the Breath of God or Spirit of God that signals the beginning of creation in Genesis 1:2, "The Breath (Spirit) of God was moving over the waters." Genesis 2:7, "The Lord God formed man from the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life." In Ezekiel 37 it is the Breath or Spirit of God that gives life to the heap of bones in the Valley of Dry Bones." ("Dem Bones gonna rise agin.") Therefore what John proclaims in this catechetical lesson is an act of creation by the One of whom it was said in John 1:3, "All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing that was made." The Church, born in blood and water, (the usual accompaniments of birth), from the side of Christ on the cross, dormant until after the resurrection, is now brought to life by the Breath of God, the Holy Spirit.
John closes this episode as Jesus bestows on the Church, on his disciples, a function reserved to God in the Old Testament, the forgiveness of sins: "Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain they are retained." Forgiveness we can more readily understand, but what is meant by "retaining sins?" An answer may be drawn from 1 Corinthians 5:5. Paul found it necessary to "excommunicate" a sinner, but only for a while, "so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." Meaning: forgiveness can be withheld until the sinner has repented, so that he is ready to receive the forgiveness held out to him.
ACTS 2:1-11
Luke, the author of Acts of Apostles, has a very different approach to the bestowal of the Holy Spirit on the Church. It does not happen on the night of the resurrection. It happens fifty days later, and ten days after the ascension of Jesus. His stoty is not based on the creation passages cited above for John's version, but on Exodus 19-24. In those chapters God forms Israel into the People of God amid fire and storm. Thus Luke writes, "A noise like a mighty wind filled the house where they were, and there appeared to them tongues as of fire which parted and came to rest on each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit."
1 CORINTHIANS 12:3b-7. 12-13
A profession of faith among early Christians was the phrase, "Jesus is Lord!" Paul informs his Christians that this profession of faith is only possible when empowered by the Holy Spirit. Later, after persecution of Christians by the Roman State progressed, this phrase became the ticket to martyrdom for Christians who were asked to recognize Caesar as God. Instead of repeating, "Caesar is Lord," they proclaimed, "Jesus is Lord."
