Receiving the Holy Spirit

Receiving the Holy Spirit

Acts 20:19-29

            According to John’s gospel this is Jesus’ second resurrection appearance.  The first is to Mary Magdalene in the garden.  It is now Sunday night, and the disciples are gathered—hiding, really—possibly in the same upper room where they had celebrated the Passover Seder the previous Thursday night.  Where else could they go?  They dare not show their faces outside—at least not in large numbers, or for prolonged periods of time.  They’re too debilitated by fear to try to leave Jerusalem.  So here they stay, and wait, and worry.

            Then Jesus comes, and says, “Shalom.”  It means “Peace be with you,” but it means much more than that.  It can mean “Hello,” or “Goodbye,” but these are uses, not definitions.  When Jesus says “Shalom,” or when we say it in the context of our faith, it refers to God’s shalom—not just peace, but peace that passes all understanding. 

            Jesus knew better than to wish them external peace.  He knew what lay ahead for them—conflict, beatings, torture, death—everything he had suffered and more.  To wish them peaceful lives would have been a cruel joke as well as an impossible promise to fulfill.  The peace Jesus offered—God’s shalom—blessed them with the inner strength they would need to weather the storms ahead.  That’s what  shalom meant to them, and what it means to us.

            Jesus said again, “Shalom.”  Then he added, “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”  Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

            This should have been the end of their voluntary confinement.  The disciples should have known it was time to move out.  They had been given permission—no, they had been given their marching orders.  “You’ve been cooped up here long enough,” Jesus seems to be saying.  “I understand why you’ve been waiting here, but here is not where you should be any longer.  Now that I am back with you, you need to be elsewhere, moving on to the task I have been preparing you for.  Go!  My Father sent me to you; now I send you out to the world.  But I am not sending you out alone.  You go in the strength of the Spirit.  This is the Comforter I promised you at our last meal together.  With the Spirit’s help you will achieve all I ask of you.”

            And still they didn’t move.  Eight days later, they’re still in the same room, still behind locked doors.  The only difference apparently is that Thomas—missing for some reason the last time Jesus appeared—is now with them.  Jesus comes to them again, expressly, it would seem to address Thomas’s refusal to accept the disciples’ claim, “We have seen the Lord!”  Much has been made of these verses. Many sermons have been preached, many devotionals written—enough that we don’t have to spend time here on Thomas’s change of heart and confession.  Suffice to say that his prayer, “My Lord and my God!” would be a good one for each of us to utter as we begin and end the day: 

            What should be of great concern to us is that when the disciples finally moved they didn’t go any farther from that room than to go fishing in Galilee.  They certainly didn’t get on with going out to the world in the strength of the Holy Spirit.  That would have to wait (according to Luke) for the Spirit to come upon them with power at Pentecost.  We know what happened after that.

            Jesus is also telling us to go forward in the strength of the Holy Spirit.  We believe the Spirit was given to us at our baptism, along with the command, “even so send I you.” 

What are we waiting for?