In the first lesson, we hear Saint Luke’s description.  He has the story of the resurrection, the ascension, and Pentecost, spread out over fifty days.  And it was only on the fiftieth day, which is the feast of Pentecost for the Jewish people, that God poured forth the Spirit upon the first disciples.  

     But in John’s gospel, you notice that it’s all compressed into one day.  Jesus rises from the dead on Easter morning and then, on Easter night, Jesus appears with those disciples in the upper room, breaths on them, gives them the Holy Spirit, and says to them, “As God sent me, I send you, filled with the Spirit.”

     I’ve mentioned this before about how we can’t read the scriptures literally.  There was no way that the people who wrote down these accounts of the resurrection, the ascension, and the feast of Pentecost, could ever put into words what really happened.

     The resurrection was something that just stunned everybody.  They had no clue that it was going to happen.  And suddenly, they realized Jesus is alive, he’s with them.  He’s so different, but also the same.  They can recognize him and see his body, even the wounds, but he also comes and goes.  They’re in the upper room with the doors closed and suddenly he’s there -- a mystery, of course, but a reality.  

     And that’s what the disciples and those who wrote the scriptures wanted us to understand.  First of all, that Jesus is alive, but then how Jesus sends forth the Holy Spirit. 

     Again, it’s an experience that those first disciples found very difficult to put into words. They knew they were alive with the spirit of Jesus, that he was in their hearts, and that he was in their midst and guiding them and leading them and giving them strength and courage.  They knew that.  But how do you describe all of this that happened?

     And so, especially, in Luke’s account, he uses symbols to try to help us understand.  First of all, he puts the feast of Pentecost fifty days after the Passover.  That was the feast when the Jewish people celebrated the event of Sinai when they had been covenanted with God and had become God’s people.  

     Luke wanted us to understand that this feast of Pentecost makes us God’s people.  Just as the chosen people became one with God and entered into covenant with God at Sinai, so we now become God’s people and enter into a covenant with God.  

     Luke wanted us to understand the power of it, so he described the wind that shook the whole house.  He wanted us to understand how it was like a raging fire that could change the whole earth, so he describes these tongues of fire that come down upon the disciples.  

     All of these symbols help us to understand the truth behind this feast -- behind the whole event of Jesus being executed, dying, rising from the dead, returning to God, and sending forth the Spirit.

     The resurrection, the pouring forth of the Spirit, and the mission -- these are the three things that we must reflect upon as we celebrate this feast today.  

     First, the reality that Jesus is alive.  That’s so important for us to grasp, just as those first disciples did.  Jesus is alive and here in our midst.  Jesus is in my heart and I can turn to Jesus at any moment.  He is alive in the pouring forth of the Spirit. 

     In the gospel lesson, John has Jesus breathe on the disciples there.  And that, of course, reminds anyone who is aware of the scriptures of the only other time that God is described as breathing.  It’s when God created Adam and Eve, when God created all of us. God breathed upon that lifeless form and it became alive.  

     So John wants us to realize that Jesus, by breathing upon us, makes us alive in a new way and then says:  “As God has sent me, I send you.”

     And that means each one of us.   And we really should listen to those words that Jesus said, breathing upon his disciples, “As God sent me, I send you.”  

     If we really take that seriously, what will it mean?   It will mean that we will try to do what Jesus did.  He was a light to the world.  He broke away from and helped people to break away from the darkness of ignorance, prejudice, hatred, and evil.  He became a light.  Jesus was a healer.  He always reached out in love.  As God sent Jesus, God sends us to heal. 

     And also as he did right there on that first Easter Sunday night, he forgives.  

     The first gift he brings to his disciples is forgiveness.  If we are being sent in the same way as Jesus, we too must be people who forgive.  People who care about other. 

     Remember how Jesus described himself, like a mother hen gathering her little chicks together around her to protect them, to love them, and to help to nurture them.  We have to be that kind of people, nurturing and loving and caring, forgiving, and compassionate.

     Or as Jesus also said when he preached his first sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth -- the Spirit of God is upon me and God sends me to proclaim good news to the poor, to help everyone who is poor materially or spiritually and to know God loves me -- good news.  To heal the broken hearted, to set the downtrodden free, to proclaim God’s year of favor.  Jesus said, “This is why God sent me.”  This is why God sends all of us.

     Take that seriously today.  

     That means we have to think of various ways in which we go into the world, confirmed as disciples of Jesus, being sent as he was sent, doing what we can to change the world and make it a better place. 

     You know, there’s so much in the press these days about the terrible things that have happened in the church through some of its ministers.  I was especially heartened on Friday of this week when I read in the little white book [used at Saint Leo Church] about Josephine Bakhita.  I don’t know if you are reading your white book everyday, but Josephine Bakhita was a young woman from Sudan who was sold as a slave when she was nine years old and passed from one owner to another until she was purchased by the family of the Italian consul in Sudan, Augusto Michieli.  When he and his family returned to Italy, she came with them to serve as a maid and nursemaid to their child, Mimmina, whom she had to take to a private school run by the Daughters of Charity.  It was there that she discovered the gospel.  She discovered religious women that were really being a light to the world.  She discovered who Jesus is and became Christian.  But when the Michieli family was to return to Sudan, she wanted to remain in Italy.  The family tried to coax her to come back with them, but she didn’t want to go.  They tried to force her to go back and went to court to demand the return of their property.   But the cardinal archbishop of Venice and the Sisters of Charity prevented that from happening and she was able to stay. 

     She was baptized January 9, 1890, and took the name of Josephine.  Six years later she took her religious vows as a sister in the community that had helped her.  The name “Bakhita” means the “the fortunate one.” 

     Looking back, here’s what she would say about how that name fits her: “If I was to meet those slave raiders that abducted me and those who tortured me, I’d kneel down to kiss their hands.   If it had not have been for them, I would not have become a christian and religious woman.”

     It’s like St. Paul said, “Once I knew Jesus, everything else was like rubbish.”  And that’s what happened to Josephine.  But it happened because she began to live among people who were a light to her, who reached out in healing, in kindness and in compassion, and changed her whole life. 

     You and I have to be like that.  All the peoples whose lives could be changed, if we really took seriously that we are sent out into the world just as Jesus was -- to be a light, to be a healer, to be compassionate, to be forgiving and so on.  How different our world could be.   And so each of us has to remember, “I am sent, as God sent Jesus.”

     Also, it’s not just on an individual basis that we have to keep on trying to change the world.  There are larger issues too.  When Luke described Pentecost, he talked about how there were all those different people from every part of the know world at that time.  They spoke all kinds of different languages.  They were separated and divided from one another by their language, their culture, their history and so on.  Through the coming of the Spirit, all those barriers were removed.  Luke was referring to what had happened in the Old Testament, at the time of the Tower of Babel, when all the nations were dispersed and division came into the world.  Now, through the coming of the Spirit, it’s reversed. Peoples are to be drawn together into one human family. 

     But just this past week, if you were watching the headlines, you must have caught how Russia and the United States rejoiced over a new arms agreement.  But if you read what they rejoiced over, you know it’s wrong.  It’s what will destroy our world, keep us separated from one another.  They are going to continue to have nuclear arsenals, even add new weapons. 

     Now, in other nations in the world, of course, they are trying to do the same thing. Our world will be divided and will ultimately be destroyed unless we, who are the members of God’s family, the covenanted people of God, take seriously that we were sent into the world as Jesus was sent -- to breakdown barriers, to heal divisions, to make the nations of the world one human family, to stop arming ourselves in a way that will bring about destruction and death, and to work for the coming of the time when all the nations can live in peace without these weapons that can destroy all of us. 

     “As God sent me, I send you.”   That’s what Jesus said to the first disciples and that’s what Jesus says to all of us today.  We pray that we will take that seriously, as God sent Jesus, God sends each one of us. 

     I hope we will leave the church today committed to being one with Jesus in trying to bring the gifts of Jesus’ love and forgiveness and healing out into our world.  That as God sent Jesus, we will understand that God sends me.

     In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.