2420AFC051724 – Spirit of the Living God ← 😊 PODCAST LINK
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Acts 2:1 – 1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.
Psalm 104:30 – 30 When you send forth your spirit, they are created;
and you renew the face of the Earth.
1 Corinthians 12:3 b – … no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.
John 20:21-22 – 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
Aloha nui loa, ʻŌmea! Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. The holy Season of Eastertide is drawing to a close. This coming Sunday is Pentecost Sunday, and therefore the Birthday of The Church. It’s a very familiar story – or at least it certainly should be – and so today we’ll skip the descriptions of that miraculous event, and just talk about what the Holy Spirit has to do with these posts, the coming celebration, and why I hold it in such high esteem.
If you read these messages regularly, you know I keep a list of favorites.
- Favorite Psalm – 138
- Favorite Solemnity – The Ascension
- Favorite Gospel – John
- Favorite Gospel verse – John 3:17
- Favorite Old-Time Hymn – Ivory Palaces
One of the reasons I treasure Pentecost so much is that it goes back millennia to the Festivals decreed by God in Leviticus 23. (See 1221AFC052512 Pentecost for details. 
There is a lot of good information for you there.) Also – if you’ll go back and look at the post from 2012 – Pentecost is in the middle of the 7 Feasts or Festivals, (Shavu’ot: The Feast of Weeks or Festival of Harvest). Whenever God puts something in the very middle of what he wants or what he creates (same-same those are), it turns out to be very special and important. Pentecost comes at the end of Eastertide, and it’s a pretty long wait – 50 days like the name says – so it’s like a really big reward for that wait. In more recent times, it commemorates what is perhaps the defining moment in the history of Israel: the Giving of the Law to Moses. All those connections serve to hold my fascination with this important day in World History. Something that many of us never really think about is the situating of the event. Everybody is involved. No occupational work, a full day of celebratory rest – much like Shabbat (the Sabbath). A day to honor the Lord by giving him the firstfruits of everything. As we see in our Key Verse from the Second Chapter of Acts, everyone was together in the same place. This aspect of Pentecost also affirms one of the quintessential aspects of God being The I AM – it is done as community, for community, in community, because God is community. In my heart that is just way-far cool.
Not many things are cooler than that, at least not without God’s putting it into the Absolutely Perfect Plan, and so on the Feast of Pentecost God the Father – who gives us the firstfruits of his community, Jesus – follows up with “The Lord, the Giver of Life.” You’ll remember that in Genesis 1, the Ru’ach – the Spirit or the Breath of the Lord was the Power-in-motion at the start of “In The Beginning.” Jesus had told the Apostles gathered into the Cenacle (The Upper Room) that they would receive Power when the Father sent them the Holy Spirit. Whenever I try to imagine that day, I end up grinning at their astonishment of what’s happening because it is absolutely astonishing! It started off big and then got BIGGER, AND BIGGER! The World was changed in a matter of minutes. That’s not a throw-away sentence. It’s a FACT! God sent forth the Spirit, and the face of the Earth was renewed. Wouldn’t we all want to be there in that moment? We can, you know.
Many of us will remember this Prayer to the Holy Spirit –
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Thy faithful and enkindle in them the fire of Thy Holy Love. Send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created. And Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.
O God, who by the Light of the Holy Spirit instruct the hearts of your faithful, grant us by the same Spirit to be truly wise and ever rejoice in his consolation.
V. You, O Lord shall open their lips
R. and their tongues shall announce Thy praise.
V. Incline unto our aid O God.
R. O Lord make haste to help us.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Through Christ Our Lord. AMEN.
This is the prayer I always use when I sit down in front of my keyboard to get a post started. The prayer is followed by a short song, another one of those treasures from my childhood, called Spirit of the Living God. (↔ Music Link) Both of these might be prayed aloud or both silently; it is then that I know we are ready to work together. I have learned that this is an important first step, a primary objective toward the goal of ensuring that what goes into the post turns out to be the proclamation, “Jesus is Lord.” The entire purpose of these posts is to make Scripture more accessible so that, together, we give Glory and Praise to Our God (↔ Music Link) He always is Jesus the Lord. (↔ Music Link) The Apostle Paul found very clever ways to plant that seed of faith in the people who would listen to him.
One example we can cite is in Acts 17:26-28 – 26 From one ancestor [Adam] he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28 For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,
‘For we too are his offspring.’ This was spoken to a crowd of Stoic and Epicurean philosophers on the Areopagus in Athens. The first quote from the Apostle Paul is by a 
well-known poet of the region, one Epimenides of Crete (or another Athenian poet). Apparently it had its desired effect because some of them indicated they would like to hear more. The Apostle Paul was telling them that all their handmade gods were useless whereas the One, True, Living God was the origin and sustaining of all Life. When he also told them the account of Jesus’ passion, death, Resurrection, and Ascension, some waved him off as more-than-dubious, but the others … well, they were very interested in hearing more. The second quote about being “his offspring” was from a Cilician Stoic named Aratus. In this way, The Apostle Paul led his listeners to consider that their gods (Zeus, for example) might be “shadows” of a Greater God. Whenever we reflect on the spread of the Early church through the Apostles, we see that Jesus’ promise about the Holy Spirit: “the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” (See John 14:25-26) the Holy Spirit is sent to us in Jesus’ name to teach and remind us of all that Jesus wants us to hear, and every word of it comes from El Olam – the Everliving God.
At this point, I am going to yield to the Spirit and close with a trio of music links. I don’t wish to overburden you with more words. There is a quote attributed to St. Augustine: “He who sings once prays twice.” Or something like that! 😉 These things are also true:
- There is an Absolutely Perfect Plan
- YOLO-F is the real (and only) deal
- Jesus is Lord
- Jesus Loves you, and so do I.
- If you like the prayer and the music, save them for future use.
Spirit and Grace (↔ Music Link)
Veni Sancte Spiritus (↔ Music Link)
Come Holy Spirit (↔ Music Link)
Romans 15:13 – 13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Psalm 51:11 –
11 Do not cast me away from your presence,
and do not take your holy spirit from me.
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Belovéd!
Please pray with us here at Share-a-Prayer.
Sprit of the Living God (↔ Music Link just in case you missed it)
Indeed, receive the Holy Spirit and renew the F.A.I.T.H. of the Earth!
Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Biblical languages inserts from Bible Hub (Bible Hub: Search, Read, Study the Bible in Many Languages) Visit at http://biblehub.com
Aloha Friday Messages by Charles O. Todd, III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
