Sunday Sermon 6/8/14

I saw the different things you did,
But always you yourself you hid.
I felt you push, I heard you call,
I could not see yourself at all--

---Robert Lewis Stevenson, "The Wind" from "Child's 

Garden of Verses"

Today is Pentecost. There are actually two such events

recorded in the gospels where Christ breathes upon the 

apostles and fills them with the Holy Spirit, in John on 

Easter Sunday and today,in Lukes's Acts. The Holy Spirit 

is a difficult concept but Christ persists in it imagery 

throughout the Gospels and the Holy Spirit is the 

intermediary in His baptism. The word "spirit" has the 

same meaning in both Greek and Aramaic: Wind, or breath.

This gospel has mind-bending density. The Holy Spirit 

is again the agent of spirituality, a physical 

manifestation of it. The disciples are ordained and the

structure of the Church implied. Finally, Christ introduces 

the concept of guiltand the importance of forgiveness--this 

2000 years before Freud.