Abundance

An unfortunate, though common, trend of the human spirit is fundamentalism — worshiping the idol instead of what it signifies. Consider this passage from the fourteenth chapter of Acts:

You see, awe for the living Power of God quickly devolves into idolatry.

As a second example, consider the Feast of Pesach (also called Pascha or Passover). The original narrative in the Book of Exodus reveals the power of God as the Master of both bondage and liberation, of death and life, and over Israel and Egypt .... and all the Creation. The Passover story sets directly before us the sublime of God: gravest danger and greatest splendor in one stroke. In the Presence of God's Almighty power — preeminent Egypt brought to its knees, Pharaoh's invincible army vanquished in minutes, and the iron shackles imposed on a whole nation falling helpless to bind.

Yet, Great Pascha, which is the superabundant fulfillment of Pesach (from which we get the word Pascha), also devolved into idolatry beginning in the eleventh century (more than a thousand years after Christ) .... certainly in the West. As the great Russian Orthodox theologian Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev has written

The ecclesial communities of the West have fastened upon this sacrificial offering to the point of distraction. Western Catholic churches, for example, are meticulously laid out to express this idolatry: a High Altar for purposes of sacrificing the bound lamb, on one end, and, on the other, seats for passive observers — all focused on what is called "the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass." You see, the people observe the drama over and over again depicting the Son of God being tortured and murdered in order to secure their admittance to Heaven .... and they needn't lift a finger. The concept is called Substitionary Atonement. We achieve At-one-ment, that is, union with Father God while His Son is substituted for us to pay the penalties for transgressing God's law.

How can we accept this? Is this the meaning of theosis, of our becoming Christ-like? What kind of union with God is this? God's Son is tortured unto death while we enjoy the embrace of the Father?

Of course it is right to venerate Almighty God's self-emptying (what Met. Hilarion means by sacrifice). It is right to reverence His awful confinement within our narrow humanity. We grieve to watch the Holy One being born amongst dung-stained hay for want of decent hospitality. We grieve to see Him spitted on, beaten, and nailed to a Cross. We grieve.

But the point of Pesach is not to clutch His sacrifice of blood as our ticket to paradise, as the end of our journey. The way is cleared!

No! It is the beginning — the life-giving qualities of His Blood daubed on our door lintels and our deliverance from sensual Egypt, that is, from the enslavement imposed on us by our passions.

Most certainly, blood sacrifice is not the point of Pascha. The point of both great feasts is what the Blood signifies — God is the Creator, He alone is life and eternal life .... and He is love.

God the Father sent the Son to be "a ransom for many" (Mk 10:45) as the definitive expression of that love. As we have considered, the mutual ransom of Damon and Pythias was celebrated throughout the known world as the highest act of a noble soul. For centuries the Cross was rejected by the Church as a symbol of the Christ's saving power. They chose instead a glyph that represented eternal life to them — the outline of a fish.

Understanding Him to be God — the One Who is more expansive than the universe, the One Who uniquely is life — yet reduced to humble humanity and accounted to be the least of us .... this is what moves us to prostrate ourselves before Him. These feelings of awe elevate us. They cause us to emulate Him: to lay down our lives for each other and for what is good and right .... His good and His right. Heaven forbid that idolatry should intrude into this most sacred drama .... or worse, devolve into a spirit of blood sacrifice. Let us be delivered from this this spirit, this grotesque fiction .... and we are! We chanted from our troparion this morning, "the Holy Spirit is Life and the Life-giver."

We carry this same principle forward as we observe the Great Feast of Pentecost. As Pascha is paired with Pesach, so Pentecost is undeniably paired to the Hebrew Feast of Pentecost, also known as Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, which is observed fifty days after Pesach. When St. Paul informs the Corinthians,

he does not mean the Christian Feast of Pentecost, for the Christian calendar had not yet been established.

For example, the Feast of the Nativity did not exist until the late fourth or early fifth century. Indeed, Great Pascha, itself, would not be observed as an instituted feast until the second century.

When St. Paul says he will travel at Pentecost, he is referring to one of the three pilgrimage seasons of the Jewish year, when there would be ample passage on ships, when hostelers would be prepared to receive guests along the roads, and vitaillers had filled their larders and pantries with food supplies. These are the traveling seasons. These are seasons when would venture to Jerusalem.

I say as an aside that Paul was the Pharisee among Pharisees, as he says: "brought up in [Jerusalem] at the feet of Gamaliel" (Acts 22:3). He most certainly was a Jew, not chosen by Jesus as a Disciple, but rather accepted and after a time approved by the Lord Jesus. St. John clearly distances the Jews as being other. St. Paul, by contrast, embraces his Jewish heritage and sees himself as having advanced to the fulfillment of what was promised.

The Hebrew feast of Pentecost commemorates the giving of the Torah received by Moses on Mount Sinai. But this feast is also called "the Reaping Feast," tied intimately to the annual cycle of planted fields, when the earliest sprouts appear. The farmer would rush to the Temple with even a blade of grass, perhaps of rye or wheat or barley, anxious that everything be alright: "O Lord, are these first fruits acceptable in Thy sight?" he would pray. "Do they point to a healthy and bountiful harvest?" Do you see how this festival is about the καιρός / kairós, the acceptable season, but also the acceptable offering (and offer-er). Now, these are the notions that open Hebrew Pentecost to us.

Moving closer to the origin of the feast, we read in Exodus 19:2, "Vayichan sham Yisrael neged ha'har" / "the people of Israel encamped there opposite the mountain [Sinai]." But instead of finding the Hebrew plural word for encamped, Va'yachanoo (they encamped), we find the singular verb. The eleventh-century rabbi, Shlomo Yitzchaki, commented that the singular verb expresses that they all encamped as one, with one heart. This signified an unparalleled moment of unity for Israel, famously divided and antagonistic towards one another. This signifiec an acceptable heart and spirit set before God, the acceptable season rooted in brotherly love and universal peace. In this sense the Torah is not so much an object given on a day as it is a crowning moment to be lived forever, enshrining what is manifest, the fulfillment of the Shemah: "And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy mind and all thy strength .... and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." You see, this is the fulfillment of Israel's greatest prayer.

Descending Mount Sinai at this climax of Israel's history, Moses radiates Divine fire. The people cannot bear to look in his face, for he, mysteriously, has become united with God. We hear a Divine tone being sounded from on high: acceptable .... accepted.

This is the setting for the Holy Spirit's manifestation, Pentecost, which every Jew present in Jerusalem would have recognized. As Hebrew Pentecost teaches us, love of God and love of neighbor is an essence of this moment. The streets of Jerusalem are transfigured into the plain opposite Mt. Sinai. The ancient proscriptions imposed at the fall of Babel's Tower (Gen 11:1ff) drop away. The peoples of the earth are no longer divided by myriad languages ("babblings"). Men from every land have become one:

At this acceptable time, the revelation of God's ways are given from on high. Divine fire radiates now from every face. The Book of Life, already inscribed on every heart (2 Cor 3:3), is now upon everyone's lips.

As St. Paul taught tirelessly, the gift of the Holy Spirit is the living abundance to which the Law had pointed, alive and stirring within each human heart — the acceptable thoughts, the acceptable feelings. The Lord Jesus had promised that the Spirit of Truth would lead and guide us into precisely this Unity, that we might be One with Him as He is One with the Father. For to have the mind of Christ within us, St. Paul writes, is always already to be righteous and just before for the Law. Well might we understand the Feast of Pentecost to be the reaping festival, to be the acceptable moment — to be the radiant fulfillment of all that has come before.

Would we go too far to call our feast today "the Feast of All Fulfillments"? After all, Holy Orthodoxy celebrates this day as Holy Trinity Sunday, the superabundance of God revealed to mankind, who are united in the streets of Jerusalem as having one heart, speaking in one tongue, having one God and Father of all (Eph 4:6), as the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in each man and woman of every degree and condition and nation.

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What does this mean in the dimension of our own lives? Above all, Pesach signifies liberation from a life fastened upon carnal cravings and impulses — the preoccupation of the modern mind, is it not? Consider our television, our movies, our magazines, the Internet.

The people Israel are removed from the flesh pots of sensual Egypt; they are baptized in the Red Sea; they are ascetically purged in the Sinai wilderness; and then (only then) share one heart in peace, which Hebrew Pentecost commemorates.

Do you know that you cannot share "one heart in peace" if your preoccupations are constantly carnal. How could you share such a heart as this with anyone? You must empty yourself and offer a pure heart. I suppose, it is impossible to pray with the former mind. It is only with the new heart and the new mind that you can open yourself sincerely before God.

This is a central teaching of religious life. The sisters are told during the novitiate that their hearts must now belong to everyone. And that heart, of course, must be an inspiring heart. Exclusive relationships are of the world are not the stuff of the Kingdom of Heaven. They must offer their heart openly to all. This must be, of its nature, an act of purification.

In broad brush, we can say that Pesach and Hebrew Pentecost express the rejection of the world and its ways, the embracing of God's mind and spirit, and a new world being given with God's Book of Life.

The gift of God's Son brings this lively intimacy to an unparalleled climax: truly, God is with us. He is literally our Teacher, our Guide, and the Beloved. The kernel of His teachings, revealed at the point of His departure, is that we be One with God as He and the Father are One. To that end, He says, the Holy Spirit will be given — the Holy Spirit, Who sanctifies us, preparing us for this Divine Unity, Who is Himself the Figure of Divine Unity, (as we read in our Epistle lesson today) erasing division and internecine hatred.

The Holy Spirit's constant message, echoing through the teachings of the Son, signified at the Harrowing of Hell, taught by the Risen Christ at the point of His Ascension, and shadowed forth by the Hebrew Feasts of Pesach and Pentecost is this: reject the world. This Jesus first word said at the beginning of His ministry is Metanoeite! Make a U-turn! Reject the world! Be purged in the wilderness! Be reborn into new life! Be set apart for God! And be united with Him and with others in this love:

Whether encamped as one at the foot of Mt. Sinai or sharing one heart and understanding in the streets Jerusalem, this is the hallmark of the Holy Spirit: Divine Love, a brotherhood of man, and the Spirit's power descending upon all. In this love, St. Peter, writes,

"Be children of the light!" (Jn 12:36), the Lord Jesus commands.

Today let us turn our hearts and open minds to the Feast of All Fulfillments. Let us meditate on its depths calling unto depths, for today we remember the most holy meeting place, where the Giver seeks the acceptable heart and mind of the ones who receive the Gift. As Jesus had prophesied,

The hour now is. Receive the Holy Spirit. Love one another. Keep the holy feasts, and worship the God and Father of all and the Son in the Unity of the Holy Spirit, Who now breaks through our earthly veil with holy fire.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.