Descent of the Holy Spirit: Holy and Glorious Pentecost
Acts 2:1-11; John 7:37-52; 8:12.
Read John 7:37-52; 8:12
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Some of the most powerful images in cinema are those of water filling up room after room of the ship in the movie Titanic. We, however, don’t always feel that out of our hearts rivers of living water shall flow so forcefully. There are periods of our lives, sometimes long stretches, where life can seem like a desert, our reserves being used up without being replenished until the desert is within, our very selves feeling dried up. Where is this scripture of which Jesus spoke before the New Testament was written?
During the Jewish exile to Babylon, the prophet Ezekiel wrote of a restoration whereby God could dwell with people and not have the same consequential banishment happen all over again. He envisioned the glory of the Lord returning to a new kind of temple which allowed for God to be both holy and present with people. And, in chapter 47, out of the center of this new way of being together, an ever-growing flood would come to water both parched desert and stagnant sea, “so everything will live where the river goes.”
In today’s gospel reading Jesus reveals that our hearts are this center; the Holy Spirit is the water. Does that mean that all the promises of God are now fully realized in our lives? No, but in Ephesians 1:12-14 St. Paul says the Holy Spirit is the downpayment. They both say that the source of the Holy Spirit within us is believing in Jesus. This gives new depth of meaning to the Proverb, “Keep your heart with all vigilance; for from it flow the springs of life.” A titanic volume of water is unstoppable. Its massive force and fluid nature will always find or make a way through the deserts of our lives.