Answering God’s Call

June 9, 2020 Uncategorized

We just celebrated on May 31 the Day of Pentecost (meaning “fiftieth day”) in which the Spirit lighted upon the disciples like tongues of fire and they all spoke in different languages so that each understood the power of God at work in that moment. Pentecost has been termed the church’s birthday because, having received the Holy Spirit, the disciples finally got back to the work Jesus had prepared them for. But it was not only in that moment that the Spirit was working. It continues to unfold precisely because the Holy Spirit that was given on that fiftieth day is one and the same Holy Spirit that is the power behind each and every aspect of faith and life in the church in June, 2020.

Every single week, all fifty two weeks (plus other times), we say in the Creed that we believe in the Holy Spirit; we believe in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting, all possible because God breathed creation into existence with the Holy Spirit, Jesus breathed the Spirit’s power into those first disciples by the Holy Spirit, and the people of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Newport News, Virginia, give of themselves for the sake of others in God’s name because it is the Holy Spirit that so enables us.

Every single baptized person in the Church is called by God to be part of the Body and every single baptized person in the Church is empowered by the Holy Spirit given at Pentecost to fulfill God’s call. Now as we enter into the long season of Pentecost in which we walk with Jesus throughout the years of his public ministry, consider what God is calling you to do and believe, as we say each week that we do, that the Holy Spirit gives the life that makes answering God’s call possible.

— Marc+