What About Preaching During the Season after Pentecost?

A couple of points to make here. First, perhaps from the liturgical OCD department: the proper terminology is “the season after Pentecost,” not “the season of Pentecost.” As in, this Sunday is “the Xth Sunday after Pentecost.” Why be so picky? Well, there are actually good theological reasons for the distinction. Pentecost (“fiftieth day” in Greek) is the culmination of the grand intervention by God in human affairs called the crucifixion-resurrection-ascension-sending of the Spirit. The earliest Christians wisely perceived a unity in these separate activities of God, namely, the event of salvation bestowed by the God of Love through Jesus Christ. These events were understood to display just how far God’s love would go – as Paul reminded the Philippians (chapter 2) of an early hymn about Jesus sung by Christians:

6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death —
even death on a cross.
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

A few decades later, historian and theologian Luke stretched these events over a 50-day spread, culminating in the return of God/Jesus in the form of God’s Holy Spirit to the community of faith during the Jewish festival of Pentecost, which had evolved to become a celebration of God’s gift of the Law at Sinai, God’s revelation to the Hebrew community of faith of God’s plan for human societal life in harmony. At Luke’s prompting, Christians quickly latched onto the gift of the Spirit precisely on that festival not so much as “you got the Law, but we got the Spirit (so there!),” as much as the Spirit animating a community formed around the crucified Jesus as the embodiment of the living God, now given to the community of faith, and shoving it to the ends of the earth to create precisely that divinely-intended New Humanity.

The liturgical season after Pentecost developed to explore the variegated dimensions of this movement of God the Holy Spirit animating the community of faith. Paul called this community the “body of Christ,” by which he meant not a particular status to be lorded over others, but as a task: the community of faith was, and still is, the living embodiment of the ministry of Jesus Christ in the world. What Jesus did, he helps us do, through the Spirit of the risen Lord.

I guess you could say that, in a way, “after Pentecost” does stand as a reminder of our status: we who are recipients of the spirit of the crucified, raised, and exalted Lord – who, let us remember, deliberately chose to retain the nail cuts in his hands and feet (see Luke 24:40 and especially John 20:27) – serve the One who came among us “not to be served, but to serve” (Mark 10:45). Pentecost catapulted us into a new room, so to speak. The season after Pentecost gives us a long stretch of time to explore its nooks and crannies.