Freedom in Nothing
Jesus spent three years traveling, ministering, teaching, and healing. For three years Jesus proclaimed that in Him and through Him, the Kingdom of God had been opened for and to all people. Generations before Jesus’ ministry, a person’s ability to enter into the Kingdom of God, to be in the presence of God, their righteousness, hinged upon that person’s ability to follow, noting the dotted “i’s” and crossed “t’s,” the Law.
The Law is what made us Holy or acceptable before God. Not the Law itself but rather a person’s ability to follow the Law. All of the Law, not just the top ten etched onto tablets and brought down from Mt. Sinai by Moses. 603 additions were made and a person’s righteousness hinged upon whether not they, you, could correctly interpret, apply, and obey the top ten plus the additional 603.
In Jerusalem, at Pentecost, the pilgrims gathered, the ones watching and mistaking the gathered Christians for being drunk at 9:00 AM were not present by happenstance. Pilgrims from all over the Jewish Diaspora were gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate and remember the first Passover, remembering when God gave the Law to Moses.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus proclaimed that he had not come to destroy the Law or the teachings of the prophets as he was frequently accused of doing.[1] Jesus did not teach anything new or revolutionary, although everything he did was new and revolutionary. No, Jesus was the fulfillment, perfectly of that which we had and continued to be unable to do for ourselves. And he talked ministered, preached, and healed, for three years and still folks did not get it.
Time and time again those who heard Jesus speak continued to look at themselves rather than the One whom all the Law and prophecy hung upon. They did not get it. The disciples, the ones called and taught by Jesus still needed reminders and refreshers as to who Jesus was and what he was doing. The disciples, these guys had full access, backstage credentials with Jesus and they miss the subtle and not so subtle cues Jesus gave.
They had been set free.
We have been set free.
The Holy Spirit descended on the Pentecost crowd and there was no mistaking to be done. The barrier was removed. The vail was torn was Christ took his last breath on Calvary.
We have failed to live up to the demands of God. We can say that we love God with all our hearts, minds, soul, and strength and that we love our neighbors as ourselves. We can say that we are doing our best to live perfectly, as God is perfect, another command given by Jesus, but trying is not perfection.[2] We are fooling ourselves if we think we can follow all of the Law - the top ten and the 603, plus a few additions made by Jesus - perfectly.
And that is where the clarity of the Gospel steps in. The faithfulness of Jesus Christ begins precisely where our faithfulness has fallen short, in our place, on our behalf, regardless if you asked for it or not.
The Gospel Good News answers the question asked by the apostles on Pentecost when converts, who heard Peter preach (the guy who denied Jesus three times) lined up and converted.
“What must be done?”[3]
“What must they do?”
“What must we do?”
Peter’s answer, is nothing. There is no line to read between or nonverbal nuances to pick up on. Peter did not preach a 613-step Gospel with a little bit of Jesus sprinkled on top for good measure. Peter told the new converts to trust the Gospel, to put their trust in Christ, and to trust, as Paul put it, “The Spirit has set you free from the Law…for God has done what the Law could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just demands of the Law might be fulfilled in us.”[4]
The message of Pentecost is that everything has been done. Done for everyone.
The Holy Spirit at Pentecost, using every language known so that there would be no mistake, no mistranslation, no nuance missed, or nonverbal misconstrued came so that those present and us today might trust, we might believe, so that we will have faith grounded in the hard to believe, impossible and yet all too real promise made by God in Jesus Christ - the perfection demanded in the Law, obedience, and perfection, has been given to you, has been given to everyone, not by what we can do but rather by what has been done.
The outpouring of the power of God will touch everyone and there is nothing we can do to stop this. Try as we might to sell Jesus flavored Law - be a good person and do your best to do good things - doing our best to hide our tells behind masks of unwritten or rewritten church law, the Holy Spirit at Pentecost tells us something else.
New life for everything and everyone is present in Jesus Christ. The one who while ascended and seated at the right hand of God promises to never abandon or forsake. The burden on us is not to control others or even the Holy Spirit as we share this news. Our task is not greatness. Our task, given by Jesus, reiterated at Pentecost so that all can hear and believes is to do just that: believe. To trust in, to have faith that the One who overcame the power of sin and death can and will do the same for you and through you.
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