Illuminations on the Lectionary readings for May 29, 2022 (Easter 7C)

First Reading or alternate Second Reading: Acts 2:1-21

Come, Holy Spirit! It is Pentecost, the Jewish feast of Shavuot, and the Spirit – the Advocate that Jesus had promised that God would send to the apostles in his name – comes to them in a burst of wind and tongues of fire in the room where they are gathered.

The Descent of the Holy Spirit (1546), oil painting on canvas by Titian (Tiziano Vecelli, 1490–1576). Santa Maria della Salute, Venice. (Click image to enlarge.)

This is a noisy, exciting scene. We might interpret it as a reversal of humanity’s division into many languages at the Tower of Babel: every person in the crowd of spectators from many nations hears the apostles speaking in his or her own native tongue. Peter then preaches to the crowd in the apocalyptic words of the Prophet Joel, foretelling that God will pour out the Spirit on all people in the last days.

Alternate First Reading: Genesis 11:1-9

The story of the Tower of Babel is another of the ancestral legends in Genesis that children and adults alike enjoy hearing re-told. It follows immediately after the stories of Noah and his family, and it clearly hadn’t taken long for humanity to get into trouble again. Now they are building a huge city and a mighty tower that can reach the heavens, a development that troubles their creator. A careful reading shows us that God wasn’t angry that they tried to reach heaven, but rather worried that – echoing Adam and Eve’s desire to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil – they would learn too much and become too wise. By causing this prideful people to speak different languages that others could not understand, God encouraged them to scatter out and fill the earth.

Psalm: Psalm 104:25-35, 37

This portion of Psalm 104, a resounding hymn of praise, celebrates God as the creator of all the Earth and everything that lives on it. God made all things great and small, we sing. God made the countless creatures that live in the sea; even Leviathan, the great whale, which the Psalmist imagines that God made “for the sport of it.” God feeds all creation, in life and in death. May God rejoice in all creation as we rejoice in God. “Bless the Lord, O my soul!”

Second Reading: Romans 8:14-17

In this short reading from Paul’s letter to the Romana we see him beginning to sketch our concepts that the early church, over the next few centuries, would gradually work out the form of Trinity that we still proclaim in the Nicene Creed: God, Abba, the Father, sends God’s Holy Spirit to lead us to become children of God, with Jesus, the Son of God with whom we suffer and through whom we are glorified.

Gospel: John 14:8-17,25-27

Through much of Eastertide our Gospels have taken us through Jesus’ farewell discourse to the apostles during the Last Supper, as told by John. This week we return to verses that we heard just a few weeks ago. In the verses preceding this passage, Jesus has told the apostles that he will be leaving them soon. But now, speaking in what is essentially John’s version of Pentecost – the coming of the Holy Spirit to the apostles – he assures them that Jesus remains in God and God in Jesus, and that God’s Holy Spirit will be with them forever. The Holy Spirit comes as an eternal Advocate, sent in Jesus’s name to teach us, to lead us and to comfort us with that great peace of God that surpasses all understanding.