For congregations that follow the Christian Year and use a lectionary as the basis for preaching, the long months of preaching from Pentecost Day to the First Sunday of Advent are called either the Sundays after Pentecost or Ordinary Time.  These two designations hint at some peculiarities of preaching during this extended time.  The former designation does not inspire the imagination in the same ways as does “Advent” and the other seasons associated with redemption.  The second term, “Ordinary Time,” is used to distinguish the emphasis of this season from the themes of redemption that permeated Advent/Christmas/Epiphany and Lent/Easter/Pentecost Day.  In Ordinary Time we are supposed to think of how the great salvific events affect our worlds.  But for many people today, the world “ordinary” evokes “run-of-the-mill, “ho-hum,” or “whatever.”  However, preaching in Ordinary Times, in league with the Spirit, should be anything but ho-hum.

The day of Pentecost both sets the stage and raises questions for preaching in the Sundays after Pentecost.  The story of Acts 2: 1-42 sets the stage by dramatizing the presence and works of the Spirit in post-resurrection church, including:

Filling the community with holy ecstasy, Assuring people that God aims to join the church to the purposes of Israel to bless the whole human community, Dramatizing that the present age is ending and is soon to be replaced by the final and complete manifestation of the realm of god, Empowering the community to witness to the realm of God through such acts as preaching, healing, making material provisions for all, and restoring relationships between women and men and Jewish and gentile peoples.

The story of Pentecost in Acts pictures the Spirit animating the early community to continue the vocation of Jesus in increasingly wider fields of ministry (from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria to the end of the earth – Acts 1:8).  An over arching call of the preacher in this season is to help the congregation think critically about which of these biblical themes are more and less helpful in recognizing how the Spirit is present and active today so that the congregation can respond more fully.

A preacher needs to address at least six significant issues that accompany the day of the Pentecost in the Christ year.  First, while the Fourth Gospel mentions Jesus breathing the Spirit on the disciples after the resurrection (John 20:19-23), and other writers presume the eschatological presence of the Spirit, Luke alone tells the story of Pentecost, and then not in reference to outpouring of the Spirit.  Indeed, only one other book in the Second Testament even used the term “Pentecost” ( I Cor. 16:8).  While we cannot be sure whether other writes knew this tale (or whether Luke created it), we can easily see that Acts 2: 1-42 plays a pivotal role in the single narrative that is the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts and that, in its present form, its is an expression of Luke’s particular theology.  By naming a day in the Christian Year after Pentecost, the church makes Luke’s story and theology normative.  The preacher needs to raise the question of the degree to which this approach does justice to the more variegated picture of the Spirit that emerges in other places in the Bible.  The preacher might also bring Luke’s understanding of the Spirit into conversation with other Biblical theologies of the Spirit.

Second, Luke describes the first Pentecost as an event involving only Jewish people who recognize Jesus as an agent through whom God is moving to end the present age and fully manifest the divine realm- a manifestation that will be complete only when Jesus returns.  Luke describes the Spirit and the events on Pentecost in Jewish terms.  Gentiles receive the Spirit and begin to become a part of the community of witnesses only in Acts 10: 34-88ff.  The preacher can help the congregation recognize that the Spirit brings gentiles into relationship not only with the God of Israel but with Jewish people themselves.  The Spirit does not establish the church with its increasingly gentile constituency as a people opposed to Judaism, but a community whose life and purposes are in continuity with Judaism.

Third, in Acts 2, Luke describes the Spirit “coming” and “filling” the house and the people.  One minute the Spirit was not present (at least in its eschatological force as pictured in Act 2) and then, in the next minute, the Spirit comes like a mighty wind.  Many other Biblical writers speak similarly.  However, this way of thinking raises serious questions.  If the Spirit comes and goes, when can we count on the Spirit to be present and what can count on it to do?  It makes more sense to believe that the Spirit is perpetually present and is always doing all that it can to lure us toward divine purposes.  At particular moments, we are more or less aware of the leading of the Spirit.  We may use language such as “coming” and “going” to describe our awareness or lack thereof, but the fact is that the Spirit is omnipresent.  The preacher can help the congregation recognize and respond to the leading of the Spirit in all situations.  Every day can be Pentecost.

Fourth, one of the texts in Luke-Acts of whether a community is responsive to the Spirit is the degree to which it is bringing together persons from different cultural and ethnic places in life, as when Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and other came together.  The sermon may reflect with the congregation on where such different peoples are coming together today.  What can the congregation do to respond to the Spirit’s prompting to become more fully such a community?

Fifth, Luke presents the outpouring of the Spirit as a sign that the end of the present age of history is coming soon.  Biblical scholars often jump to Luke’s defense by saying that the biblical author anticipated a delay between Pentecost and the Second Coming.  However, Luke did not envision a 2,000 year hiatus.  Few people in my theological world believe that we are even now living in the last days.  The preacher, then, needs to help the congregation sort through those aspects of Luke’s teaching about the Spirit that are abiding and those that require reframing.

Sixth, Luke assumes that readers of Acts 2 will hear the story of the coming of the Spirit from the perspective of the Jewish background of the festival of Pentecost (usually called the Feast of Weeks in the First Testament.)  Since few Christians today are aware of that background, the preacher could deepen the congregation’s appreciation by helping the community hear the theological associations between the Feast of Weeks (and its development over time) and the story in Acts.  This approach would help work against the latent anti-Judaism in many congregations by stressing the continuity between the Testaments and between Judaism and the early Christian Jewish community.

Similar questions travel with us as we shift focus from the Day of Pentecost to the Sundays after Pentecost.  One question was raised for me in a Bible call I was teaching after worship one Sunday in June.  A life-long church attendee asked, “Didn’t we have Pentecost a couple of weeks ago?” “Yes.”  “Well, didn’t Pentecost happen right after Jesus?” “Yes.”  “Well, then, why are hearing about the life of Jesus now – after Pentecost?”  To be sure, after Pentecost, the lectionary includes readings from the epistles (which are certainly in the category of “life after Jesus”), yet the main Sunday readings continue to be from the gospels.

Fortunately, an explanation for this oddity is close at hand, though aspects of it may catch the congregation by surprise.  While each of the four gospels appears to tell the story of the life of Jesus, they were all written after the resurrection. They interpret the life and teaching of Jesus from the standpoint of knowing that Jesus is resurrected.  Although, as noted above, Luke is almost the only author in the Second Testament to refer by name to the Day of Pentecost, all of the writing of the Second Testament assumes that the Spirit is present in the church in much the same way that it was present in the ministry of Jesus.

From this point of view, the words and stories of Jesus in the gospels are not as much reports on the historical sayings and actions of Jesus as they are narrative depictions of the purposes and power of Spirit.  Indeed, one could speak of the stories of Jesus in the gospels as video clips of the Pentecostal life.

The gospels nuance their points of view in different ways, but they all stress that the Spirit animates the life and vocation of Jesus.  Matthew and Luke say that Jesus was conceived under the influence of the Spirit.  All four gospels indicate that at baptism, the Spirit filled Jesus for ministry.  The gospel writers periodically remind the reader that the Spirit is the force behind Jesus’ ministry.  These writers also make it clear that one of the aims of Jesus’ work is to baptize with the Holy Spirit; Jesus’ life is the model of the Spirit-filled life which believers will also lead.  The gospel writers occasionally refer directly to their confidence that the Spirit will be with the readers and will animate them in faithful witness in their later circumstances just as Jesus witnessed in his time and place.

Despite the efforts of the Jesus Seminar to recover the historical Jesus, we do not get much history qua history about Jesus from the gospels.  The stories of Jesus in the gospels function, in part, as models of the Spirit-filled life.  Just as the gospels picture the Spirit working through the life of Jesus, so the gospel writers want the readers to see the Spirit moving similarly through the church to announce the realm of God, to heal, to cast out demons, to teach, and to confront resistance to the divine realm.

For preaching, then, the emphasis in the gospel lections in Ordinary Time is less on what Jesus did and more on what the Spirit continues to do through the community and in the world.  When working on a sermon on a gospel lesson during this part of the season, a preacher would ask less, “What does text tell us (if anything) about the historical Jesus?” and more, “How does this text reveal the continuing work of the Spirit in our congregation and world?” For example, when preaching on the feeding of the 5,000 in Mark, a preacher might ponder how God through the Spirit continues to provide for hungry people in wilderness situations.  When developing a sermon on a passage in which Jesus channels God’s grace to a gentile, a pastor might meditate on how the Spirit is channeling divine grace to gentiles today.  A text on a prophetic confrontation between Jesus and persons who resist the realm of God prompts a message in which the sermon confronts persons, groups, and systems that resist the realm of God or urges the congregation to do so.  When preaching on a saying of Jesus, the preacher wants to hear not simply what Jesus said to people in the past, but how the Spirit leads the congregation to hear and apply the saying in our world.

The readers appointed by the lectionary from Matthew, Mark, and Luke both help and frustrate the preacher and congregation in discovering the nuances of the work of the Spirit through Jesus and the community in each gospel.  On the Sundays after Pentecost, we read semi continuously from the synoptic gospels.  This approach encourages pastor and people to become sensitive to the literary and theological patterns of the portrayals of the work of the Spirit by each gospel writer.  For instance, by following the narrative of Mark, we become aware of the growing misunderstanding of the twelve disciples with respect to the ministry of Jesus and, consequently, of the work of the Spirit.

However, the congregation does not have a similar opportunity in connection with the Gospel of John, since the lectionary provides for almost no continuous reading of the Fourth Gospel in Ordinary Time (or any other time in the Christian Year} except for the bizarre reading of John 6 over five Sundays in Year B (Five weeks on one chapter?  Why?)  To give the congregation an opportunity to develop levels of sensitivity with John similar to those that emerge when following the first three gospels, the preacher could read and preach continuously from John in the Sunday after Pentecost every fourth year.  The lectionary, after all, is supposed to be the servant and not the master of the witness of the gospel.

Other peculiarities in the Christian Year and the lectionary come into focus in the Sunday of Easter and leading up to Pentecost that the preacher needs to address on the Sundays after Pentecost.  While the Psalms are continued for liturgical use after Easter, the main reading from the First Testament is replaced by readings from Acts.  On the one hand, removing the readings from the First Testament severs the connection between the resurrection and God’s action in the First Testament.  On the other hand, the narratives of the Book of Acts all presume the coming of the Spirit on Pentecost.  Acts tells the story of a church living in the power of the Spirit to witness to the realm of God.  Yet, the story of the Day of Pentecost appears in the readings in the lectionary only after passages from Acts are read in the Sundays of Easter.  In a mind-boggling non sequitur, the lectionary appoints no readings from Acts in the season after Pentecost.  The preacher needs to help the congregation recognize and theologically critique these peculiarities.

On the Sundays after Pentecost, the preacher needs to remedy some of the theological damage done by the illogic of the lectionary readings for the Sundays of Easter.  The lectionary offers the preacher some help through one of the ways it handles the First Testament in Ordinary Time.  The lectionary gives the congregation a choice of hearing either readings from the First Testament that coordinate with the gospel lections or of reading that present significant stories and themes from the First Testament in a semi continuous reading (the ancestral narratives in Genesis, the Exodus, the Davidic covenant, wisdom, and the prophets.)

By focusing on the semi continuous readings from the First Testament, the preacher can help the congregation become more familiar with many of the primary texts and ideas of the First Testament and with their diverse theological standpoints.  This approach gives the homilist an opportunity to correct a misperception held by some Christians, namely, that Pentecost marks a qualitative improvement in the work of the Spirit, as if prior to Pentecost the Spirit was pale and limp while only after Pentecost did God send the Spirit forth with full force.  Through the readings from the First Testament the preacher can help the congregation recognize that the Spirit was fully operative in Israel and beyond.  Indeed, the theologies of the Spirit in the First Testament provide the theological lenses through which to interpret the work of the Spirit in the Second Testament.

Although the story of Pentecost in Acts 2 is one of the few readings from the bible that occur in all three years of the lectionary, the Book of Acts is otherwise disadvantaged.  Not only are it contributions to the lectionary read of our literary and theological sequence in the Sundays after Easter, but less than half of Acts is appointed for reading, even in bits and pieces, over the three-year cycle; the complete story of Acts is never heard seriatim.  Indeed, Chapters 20-28 in Acts, where the narrative reaches its climax, are not read at all.

To counteract these deficiencies, in occasional years, the preacher could replace the readings from Acts on the Sundays in Easter with readings from appropriate Epistles, and then abandon the readings from the Epistles during the Sundays after Pentecost and replace them with passages from the Book of Acts.  The minister could then develop sermons continuously through the stories of Acts: the preacher could begin with the day of Pentecost and trace the effects of that day on the church.

The longer I live with the Christian Year and the lectionary, the less adequate I perceive them to be as theological and literary frames for organizing Christian worship and preaching.  However, since the church is not likely to consider more faithful alternatives in the foreseeable future, a part of a minister’s calling is to try to find points at which the Year and the table of readings bring preacher and congregation into real conversation regarding our deepest beliefs concerning God and the world, as well as to critique points at which the Christian Year and the lectionary obfuscate theological reflection. At just this point, of course, we encounter one of the continuing evidences of Pentecost: whether through Christian Year and lectionary or some other means, the Spirit persistently seeks to lure us to deeper recognition of the divine presence and purposes.