Pentecost and Mission

At the Abbaye Sainte-Marie-Madeleine de Vézelay, there is a powerful tympanum over the main doors leading out of the vestibule and into the narthex of the Church, depicting a kind of mash-up of the Ascension of Christ and Pentecost.  Instead of tongues of fire, rays of light emanate from the hands of the Lord Jesus and onto each of the Twelve Apostles, thus illuminating them.  The Apostles are so postured to show their readiness to spring into action, each of them holding a book representing the Gospel to be proclaimed.  Below the Apostles are a row of grotesquely-formed people representing the unevangelized, grotesque because they are bereft of grace.

I cannot help but wonder if those mesmerizing swirls on the garment of the Lord Jesus are supposed evoke the "mighty wind"--the Ruach ha-kodesh that swept throughout the house and the Upper Room on the morning of Pentecost (cf Acts 2:2).

If the previous several posts are any indication, the mediaevals liked to depict the Ascension and Pentecost together; the tympanum at Vézelay combines the two events into one, as I said, in a mash-up.  St Mark's gospel, for example, gives such an impression:

So then the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God.  And they went forth and preached [ἐκήρυξαν] everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that attended it.  Amen (Mk 16:19-20).

Keep your eye on that verb for "preached"--ἐκήρυξαν--we're going to come back to that.  What's curious here is that the Lord Jesus is both seated "at the right hand of God" and "worked with them" as if He was two places at once.  But was He?

The Ascension of Jesus meant that He became more present to the Church, not distant from it, which is why the Apostles "returned to Jerusalem with great joy" in St Luke's account (24:52).  Who rejoices when a loved one departs?  No one--here, though Jesus went up, He most certainly did not go away.  More than that, since the Holy Spirit is also "the Spirit of Christ" (Rom 8:9) and the "Spirit of his Son" (Gal 4:6)--not that the two Persons are conflated but that they are related--the Holy Spirit (if I may be so crude) "immanentizes" Christ to His believers.  It is for this reason that the rays of light emanate from the fingers of Jesus (perhaps an allusion to the tradition that describes the Holy Spirit as "the finger of God"?) and touch upon the head of the Apostles like the tongues of file in Acts 2:3.  The tympanum, with its almost ridiculously-oversized Christ does indeed show the immanence of Jesus--perhaps, even an almost menacing presence--in the apostolic Mission.  If this be the case, then, clearly the tympanum shows a connexion between the Ascension, Pentecost, and Mission.

Immediately prior to His Ascension, the Apostles asked Jesus a question, and He gives what appears to be an evasive answer:  "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6).  They were still too thick to understand that Jesus' kingdom was not an earthly kingdom (Jn 18:36) and the reasons why He refused an earthly throne (cf Jn 6:15).  In reply, Jesus essentially says, "How and when--mind your own business."  It's the very next verse that ought to catch our attention:

But [ἀλλὰ] you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses...to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8).

 "But" is a conjunction--it 'conjoins' two different ideas but on a slightly different note.  "I don't want to eat a candy-bar, but I am hungry" means I'm conjoining my reluctance to eat something unhealthy while needing something to eat just the same.  So when Jesus says to Peter, "But..." He means to say, "Same destination, different course!"

Same destination, different course.  What's the destination?  The fullness of the Kingdom ("restore the kingdom to Israel").  What's the course?  Pentecostal power for witness ("power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses").

Witness what?  On the basis of Acts 2:36, 10:36, Romans 14:7-9, we give witness to the Lordship of Jesus. The Ascension of Jesus Christ--with His enthronement at the Father's right hand--is precisely the "iconography" of the Lordship of Jesus; from the Father's right hand Jesus sends forth the Holy Spirit so that the Church may both be born and be fueled for Mission.  This is exactly at the heart of St Paul's words, "No-one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit" (Rom 10:9)--not merely by an utterance but by a heralding.

Let's go back to that Greek verb in Mark 16:20, ἐκήρυξαν, "preached."  which is the aorist tense for κηρύσσω, 'I herald, I proclaim.'

Nothing bores me into a coma more than conflating "preaching" with "homiletics"--they are not the same thing.  To preach--κηρύσσειν in the infinitive mood--originally meant to proclaim or to herald the imminent arrival of a monarch.  In antiquity, before a king was to make a royal visit to a city, a "preacher" (κήρυκα) would go ahead of the visiting monarch and warn the citizen-subjects that their monarch was about to arrive.

A Christian preacher does just this, except he or she does not herald the imminent arrival of a king, but the current Lordship of Jesus.  Jesus "preached" in the original sense of the word (cf Mt  4:17; Mk 1:14); with His glorification at His Resurrection (whereby He conquered sin, death, hell, and Satan) and at His Ascension to the Father's right hand, "He has put all things under His feet" (Eph 1:22), the task of "preaching" shifted from "the Kingdom is coming" to "the Kingdom is now--whose side are you on?"

At the jubilee of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in 2017, on the platform at Circus Maximus, there was a huge mural with JESUS IS LORD printed in the languages of the world.  This is at the heart of the Gospel preaching--to declare the Lordship of Jesus:

...the same Lord is Lord of all and bestows His riches upon all who call upon Him.  For, "every one who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved."

But how are [people] to call upon Him in whom they have not believed?  And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard?  And how are they to hear without a preacher [κηρύσσοντος]?  And how can [they] preach [κηρύξωσιν] unless they are sent?  As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach [εὐαγγελιζομένων:  literally, "evangelise"] Good News!"  But they have not all heeded the Gospel; for Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed what he has heard form us?"  So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ [ῥήματος  Χριστοῦ:  literally, "utterance about Christ"] (Rom 10:12-17).

Clearly, St Paul intersects "preaching" and the "Lordship of Jesus." Clearly, too, St Paul understands that the declarative utterance (ὁμολογήσῃς...ἐν τῷ στόματί, in the same sense as "utterance about Christ in Rom 10:7) that "Jesus is Lord" can only be done Pentecostally, that is, in the power of the Holy Spirit who, when imbuing us, imbues us precisely for Mission.

This is precisely what the tympanum at Vézelay intends to tell us:  The Apostles, baptised in the Holy Spirit, are dispatched for Mission to declare to the peoples of the world that "Jesus is Lord"--symbolized by the immense statue of the enthroned Lord who outpours the Gift of the Holy Spirit.

Today's Church seems to be languishing in her Mission, despite the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council's renewed summons to proclaim the Gospel in its decree ad Gentes, despite Pope Paul VI's Evangelii nuntiandi, despite Pope John Paul II's Redemptoris missio, despite Pope Francis' Evangelii gaudium.

Despite Vatican II and the magisterium of the recent popes, there is a definite missionary laziness in the Church, and here's why:  Many have substituted ideological verbiage in place of preaching, social activism for Mission, and human prowess for the Holy Spirit.  Resolving the world's miserable lot--whether it be poverty, starvation, war, oppression, or every existential crisis--can only be done successfully when we are on the side of the Lord Jesus, and only be done successfully when we are "clothed with power from on high" (Lk 24:49).  As St Paul wrote--

When I came to you, brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom.  For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.  And  I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling; and my speech and my message [κήρυγμά] were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God (1 Cor 2:1-5).

Billy Joel naïvely sang, "We didn't start the fire!"

Oh, yes, we did.

But we can only fight fire with Fire--with the Fire of the Holy Spirit, preaching the Gospel of the Lordship of Jesus Christ and bringing the world into sweet submission to Him.

JESUS IS LORD!