Today, at the end of our Easter season, we hear two very different accounts of the coming of the Holy Spirit to the disciples.
Luke in the Acts of the Apostles gives us the full Hollywood treatment, with rushing wind and fire and miraculous speech. This parallels the beginning of his Gospel where he has angels singing in the sky to greet the arrival of Jesus. Luke clearly plays to a spirit that is popular in modern times. It’s found in the grand movies, from Cecil B DeMille to Gladiator and even Star Wars. We enjoy the thrill of the grand sweep of history or pseudo-history. The Romans of the First Century were just the same. The amount of effort they put into their spectacular entertainments makes Hollywood seem restrained.
John by comparison is so understated that you could almost miss his account of Jesus passing on the Spirit. A quick breath and it’s done.
It’s amusing to imagine how Luke and John might have discussed their alternative treatments. Luke could easily be the Hollywood agent saying “yes John, I know, but they’ll never buy it, Theophilus is a Roman, you know they expect the grand effects – I have to write it for them”.
In an earlier age, Elijah, the first prophet, learned something about the presence of God. He was running away from his mission, to Horeb, just like the apostles were trying to keep their heads down. Elijah was visited by earthquake and fire, but God was not in the earthquake or fire, rather He was in “a light silent sound” (1 Kings, 19:12).
The drama in Luke is obvious. He might have felt a little queasy remembering the story of Elijah, but he was following the basic principle of any good evangelist – you have to talk to people where they are. If they don’t listen to you to start with, then you can’t get any further. And of course Luke’s account of Pentecost is about how the Spirit enabled the disciples to spread the news to everyone regardless of language and background.
We also need to ensure we don’t miss the drama in John’s account.
Jesus breathing on the apostles doesn’t seem like like such a big deal. But let’s again think back through the Hebrew Scriptures, right to the beginning – God breathed into the dust and gave life to man (Genesis 2:7). The breath of God is the most powerful force there is – forget wind and fire – God’s breath gives life. John has already told us Jesus shares the power of the Father, and now he is using that life-giving power to give the disciples a new life with the Spirit.
The result of this is something much more dramatic than the ability to preach to anyone, anywhere – it’s power over sin, a power which Jews clearly held belonged to God alone. Jesus claimed power over sin. That was one of the things the Pharisees had most difficulty with (Luke 5:21). He now passes that power on to the disciples.
So if Luke might be considered a little like the Hollywood version, John is actually making the more dramatic claim – maybe like the French movie, where nothing very much seems to happen, but actually everything changes.
Regardless of any fanciful comparisons with movie styles, the underlying point is that Luke and John are telling us the same thing. Neither is telling us about the how and the when, the things that our human imaginations crave for – “tell me what really happened”. They are telling us something much deeper – that Jesus came and left his Spirit with us, and we are forever different and powerful. That is what really happened.
The question it leaves us with, to be worked on through the rest of our liturgical year, is – what do we do with that power?