SermonProfile

Will we too, like Philip, pray to Jesus saying: ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied?’ Well, I don’t mean to say this sarcastically – I really believe that sometimes this can be our prayer. Such a prayer does not necessarily show our spiritual immaturity in not perceiving Jesus as the Way to the Father and Jesus’ manifestation to us of God the Father. For such prayer may show our inner yearning to gain deeper insight on who God is for us, and can show our inner yearning of reliance upon Christ as the light on our way of faith journey. Yet Jesus is still likewise reminding us that we who have been with Christ and have seen Christ have seen God the Father.

Andrew have, over different periods of time, owned three dogs, all German shepherds and all were named Carmen. If you are like me and hear this, you’ll probably be curious as to his reason for doing so. Yes, there is a very good reason. The first dog Carmen he had decades ago literally saved his life on one occasion. By then he was living in a relatively remote area in Hong Kong, with only three isolated houses by the hill-side. One day he heard Carmen barking in a very unusual way outside his house. To play safe, he looked out of the window instead of walking out of the house in case if there was anything unusual out there. And of course there was. As soon as he looked out of the window, he saw a big cobra hissing outside the door of his house, with its upper body standing upright and with its big triangular head waving in the air with fangs coming out from its wide-opened mouth. Andrew tried to phone his next-door neighbors for help but none of them was at home. So what Andrew and his mother could do was to make lots of noises by banging and drumming at the far end of the house to try to scare the cobra away. Eventually they were able to corner that big poisonous snake to a spot to the hill-side by the side of a pond. With the snake having nowhere else to go but got stuck at the corner, Andrew finally managed to pin the cobra down to the ground by sticking through the body of the snake with a sharp-pointed tool so that the cobra could not bite or otherwise attack Andrew or his mom. Whilst Andrew poured in his entire stamina to keep the snake pinned to the ground, his mother kept hitting its lower body with some heavy objects until the snake gave in and breathed its last. Andrew said, ‘if it’s not for Carmen making that unusual barking, I would have gone out through the front door and be bitten by that big poisonous snake the moment I stepped out. Carmen literally saved my life!’

The question though is: are we aware of Christ’s presence with us at all? Jesus said to Philip: ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.’ Whilst cognitively we know that we have Christ with us all the time and that we have seen him, we often cannot articulate well or put words into our real life experiences to depict Christ’s presence with us and how we see him on a day-in and day-out basis through the Holy Spirit. As time moves on, our cognition of Christ’s presence with us (and hence our knowing him) will gradually be eroded by lack of experiential perception of such reality. That’s the reason why Jesus continued to tell his disciples: ‘Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.’ Here, Jesus reminds us that when our faith gets weakened because we allow our lack of experiential perception of Christ’s oneness with us and with God override our cognition of such truth, we need to look at Christ’s work in our midst. There, Jesus continued his teaching to us: ‘Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these because I am going to the Father.’ In other words, it is through our works in the power of Christ that we will be both cognitive of, and be in experience of, God’s presence with us through Christ. And we can do so because Jesus went back to God the Father upon completion of his mission through his death and resurrection, and he sent us the Holy Spirit. That’s why Jesus continued to say: ‘I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything. I will do it.’

Needless to say, it is the Holy Spirit who guides and teaches us to pray in the name of Jesus, to ask for things which commensurate with God’s will for us, so much so that we can do even greater things than what Jesus had done when he was on earth before he completed his salvation for us through the cross and the empty tomb. That’s why Christ sent his spirit, the Holy Spirit, to his disciples to equip them to be the church: to do God’s works that need to be done in Jesus’ name, even greater works than what Jesus had done.

Of course, the coming of the Holy Spirit happened as a big event on the day of Pentecost, as we heard from our First Reading today. ‘There came great heavenly sound like the rush of a violent wind, filling the entire house where the disciples were sitting. There were also divided tongues, as of fire, resting on the head of each of the disciples. And as each of them was filled with the Holy Spirit, they began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.’ There was a big crowd of Jews living in Jerusalem attracted by this cacophony of sounds. These people all had their respective native dialects and they were greatly surprised by the disciples’ Galilean accent and yet they could speak in these Jews’ native dialects of the various nations from where these Jews had emigrated: from Mesopotamia in the East and Asia Minor in the north, to the Mediterranean, North Africa and Rome in the west and the south. In response to their big surprise and hence non-sensible hypothesis in an attempt to explain for such amazing phenomenon, Peter gave his first sermon in life, by making reference to the prophecy of the prophet Joel to point out that the outpour of God’s spirit will be upon all flesh, irrespective of age, gender or class, and there would be authenticating signs and wonders with cosmic impact to inaugurate the day of the Lord when people would call out to the Lord for salvation.

In a way, this ‘out-pour of God’s spirit upon all flesh’ is Christ’s spirit coming to us to satisfy his disciples’ yearning to know and to be with God, like how Philip requested Jesus to ‘show them the Father’. This is also like what St. Paul talked about in our Second Reading today: ‘for all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God . . . When we cry ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children then heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ’. That is to say, as Christ grants us the Holy Spirit, our inner yearning for God can be satisfied as the Spirit assures us that we are children of God, inheriting blessings from on high with Christ. Such gift from Christ is for all believers, irrespective of age, gender or class, and we’ll be able to see and hear authenticating signs and wonders, as we who ‘went through death and resurrection with Christ (through baptism) will also be glorified with him’ (as we move on in the power of the Holy Spirit).

Today, as we celebrate the day of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit to the people of God, would we pause and meditate on such big blessings Christ has prepared for us and God has poured upon us? Let’s pause and treasure such holy mystery, not only for our minds to understand but all the more for us to experience and live into, just like what that First Pentecost 2,000 years brought to the disciples and the Jewish crowd who witnessed it. Don’t forget that by the end of Peter’s first ever preached sermon there and then, 3,000 people were baptized and then devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers’.

Whilst we are far much smaller than 3,000 people here, at least we have in our midst a new believer being baptized today in our parish. The baptism of Susan helps us in our pausing to contemplate the meaning and reality of the outpour of the Holy Spirit upon us who rejoice at the day of the Lord and call on the name of the Lord for salvation. What joy! What blessed meditation! What truth waiting for us to inherit and live out in our faith journey! Let us give thanks to God!