[AI translation] Once upon a time, when I was a child, we were taught in confirmation class that Pentecost was the day of the filling of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Christian mother church. And indeed, what we see in the Pentecost story is that the very first, concrete, visible result, the effect of the outpouring of the Spirit is that something is created on earth that was not there before. A gathering of people, an interconnectedness, a community of people is formed that is very different from any other community. A way of life is beginning to take place which brings together the most diverse kinds of people into a great unity, the miracle of the Church is being born. This miracle is described by the Apostle Paul in our Word: "By one Spirit we have all been baptized into one body."Two thousand years have passed since then. The church has survived, but that certain miraculous character has been thoroughly faded, almost gone. Yet the Church, the Church of Christ, is still a miracle, as is Christ's death and ascension. It is a miracle that can be experienced and lived by faith just as much as the resurrection and ascension of Christ. It is this miracle of the Church, of which we are members, that I would now like to make conscious in the light of the Word that has been taken as its foundation.
The quality of the Church is wonderful. It is not a great, joint, human undertaking, a good intention or objective that has brought together different people, as in the gigantic construction of the Tower of Babel. It is not as if the power of a general and the genius of a statesman could bring peoples together in a community of interests, as was once the case in the Roman Empire, but some mysterious, heavenly power holds it all together and keeps it alive. Just as the life-principle or soul in man holds together the most varied particles of matter that make up our bodies into a living organism. "We have been watered with one Spirit," says Paul. By one Spirit, the Spirit of God, we are all baptised into one body.
The Church, then, is a human community created, constituted, animated, permeated by the Holy Spirit of God. And the Holy Spirit of God is nothing other than the element of the coming kingdom of God. It is the sphere of life of the new age, the new heaven and the new earth that will come after Christ's return, his final victory and judgment. That something which fills outwardly-inwardly, constitutes the new creation of the kingdom of God, the "stuff" of the recreated cosmos. This part of the world to come, the Spirit, is already here in the Church. The Pentecostal miracle consists precisely in the fact that this material, this future element of the recreated world is already given now, before the recreation, in this present age. The divine Spirit, who created the church and is at work in the church, is the pledge of the kingdom of God to come (2 Cor 1:22). God, by sending his Spirit to earth, has, as it were, reserved the world for the full re-creation, the fulfilment of the redemptive power of Christ's redemptive death.
The Holy Spirit, whom God has given to the Church, is the genesis (Rom 8,23), the beginning, the initial manifestation of the new world after Christ's return, in which God will be all in all. The element of this coming kingdom of God was given at Pentecost in the Holy Spirit, and it acts as a pledge, as a germ in the Church. So the Church is still waiting - or one might say already waiting, precisely as the possessor of the genitive of the Spirit - for the redemption of the whole created world. And for this very reason, because it was created and is animated by the Holy Spirit of God, it is valid that hell and death do not triumph over it. But precisely because he is the bearer of the genius, the pledge of the Spirit, he must always take up the fight again against the powers of hell and death. In any case, the Spirit of God in the Church is already a piece of the Kingdom of God to come in this world on earth.
This heavenly quality is then reflected in the external life of the Church. By the one Spirit, all are baptised into one body there at Pentecost, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free. Much has been said about the miracle of the tongue at Pentecost, which the apostle describes in this way: each one heard the apostles speak in his own language. The essence of this is that the Holy Spirit bridges the gaps that otherwise separate people and nations from one another, that set them in opposition to one another. So the differences of language, origin, wealth, culture, race, which cause so much trouble and warfare, are not obstacles in the Church to people understanding, loving, helping and serving one another.
Such are the statements we read about the life of the early churches: all who believed were together and had everything in common. The hearts and souls of the multitude of believers were one, and there was not one needy among them. Indeed, all the diverse people in the church became one body, with mutual openness and complete trust in one another. Their thoughts and feelings towards one another are pure, and therefore their conduct towards one another is entirely free. Each man is freed from concern for his own person, and is therefore able to care for the concerns of others, to take upon himself the troubles of others. They are bound to each other by mutual love, and can therefore admonish each other and accept criticism from each other. Like in a good work community: one complements the other to form a whole; like in a good sports community: they do not fight for themselves, but for a common victory. Like in a good marriage: they do not seek to satisfy their own needs, but each other's, mutually seeking to lift each other up. In other words, they are bound together by the bonds of Christian brotherly love into a single organism. As Jesus said.
This is how the church came into the world, this is what it meant in practice to be baptized by one Spirit into one body. And this is still the essence of the Church today! However small the signs of all these miracles may be in the Church today, it does not change the requirement that it must become one! And to the extent that our church is ready to receive the Spirit, to that extent it can become so today! For the Holy Spirit has been given to bring together all believers in Christ, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, into one body, the earthly body of Christ! A community in which the otherworldly character and quality becomes this worldly reality! In this wonderful quality of the Church, the wonderful function of the Church, its service to the world, is then already given. The church is not an institution for its own sake, it is not for its own sake, but precisely as an earthly organism of heavenly quality, as the body of Christ, it represents the invisible Christ, it projects him into the world with its life and service. In Jesus' analogy, the church is the leaven of the coming kingdom of God in the world. Would this mean that it is our task, as the leaven, to persuade everyone to come to church, to say the Creed after us and with us, and to turn away from those who do not want to do so, as pagans and heretics? By no means! Jesus entrusted His church to teach all nations to keep all that He commanded us. And to preach repentance and forgiveness of sins in His name among "all nations".
It is characteristic that Jesus' last words to the disciples were to engrave on their hearts a turning to all nations, to all Gentiles. It is not, then, that a small army of the elect will endure to the end, but that God "wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." (1Tim 2,4) The important thing is not that the church of Christ should ultimately shine in its own glory, but that the kingdom of God should come, that His will should be done, on earth as it is in heaven! Leaven is necessary, but its end is not in itself: but the end is bread! That is, that this world may be made into tasty, enjoyable, nourishing bread! For this we are called, for this we have received the element of heaven: the Holy Spirit of God!
So, the people of God, the Church, are not called to pious piety, but to actively participate in all efforts and works that seek the truth of the Kingdom of God, that is, peace, mutual respect, an atmosphere of mutual trust, brotherly love, and a better living for all people on earth. Jesus was not working for a sealed-off afterlife, which he would have contrasted with our worldly, miserable lives. But he really lived for real people, for those who lived around him, regardless of what those people were like, good or evil. He healed their illnesses, fed them, shared in their suffering and joy, told them how to live among themselves so that they could be happy and at peace. But Jesus also told them that all this earthly life is only one way of looking at reality, that behind it is eternal life. Behind human order and justice there is the kingdom of God and its righteousness, behind human misery there is the happiness of salvation. It is this Christ that the Church proclaims to the world through the living word, through obedient service in every good cause, through the practice of love without partiality and, if necessary, through suffering.
The people of the Church are men and women who have received in the Holy Spirit the pledge of the new world to come, for whom, therefore, the kingdom of God is not a dream, a pious vision, but who already breathe its air, who already live in the old world by the power of this new world. Who live there, then, among sinners as witnesses of forgiveness, among mortals as witnesses of resurrection, among the suffering and weeping as witnesses of divine consolation and help, as God's co-workers. Among the hopeless, as those who have the great hope that Jesus' death is an atoning sacrifice for the whole world.
I know that we are far from this miracle of the Church, its heavenly quality and earthly vocation. Let not our weakness, our many failures, our many humiliations in the course of history, discourage us, but rather encourage us to ask with eager prayer, to claim with a heart ready to obey, and to accept with full faith the miracle which Paul described thus: 'By one Spirit we have all been baptised into one body, the earthly body of Christ, and have all been made to drink of one Spirit.
Amen
Date: 24 May 1953, Pentecost.
Lesson
ApCsel 2