Opening Prayer:
Creator of all, we thank you for the opportunity to gather in study. Open our minds and hearts. By the power of the Holy Spirit, unite us in faith, hope, and love. Help us to be faithful to the gospel and to walk humbly with you. Grant us your peace as we grow in wisdom and understanding. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
John 7:37-39 What is the thirst for living water?
This lection picks up the thirst-and-water theme of the woman at the well story we explored on the Third Sunday of Lent. It would be well and useful, perhaps, to revisit that in conjunction with today’s study. The festival at the time of this scripture was Sukkoth (Tabernacles), which celebrated both God’s act in history (the years of wandering in the dry, dusty desert) and God’s act in the present (thanksgiving for the recent harvest). In Jesus’ day, it was an eight-day celebration. Water was brought back to the Temple and poured out on the altar as an offering. This act was a prayer for rain and for the promise of good harvest the following year. It was also a reminder of the water that had flowed out of the rock in the wilderness (Exodus 17) when people had complained of thirst. Jesus looked around at the water rituals and invited all who are truly thirsty to come to him for “living water.” Some may be familiar with the difference between rainwater collected in a cistern and fresh water coming from a flowing well—the second of the two being fresh and satisfying. Jesus promised this living water through the gift of the Spirit who was to come.
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13 What has been your experience of God bestowing spiritual gifts upon you?
What does the Spirit do in the church? Paul gives a partial answer by talking about the Spirit’s gifts to the church. There are varieties of abilities, ministries, and tasks, all of which are gifts of the Spirit. Gifts are for the sake of the church—they are for, as Paul, puts it, the building up of the church (not individuals, as we sometimes interpret spiritual gifts today). This is why, for instance, Paul insists that no one utter ecstatic speech unless there is someone to interpret. The church cannot be built up if a gift is displayed for one’s own edification. Paul presents this metaphor of the body to remind his readers that, however different our gifts may be, we are all apart of the same body; and our gifts serve that community in different and also interdependent ways.
Acts 2:1-21 How do we experience the power of God’s Spirit in the life of the church?
It was on that holy ground that the Spirit fell on the day of Pentecost, some fifty days after the Resurrection. The disciples (a larger body than the eleven) were gathered in the Upper Room, and something extraordinary happened. It was one of the three main Jewish festivals at which all Jewish males were supposed to be present, there were many visitors in Jerusalem over all the Mediterranean world (v. 9-11). The crowd thought the disciples were drunk, and Peter responded to the charge of drunkenness in two ways: 1) a reminder that wine shops were not even open at this time, and 2) a more serious appeal to the prophet Joel about the Spirit of God being poured out on all humanity, even on those who in many cultures were thought too insignificant for God to deal with. This was the power of God that would give them the calling, the gift, and the strength to witness to God both in their own communities and to the very center of the world—Rome itself.