Dear brothers and sisters in the Lord, two thousand years ago the friends of Jesus received the Holy Spirit and the story of the church started. That is why we celebrate at Pentecost the birth of the church.
In the beginning they were a small group but soon they were all over the known world. Two names are specially associated with this development, St Paul and St Peter. These men laid the foundation in the name of the Lord, and that is why we are here together as a Christian community. Obviously St Paul and St Peter had many people who worked with them. Their names are not so well known, but today we will get a visit from one of them; here name is Priscilla. She leads together with her husband Aquila a Christian community.
1. Greetings Priscilla, you are very welcome to be with us today. You have come to us from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Roman Empire. It is nearly 2,000 years since the time that you lived here on earth.
2. Two thousand years? Hasn’t Jesus returned yet? I am surprised that you are still here. In our time we thought Jesus would come during our lifetime, or at least shortly after, to bring in a new world. That is why we worked so hard to convince so many to believe. Two thousand years ....
1. Yes, Priscilla, it is two thousand years later, and there is much about you early Christians that we do not know. How did you live your lives? I want to ask you some things. You and your husband Aquila found your way to the Christian faith through St Paul? Is this true?
2. Through St Paul? What an idea! No. St Paul was a good friend of ours, but when we met him we were already members of the Christian community.
1. But how did you get in contact with the community?
2. My husband and I lived in Rome. We had a business making tents. I was a Jew, but it was not unusual to leave our homeland to earn money in a foreign country. At home in Israel there were hard times, and in Rome we found a good life and a community of Jews to live amongst. We enjoyed our life in Rome and felt settled.
1. So how did it happen that you heard about Jesus in Rome, of all places?
2. I think you never forget your homeland; you always long for it. Therefore the intention of exiles is always to visit home at least once, to see Jerusalem. We saved all our money, and picked the right moment to close our business and to go to Jerusalem. There we saw how the Holy Spirit filled all the people and suddenly we were one community, a Christian community.
1. You are talking about the miracle of Pentecost. Did you really see how the Spirit came upon the people on the first time?
2. What do you mean, the first time? You must have totally misunderstood. Our ancestors in the faith were anointed with the Holy Spirit.
1. With the Holy Spirit?
2. Our ancestors felt that they were in contact with God. Our Hebrew word for Spirit is Ruach and it also means breath; for us it is a feminine word. I notice that in your language the word Spirit seems to be masculine. I wonder if this is significant. In our Jewish tradition we say somebody is full of the Ruach, the Spirit of God. This person seems to be like a red hot oven, full of shining, radiating love. Like Miriam as she sang the song of freedom as they were led by the Spirit of God out of Egypt. It is like a fire that helps you to discover your talents, talents that you never imagined that you have. And then you have to tell everybody your experience. Do you know that we have in our tradition the prophecy of Joel, that Peter quoted on the day of Pentecost:
28 "And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.
29 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days.
This is exactly what I, Priscilla, felt on that day in Jerusalem, and I knew that this was the time that our hopes would all be fulfilled.
1. And then you went back to Rome?
2. Yes, and on the way home we could talk of nothing else. We founded with others the first Christian community in Rome. All went well at first, but we soon realised that we were making enemies amongst our Jewish compatriots who did not believe in Jesus. In addition the Romans were suspicious, so we had to leave Rome. We went to Greece. We started afresh in Corinth.
1. And there your husband opened your house for Christian meetings?
2. Not just my husband Aquila! We opened our house.
1. Oh, you helped your husband?
2. Don’t be silly. We helped each other. We organised, we evangelised, we taught our neighbours, families and friends about Jesus.
1. You did this together, both men and women?
2. Yes, we did it together. It did not seem to matter who preached the sermon, who led the singing, or anything else. It was just like the time described by the prophet Joel that Peter quoted.
28 "And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.
1. But who was in charge?
2. What do you mean in charge? We each had our own specific roles and tasks, but it never occurred to any of us that some were more important than others, at least not at the beginning (Paul had to write some stern letters later!). I notice among you that some people seem to consider themselves to be important, and others that they have nothing worthwhile to contribute. I wish you could find that freedom and exhilaration that we had in our day when we were first filled with God’s Holy Spirit.
1. Priscilla, on behalf of everyone here, thank you for your visit and for sharing your love for God and experience of the Spirit with us.
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