Pentecost
“The Spirit” — Rev. Brent Gundlah
First Reading (Acts 2:1-21, NRSVUE)
Gospel Reading (John 14:8-17, NRSVUE)
I was in my office this past Tuesday morning, struggling mightily to come up with something to say here today, when it dawned on me that a change of scenery might do me some good. I’ll leave it to you to judge whether it worked (and if you don’t believe that it did, I encourage you to keep that to yourselves).
Now, I have no idea what I look like when I’m sitting at my desk writing, though I think that I might bear some resemblance to Saint Jerome sitting at his desk writing in this painting by Caravaggio. Sure, I’m a little younger and don’t have a beard, I generally wear a shirt, I don’t have a halo over my head and there’s not a skull perched atop my pile of books (as far as you know, anyway); nonetheless, I this is a pretty accurate representation of the angst I experience while writing most weeks — but particularly this one.
Today is Pentecost which marks, among other things, the end of the Easter season. Pentecost is a “moveable feast,” a holiday whose dates change depending upon when Easter falls in a particular year (Pentecost is always fifty days after Easter).
Unfortunately, though, the reading for today never changes — today’s story from the Acts is always the text for Pentecost, which makes it more challenging to find something new to say about it with every passing year. Hence the source of my struggle last week.
I have no idea why it had never occurred to me before — or why it did occur to me last Tuesday morning — but while sitting at my desk lamenting my drought of ideas, I suddenly felt the need to head outside. Maybe it was lure of the fresh air (or what passes for it around here these days); maybe it was the bright blue sky and the stunning view of Mount Olympus on a late spring day; or maybe it was the Holy Spirit pushing me out the door. Whatever the reason, I grabbed my books, cup of coffee, iPad and the folding lawn chair I keep in the trunk of my car and set up a workspace on the sidewalk outside the front door hoping to finding some inspiration.
I must confess that being outside in the sunshine reading and writing made me feel guilty at first. But I soon rationalized that I had the same amount of work to do regardless of where I did it, and it’s not like we score extra points for self-deprivation). Besides, nature has always had a way of prodding people into thinking big thoughts, which is what I was hoping would happen to me that day.
As I sat there on the sidewalk reading and thinking about Luke’s account of the first Christian Pentecost with the sun peeking through the leaves on the tree above my head, a breeze suddenly arrived as if out of nowhere, knocking over my coffee cup and blowing open the book that was lying next to my chair, which not only startled me, but also caused me to contemplate the wind.
It dawned on me that the this breeze hadn’t, in fact, arrived out of nowhere; it had been somewhere before it got to me and was going somewhere after it upended my outdoor office. But where had it come from, and where was it headed next? Where had it started, and where would it end? Had it always been here, and would it always be here, in some way, shape or form, impacting the world as it meandered its way through it? And then my thoughts turned to Pentecost, because similar questions apply to what happened that day when a rush of violent wind filled the house in which the apostles were staying.
I referred to this day as the first Christian Pentecost a few minutes ago because Pentecost had been a thing for quite a while before today’s story took place. “Pentecost” is the Greek word for “fiftieth,” and this is the name that Greek-speaking Jews in that time and place used to refer to the Festival of Weeks, which is celebrated fifty days after Passover.
The Festival of Weeks was one of three occasions that brought religious pilgrims to Jerusalem every year (Passover and the Festival of Booths being the other two), which is why there was a giant crowd on hand that day. Pentecost is a big deal in the Jewish tradition because it’s understood to be the day when God first gave Moses the law on Mount Sinai and told him to share it with the people.
Now, Moses had always been a reluctant prophet (which makes sense because it’s not an easy job), but he generally did what God’s asked of him. Jesus’s disciples? Not so much — well, at least at this point anyway.
As our story begins, they’re exactly where they’ve been all the previous times we’ve encountered them after Jesus’s resurrection: inside the house where they shared the Last Supper. The Risen Christ has already shown up there on several occasions and tried to get them to go share the gospel, but to no avail.
Jesus reminded them that “as the Father has sent me, so I send you”; he told Peter to feed his lambs and tend his sheep. But, for some reason (laziness? sadness? helplessness? fear?), they lack the motivation needed to do that — as evidenced by the fact that they’ve been sitting around the house for seven weeks. So now the Holy Spirit shows up and tries to provide that motivation for them; and when that wind starts blowing, they finally get out there and start doing the work that Jesus — that God — has been calling them to do all along.
Some have described this gathering of the disciples and the Jews from all the nations on Pentecost as the “Birthday of the Christian Church” and while this is sort of true, it’s also sort of not true. It is the day that Jesus’s disciples finally get off their collective rear ends, head into the world and start being the church by doing the work of discipleship, which is worth celebrating.
But, like I said earlier, Pentecost had been a Jewish holiday for centuries before that day. Did a new thing happen when the Holy Spirit blew into town seven weeks after Easter (and, of course, Passover)? Sure, in some ways, I suppose. But that new thing didn’t happen in isolation; it was part of something else, something bigger. The story of this first Christian Pentecost is part of the story of Pentecost which, in turn, is part of the story of God’s relationship with God’s people which, in turn, is part of the story of God’s creative work in the world.
The wind of the Holy Spirit has been breezing it’s way around these parts for a long, long time now, arriving in our lives every now and again to remind us who and whose we are, shoving us out the door, and letting us know that God’s call upon our lives is the same now as it’s always been — even if the way we live into our call as God’s partners in the work of the world is always changing.
The fact is, the wind that blew through Jerusalem on Pentecost two thousand years ago has been blowing since the beginning — and by that I mean the very beginning. You may remember those first words from Genesis: “when God created the heavens and the earth [and] the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” When the wind is blowing, God is creating — God is doing something new. But the wind is always blowing somewhere because God is always creating somewhere — God is always doing something new somewhere.
In the Hebrew scriptures, the law God gave to Moses told the Israelites to love God with all their heart, and with all their soul, and with all their might; it told them to honor the terms of the covenant they’d made with God and with one another. Suffice it to say, they didn’t have a great track record of doing these things.
Eventually, Jesus came into the world to interpret those scriptures for a new time and place by setting an example, and by making clear to his disciples that they were to show their love for God way by loving their neighbor as themselves. Then, on that first Christian Pentecost (after Jesus was gone but not really gone, having been killed by the very people he’d come to save and having risen to new life), the Holy Spirit showed up amidst this gathering of Jews from all the nations who were speaking different languages and helped them to understand rather than fight with one another for a change, which inspired at least some of them to think more expansively about who their neighbor might be.
And so, driven by the wind of the Spirit, Jesus’s disciples would go off and share the gospel message with other Jews in that region. Next, Paul would arrive on the scene and challenge that whole “who is my neighbor” yet again as he lived into his call to share the gospel with Jews and with Gentiles throughout the whole world. Was this a new thing? In some ways, it was. Then again, perhaps when God said to Abram, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” and later told him that his descendants would one day be as numerous as the stars in the sky, this is what God had in mind all along.
When you pull back the focus and look at the big story, God and humanity have always been in relationship, and relationships necessarily evolve (as all things in this world do). But as they evolve — as things change — the constant is that God calls us live up to and into the covenant we’ve made with God and one another, to love both God and one another (and that circle of love — the definition of “one another” — gets wider and wider all the time).
Let’s face, there are clearly moments in our history when we need to be reminded of this call; there are times when we need to interpret this call in new ways that will resonate with us — ways that will drive us from the safety of our upper rooms and beyond the company of those with whom we are comfortable into this messy, complicated, perilous and beautiful world that God loves so much. And so every once in a while, the Spirit goest the extra mile to make God’s presence known to us, which is what today is really all about.
God has many ways of drawing our attention back to this call and what it entails: prophets like Moses, commandments to live by, covenants to keep us on the same page, Jesus and, of course, the Holy Spirit — which is always there inspiring us and pushing us and strengthening us to do God’s work in the world, even if we don’t always see or hear or understand that.
And so perhaps the most faithful way we can celebrate this Festival of Weeks or Pentecost or Kick the Church in the Seat of the Pants Day, or whatever you want to call it, is to remember our responsibility for discerning where the wind of the Spirit is calling us right here and right now.
Where, pray tell, might that be?