Pentecost
Today is Pentecost. Pentecost is the Greek name for the Jewish Feast of Weeks, which
occurs fifty days after Passover. The Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost, marked the
end of the grain harvest and commemorated God giving the Torah to the Hebrews.[1] In
time, as Christianity developed an identity separate from Judaism, Pentecost
became the Church's annual celebration of God's gift of the Holy Spirit, which
we heard about in today's readings.[2]
In the Old Testament, only prophets and
prophetic figures – persons like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Deborah, and David – received
the gift of the Holy Spirit. In contrast, the New Testament teaches that God
gives the Holy Spirit to everyone who walks the Jesus path. This is why, after
receiving the sacrament of Holy Baptism, the person is anointed with oil, symbolizing
the gift of God's Spirit.
The account of Pentecost, as recorded in the
Book of Acts, associates the Holy Spirit with three images or symbols: wind,
fire, and language.
Language
Probably the best known and most
controversial of the three – wind, fire, and language – is language. The text
reports that each person heard the gospel in her or his own language. Then as
today, Jerusalem was a cosmopolitan city because Judaism had spread along the
eastern Mediterranean coast. Notably, Alexandria's Jewish population rivalled
Jerusalem's in size. Jewish religious festivals regularly attracted crowds of
pilgrims. So there is nothing surprising in the report that Jews of many nations
and ethnicities were present.
The text is vague about what actually happened.
Scholars, popular among charismatics and Pentecostals, argue that the Holy
Spirit miraculously enabled early Christians to proclaim the gospel in a wide
variety of languages. Other scholars, popular among Christians who believe that
the Holy Spirit's gifts are less flamboyant and more commonplace, argue that the
people speaking Parthian, Arabic, and so forth already knew the language. In
either case, our emphasis should be on the event's meaning and not on what happened.
Jews from far and near all heard the gospel in a way individually understandable.
In other words, God speaks to each person,
then and today, in a way that the individual is most likely to understand. God's
language is the language of love, the only truly universal language, one that every
human intuitively understands, for at the core of our being each of us seeks
unconditional love and acceptance.
Someone once compared the Spirit to a pair
of eyeglasses.[3] When a
pair of glasses fits comfortably and has the correct prescription, the wearer
hardly notices the glasses. So it is with the Spirit. We overlook the Spirit's
presence in our lives because we seek flashy, dramatic signs. Instead, look for
the Spirit in moments of unexpected joy, moments when you discover yourself
loving a previously unlovable person, moments of spiritual insight, and moments
of synchronicity, i.e., serendipitous coincidences that lead to love and
creativity.
Fire
The desert fathers and mothers were Christian hermits who lived in the
Egyptian desert from the mid-fourth century through perhaps the end of the eighth
century. This is one of their memorably instructive stories:
Abba [Father] Lot went to see Abba Joseph and
said to him, "Abba, as far as I can, I say my little office, I fast a
little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace, and as far as I can, I purify my
thoughts. What else can I do?" Then the old man stood up and stretched his
hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to
him, "If you will, you can become all flame."[4]
Whether it is the tongues of fire above the
disciples described in the Book of Acts or the fire on an elderly monk's
fingertips, the image is metaphorical. The fire –observable physically in our
lit candles and symbolically in the red of my stole and on the altar – connotes
the passion that the Spirit tries to evoke in Christians.
Christians since the first century AD have described
Jesus' arrest, trial, crucifixion, and death as his passion. In his passion, Jesus
opened his arms and lovingly embraced everyone, just as s/he is. We echo Jesus'
passion when we declare with genuine conviction that all are welcome.
Spiritual passion, like the moon, has
seasons when it waxes and wanes. When our spiritual passion wanes, we can renew
it by pausing to recollect times we have experienced the Spirit, times we have loved
a neighbor in God's name, and times God has fed us with living bread or slaked
our thirst with living water.
Wind
You may remember when English speaking Christians
routinely called the Holy Spirit the Holy Ghost. That practice's roots lie in the
Anglo-Saxon word gast, derived from a
Germanic word meaning both gust and spirit.[5] Similarly,
the Hebrew word for wind, ruach, and
the Greek word for wind, pneuma, also
denote both God's Spirit and the human spirit.
Speaking in tongues points to the Spirit's
presence. Fire emphasizes passion. Wind signifies movement. The Christian life,
individually and communally, is a life of dynamism and growth. Christians and
Christian communities who sit still are like stagnant ponds that weeds and
algae slowly choke to death.
Theologian Reuben Alves has described the Holy Spirit as the
"aperitif of the future," saying:
We want the Spirit to be like airplane
coffee, weak but reliable, and administered in small quantities. Or we want the
Spirit to be a can of diet soda, bubbly and; ubiquitous, and capable of easy
ownership. The heady aperitif tantalizes us, assuring us that the banquet to
come will be magnificent.[6]
The Spirit speaks in ways that we can hear,
fires us with passion, and moves us to action in ways that are often
unpredictable but always life giving.
Almost fifty years ago, Al Unser was a
favorite for winning the Indianapolis 500, until he skidded and hit the wall.
He lay slumped in his burning car for only a few seconds before another driver
stopped alongside Unser's burning wreck. While other cars roared past, some
dangerously close to the second car, its driver, a young man named Gary
Bettenhausen, clambered out, rushed over, and pulled Unser from the flames.
This courageous act cost Bettenhausen, who had spent months and a small fortune
in preparation, whatever chance he had had to win.[7]
"They'll know we are Christians by our
love" is the title of a popular Christian song[8]
The work of the Spirit, in touching us, filling us with passion, and moving us
to act calls and empowers us to act with love for God and our neighbor that
emulates and incarnates Christ's.
May they know we are Christians by our love.
Amen.
[1] Mark J.
Olson, "Pentecost," Anchor
Bible Dictionary, ed. D.N. Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), Vol. V,
pp. 222-223.
[2] Acts
2:1-21; Romans 8:14-17; John 14:8-17.
[3] R.
Maurice Boyd, The Fine Art of Being
Imperfect And Other Broadcast Talks (Nashville: Abingdon Press), 1998.
[4] Joseph
of Panephysies, The Sayings of the Desert
Fathers, tr. Benedicta Ward (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications,
1975), p. 7, cited in "The Problem of Unanswered Prayer," Homiletics, October-December 1992, p.
13.
[5] C.
Frederick Barbee, 'From the Editor,' The
Anglican Digest, Pentecost (1995), p. 2.
[6] Ruben
Alves, quoted in Beverly R. Gaventa, "The Unruly Spirit," Christian Century (May 12, 1993), 515.
[7] Og
Mandino, The Greatest Miracle in the
World (New York: Bantam, 1975), p. 54.
[8] Peter
Schools.
Comments