Pentecost Sunday, 2023

Pentecost runs a distant fourth in the high holy days of the liturgical year, coming in behind Easter, Christmas, and Mother’s Day. (Yes, I know Mother’s Day is a cultural holiday, not a high holy day on the liturgical calendar, but most people know more about and pay more attention to Mother’s Day than they do Pentecost Sunday – hence, my giving it a fourth-place finish.) While most church members can associate Pentecost with either the pouring out of the Spirit or with the birth of the church, they know little – I fear - about the meaning or significance of Pentecost for their own lives as a follower of Jesus today.

The story of Pentecost, recorded in Acts 2:1-4, is rich with imagery. The meaning or significance of the event is found in that imagery. I identify four images embedded in the story. Each hold meaning for us as the followers of Jesus today.

The first image is found in the description of what happened as the Spirit was poured out on the disciples. The room was filled with “a sound like the rush of a violent wind” – think West Texas tornado – and “divided tongues, as of fire appeared among them,” Acts 2:2-3. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the presence of God is always represented by a storm or fire. God spoke to Job out of a whirlwind, to Moses out of a burning bush. The wind and the fire of the Pentecost event point to the presence of God in their midst.

This image draws on the Tabernacle the people of Israel built at Sinai. The LORD instructed the people to construct a Tabernacle “that I may dwell among them,” Exodus 25:8. When the Tabernacle was completed, the Shekinah presence of God filled the Tabernacle, represented by a cloud by day and fire in the cloud by night, Exodus 40:34, 38. The LORD dwelt in the midst of his people through the Tabernacle.

The destruction of the Temple by the armies of Babylon in 586 BCE created a spiritual crisis for the nation of Israel. They felt abandoned by God, forgotten and disregarded (see Isaiah 40:27). The unnamed prophet of the exile spoke to that crisis, assuring the people of God’s presence and care. “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior,” Isaiah 43:2-3. In the midst of their crisis and despair, God was still with them – in their midst.

On our spiritual journeys, we often walk through difficult times in which we – like the people of Israel in exile – wonder if God has forgotten us or if God cares. Like the psalmist, we experience times of spiritual dryness in which God seems distant (see Psalm 42). The Pentecost event reminds us that God is always with us. God is closer to us than the breath in our lungs.

The Pentecost event is the next expression of “God with us.”  God’s Spirit was not poured out onto a building such as the Tabernacle or the Temple, but onto a spiritual community of the followers of Jesus. We, the followers of Jesus, today, are “a holy temple,” the “dwelling place of God,” Ephesians 2:21-22. Through the indwelling Spirit, God is with us - in our midst as a spiritual community.

Of course, the ultimate expression of “God with us” was in Jesus, the Word made flesh. Jesus was Emmanuel in the fullest sense of the word. In the incarnation, God robed the divine self in human flesh and lived among us, as one of us, John 1:12-14. Through Jesus, we know what God is like. We know the ways of God. We know God’s truth. In him, we experience God’s grace – “grace upon grace,” John 1:16.

The second Pentecost image grows out of the first. Through the indwelling Spirit, God is not only with us, God is in us. In John 14, Jesus taught the Spirit “abides with you, and he will be in you,” John 14:17. In the Pentecost experience, the tongues of fire rested on each of Jesus’s followers gathered together in that place. The Spirit filled each of them.

Through the indwelling Spirit, God dwells in each of us. We are the continuing incarnation. We are the next expression of God-in-the-flesh. Through the indwelling Spirit, we are the presence of God in the world.

This image – the continuing incarnation – leads to the third image.

As the Spirit filled each of the disciples, each received the ability to speak a language that was not their native language. As a result, each foreigner visiting Jerusalem for the Pentecost festival was able to hear in their own native language what the disciples were proclaiming about Jesus, Acts 2:5-11.

This ability to communicate across national/cultural lines recalls the story of Babel, recorded in Genesis 11. In that story, everyone on earth spoke a common language. As a result, the people sought to invade the realm of the gods – represented by the tower reaching up to heaven (the realm of the gods). They were not content to be human (the same theme represented in the serpent’s statement to the woman, “You shall be like gods,” Genesis 3:5). Their arrogance and overreach led to the confusing of languages, resulting in the division that marks the world.

The Pentecost event is the reversal of Babel. Through the gift of the indwelling Spirit, cultural divisions were overcome. The church as the dwelling place of God on earth transcended cultural distinctions. “In Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus,” Galatians 3:26, 28. Rather than ethnicity or socioeconomic status or sexual orientation, the Spirit makes Jesus the defining characteristic of a person’s life. Through the work of the indwelling Spirit, oneness can be experienced in the midst of the world’s brokenness and division, in and through Christ.

As the continuing incarnation of God in the world, we are God’s partners, doing God’s work, working to bring God’s ultimate purpose into reality. God is seeking to restore oneness to all of creation – unity in heaven and on earth. “To gather up all things in him (Christ), things in heaven and things on earth,” Ephesians 1:10. The church as a spiritual community learning and living the ways of Jesus is both a foretaste of that oneness and the means by which that oneness is demonstrated to the world. As the continuing incarnation of God in the world, we are the means by which God works in the world to achieve that eternal, redemptive purpose. Through the indwelling Spirit, we are God’s partners in the world, doing God’s work.

The thought of being God’s partners, doing God’s work often stirs a sense of inadequacy in our minds. We think of ourselves as incapable, as insignificant. Who am I? What do I have to offer? What can I do? This sense of inadequacy leads to the fourth image buried in the experience of Pentecost.

For the Hebrew people, the festival of Pentecost celebrated God’s giving the law to Moses on Mt. Sinai. The law was God’s greatest gift to them as a people, setting them apart from all others.

It was central to their identity as the people of God and to how they sought to live as the people of God.

The gift of the law sets the stage for understanding the gift of the Spirit. These two gifts represent two different ways of living as the people of God. (The apostle Paul contrasts life in the Spirit and life in the law in Romans 8 and Galatians 5.) The gift of the Spirit brings a new way of living for the followers of Jesus.

The law tells us how to live. It focuses on behavior - what to do, what not to do. It emphasizes conformity. The law depends on self-effort and self-reliance. We conform to the demands of the law by trying harder to do better.

The apostle Paul – who built his early life around strict obedience to the law – identifies two weaknesses inherent to the law. First, whereas it can tell us what to do, it cannot give us the power to do what it demands, Romans 8:3-4. We are left to our own to power to live up to what the law requires. The second weakness is its focus. The law focuses upon behavior, leaving the heart unchanged. Jesus, following Jeremiah the prophet, identified the heart as the source of the problem, Mark 7:14-23.

The Spirit empowers us to move beyond both of these limitations. The Spirit not only teaches us the ways of God, the Spirit also empowers us to live the ways of God. The Spirit empowers us to love as Jesus loved – which Paul identified as the fulfillment of the law, Galatians 5:14. The Spirit empowers us to love – thereby fulfilling the law – by transforming our hearts and minds.

The Spirit works from the inside, out. The Spirit teaches us the ways of God Jesus taught – spiritual truth. This renewing of the mind (Romans 12:2, Ephesians 4:22-24, Colossians 3:9b-11) leads to a cleansing of the heart. As our minds are renewed and our hearts cleansed, our lives are transformed. The Spirit empowers us to fulfill the law – love – by transforming our hearts and minds and lives. The Spirit empowers us to love by growing us up in the likeness of Christ.

The Pentecost experience introduced a new way of living as the followers of Jesus. Paul spoke of this new way of living as being led by the Spirit (Romans 8:14) and as living by the Spirit (Galatians 5:25) and as walking in the Spirit (Galatians 5:25). The indwelling Spirit leads us to love as Jesus loved, to love those Jesus loved. As we love as Jesus loved, as we loved those Jesus loved, we are God’s partners in the world, doing God’s work – the continuing incarnation of God in the world.

We are able to do God’s work in the world - loving as Jesus loved, loving those Jesus loved - because God is with us through the indwelling presence of the Spirit.

May we reclaim our life in the Spirit as we celebrate Pentecost this Sunday.

Merciful God, may it be!