When the time of Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together and suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim. (Acts 2.1-4)
Today we conclude the Easter season with the feast of Pentecost. However, it is more properly viewed not as ending something, but as beginning something. And what is it beginning? It is beginning the life of the church, understood by Luke as a community of “believers of one heart and mind.”
Rightly, then, the feast of Pentecost is often called the birthday of the Church, the infusion of the Spirit into the disciples bringing them together with a common purpose, to proclaim the words, works, and wonders of Rabbi Jesus, the Crucified Galilean and the Glorified Lord.
Because the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles should be read as one book, or as two volumes of the same story, the insertion of John’s gospel in between them in the order we find them today often results in our seeing them as separate books, disconnected and distant from each other. But that would be an error.
When we put them side by side, we can see the clear signs of continuity. For our purposes here, we may want to recall that the Gospel of Luke begins with the visit of an angel named Gabriel to Mary, a young woman living in Nazareth. The purpose of the visit is to inform Mary that she has been chosen to give birth to the son of God.
Confused and perplexed, Mary, young and unmarried, asks the logical question of the angel, “And how can this be since I have no relations with a man?” To which the angel answers, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.”
At the start of the Acts of the Apostles, we find a parallel event in the coming of the Spirit upon the apostles. Luke describes it for us today, “Suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues.”
Without a doubt, the parallel events are planned by Luke to present the two births—first, the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, and then the birth of the community of believers who will continue the mission of Jesus in the world, proclaiming to all the nations the deeds, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, no longer on earth, but ascended to the heavens.
Overshadowed by the Spirit, Mary gave birth to Jesus who at his baptism will also receive the same Spirit. Luke describes the scene at the Jordan in this way, “After all the people had been baptized and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven. ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.’”
Filled with the Spirit, Jesus will begin his ministry to the world, proclaiming the good news of the Heavenly Father’s love for his children throughout Judea, ending in Jerusalem where he is put to death and is risen from the dead by the power of the Most High God.
Soon after, the Spirit descends upon the apostles on Pentecost, giving birth to a community of believers who will proclaim the same good news not only in Judea, but, beginning in Jerusalem, to all the nations. In both instances, the mission is the same and in both instances the Spirit inaugurates the beginning or the birth.
One almost wants to see echoes of the creation story found in the Book of Genesis when the Lord God begins the human family, “forming the man out of the dust of the ground and blowing into his nostrils the breath of life, the man becoming a living being.” And it would not be wrong to do so because the word for breath, wind, and spirit are the same word–ruah in Hebrew.
So, a clear trajectory is found here, starting with the creation of the human family, continuing in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, and now located in the community of believers, the same Spirit or breath of life entering each moment and guiding the world towards the completion intended by the Creator at the dawn of life.
This is not an invisible line, barely discernible, but a strong line of continuity, the world moving forward, like stepping stones put on a pathway. Perhaps it is described no better than by the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins who penned these lines, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil. It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil.”
As Hopkins ends this beautiful image, he explains why it is all possible, writing, “Because the Holy Ghost over the bent/ World broods with warm breast and with ah!/ bright wings!” So, as we can see, Hopkins also believes that the same Spirit first released at the dawn of creation continues to effect the master plan of the Most High God, prompting and pushing the plan ever forward.
The evangelist Luke, in an effort to imagine this pivotal moment in the trajectory of the plan that we call Pentecost, presents us with wind and fire, both ancient symbols of the presence of the Divine in the material world. Both are powerful and both are uncontrollable.
His fellow writer, John, attempts the same image when he has Jesus say to Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Likewise, John will conclude his gospel with the gift of the Holy Spirit given to the apostles on Easter evening when the Risen Lord says to the eleven, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” and then, as John tells it, “he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”
So, as we see, the presence of the Spirit is described variously in the Scriptures, but whatever the medium, the message is the same. God is present in this place and in these persons. The tongues of fire and the sound of wind is a validation of the Divine Presence in much the same way as was the voice from the cloud at Jesus’ baptism.
While this look back to the past is compelling and is called for by our celebration of Pentecost today, it would seem that the Spirit is forward looking. The Spirit looks ahead, not behind, and moves the world towards the future, not into the past. The Spirit sees in the past the work done, but sees in the future the work still to be done. So it moves ahead.
A closer look at Luke’s version of the moment when the disciples receive the Holy Spirit reveals that the first movement that the disciples make after being filled with the Spirit is a movement forward. They leave the Upper Room where they had huddled for the past weeks and they go forward into the streets of Jerusalem where they tell “of the mighty acts of God.”
Rather than stay in the room and concentrate on the past, they move out of the room and focus on the future. In that initial response to the indwelling of the Spirit, we find a lesson for our own lives. If the Spirit is truly within us, and we are responding to it rightly, then we should do as the disciples did on Pentecost, leaving behind the past and launching the future.
As co-workers in God’s plan for the recreation of the world, propelled by the Spirit into the world, we do the work that remains to be done, seizing each moment to bring life and love into the space in which we stand, in this way reclaiming the desert as part of God’s creation. As the sun overhead moves across the sky, signaling the movement forward of time, so we move towards tomorrow, casting light into the darkness.
We can assume that the Spirit is at our back urging us forward into the world, even as it was at the back of the disciples, blowing them out of the Upper Room and pushing them into the streets of Jerusalem, and from there moving them through Judea and into the lands beyond, much like wind that moves steadily across the face of the earth.
And like wind, which is a powerful force, we destroy hatred wherever we find it, replacing it with love; we bring to the ground prejudice, rebuilding in its place tolerance; and we smash the walls built to separate peoples, allowing communities to be born, people no longer divided by petty squabbles and insignificant differences, now united in bonds of a shared humanity, linked arm in arm, the lion and the lamb lying peacefully beside each other.
In short, the Pentecost story is a call to build a better future, letting go of past hatreds and petty prejudices, envisioning a tomorrow where Cain and Abel become brothers once more, building a society based on common cause, not personal advantage. Inspired by the Spirit, we turn the impossible into the possible and flood the desert with life-giving waters.
But, as is plain to see, nothing happens so long as we stay in place, doing nothing, going nowhere. We can fight the wind that pushes us forward, refusing the Spirit that asks us to give birth to a better world. So long as we do, the world stays stuck in the past, the skies overhead darkened by despair, and the future bleak because we don’t allow it to be born.
So, the Pentecost story carries a big punch today, as we might expect anytime the Holy Spirit is involved because it is a force that simply does not want us to sit still or to sleep on the job. Instead, it is constantly urging us forward, asking us to become God’s workforce on earth, the movers and shakers that he calls to transform the world. Or, as the brilliant writer Anne Lamott once said, “We are called to be the love that wears socks and shoes,” just her way of saying that we are called to be God’s boots on the ground.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 