When the time for 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. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem. At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language. They were astounded, and in amazement they asked, “Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans? Then how does each of us hear them in his native language?” (Acts 2.1-7)
We end the Easter Season today with the Feast of Pentecost. And, without a doubt, it ends with a big bang, perhaps not as big as the start of the season with the resurrection of the Lord from the tomb, but the arrival of the Spirit upon the apostles fifty days after Easter was no soft knock on the door. At least, not in the way Luke describes it for us in the Acts of the Apostles, his telling of the story being full of fireworks and wind blasts.
In large measure, we owe the feast of Pentecost to Luke. At the end of his gospel, Luke has the Risen Lord tell his disciples “to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” At the start of Acts, his second volume, Luke tells of the Spirit coming upon the disciples in Jerusalem fifty days later. Neither Mark nor Matthew mention the gift of the Spirit upon the apostles.
Matthew, at the tailend of his gospel, when the Risen Lord meets his followers in Galilee, instructs them to “Go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” However, it would be difficult to take from this commission that the Spirit was gifted to the disciples at that moment.
John, for his part, has the gift of the Spirit given to the disciples on the evening of Easter when the Risen Lord appears to them, breathes on them, and says to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” It is very clear what is happening here. And it is also clear that it is not the same story that Luke tells. Such are the complexities and conundrums of the scriptures.
For our discussion today, I have taken Luke’s account as found in Acts, although the bestowal of the Spirit from John’s account is the gospel text for today. Having John’s text as the gospel for this feast makes for an interesting game of twister as preachers must try to explain how the gift of the Spirit on Easter Sunday as John tells it becomes the storyline for the gift of the Spirit on Pentecost, celebrated fifty days after Easter.
I am no contortionist, so I am satisfied with accepting these are two very different stories of the gift of the Holy Spirit whose only common point is that the Spirit was bestowed upon the early disciples. It is enough to know that the Spirit was gifted to them. When and how bother me less. The important thing is that it was given, fulfilling the promise of Jesus that his followers would not be alone in the future. The final words of Jesus to his disciples in the Gospel of Matthew were “I am with you always to the very end of the age.”
As we see from the selection from Acts, Luke’s version has a lot more flare than John’s telling of the story, very much like a flashbulb that gives a blast of blinding light, which explains why it is the one that everybody associates with the feast. The memory of the pyrotechnics of the Fourth of July stays with people much longer than the grilled hamburgers.
We should take a moment, then, to look at Luke’s text to see what message he might be telling us beneath the story of the fireworks and the spring thunderstorm. For the early listeners who heard the story, there would have been recognition of these elements in the story, finding a familiarity in them that later readers probably miss.
In regard to “the noise like a strong driving wind,” the Jews in the crowd would see a parallel with the initial appearance of the Most High God to the Hebrew slaves in the Sinai Desert. The writer of the Book describes it in this way, “On the morning of the third day there were peals of thunder and lightning, and a heavy cloud over the mountain, and a very loud blast of the shofar, so that all the people in the camp trembled. But Moses led the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stationed themselves at the foot of the mountain.” Even for us, it is easy to see the parallel.
Furthermore, since the Hebrew word for wind and breath is the same word, “ruah,” the Jewish people would have recognized the overtones that the description has with the creation of man as found in the Book of Genesis. It is described in this way, “Then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Having an appreciation for that great story of the life that God breathed in the man allows us to see the gift of new life that the Most High God breathes into the disciples on Pentecost.
The same with the image of the fire. The divine presence was described in the Book of Genesis with the same imagery, particularly when God made a covenant with Abraham. The writer describes it in this way, “When the sun had set and it was dark, there appeared a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch, which passed between those pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram.”
Perhaps more familiar to us, the same image is used in the telling of the burning bush that Moses sees in Midian while he was tending the flock of his father-in-law. The event is told in this way, “There the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses as fire flaming out of a bush. When he looked, although the bush was on fire, it was not being consumed.”
Likewise, that same use of fire to depict the presence of God is found in the Book of Exodus when the Hebrew slaves were led through the desert by God, described for us in these words, “The Lord preceded them, in the daytime by means of a column of cloud to show them the way, and at night by means of a column of fire, to give them light. Thus they could travel both day and night.”
These are only a few of the many examples of the images of wind and fire that can be found in the Hebrew scriptures, used each time to symbolize the mysterious presence of the Lord God. No doubt, Luke also understood the popularity of these images and borrowed heavily from the earlier uses when he wanted to describe the gift of the Spirit to the disciples.
The reason was a simple one. The first audience for the telling of the story was a Jewish one. These were family stories that they had grown up on. So, for Luke to describe the presence of the Divine One descending upon the disciples in terms of wind and fire made perfect sense. So much sense, in fact, that nothing else would have. His listeners got it.
While we have to do the work to understand the reasons for his using such imagery, much like going into the stacks in a library to dig through books to research ancient symbols, his audience did not. It was fresh in their memory. He was simply telling them that the Lord God had visited his chosen people once again as he had done any number of times in the past.
The one other aspect of the Pentecost story that always captures our attention is the capacity of the apostles, filled with the Spirit, to speak to the crowds of Jewish visitors from other parts of the Empire “in their own language.” As Luke recounts the event, these visitors were confused, astounded, and amazed. “Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans,” they asked. “So how does each of us hear them in his native language?”
Again, Luke may be borrowing from another classic story in the Hebrew scriptures, namely the story of the Tower of Babel, found in the Book of Genesis. That ancient story was an effort on the part of the writer of Genesis to explain the origins of the many different languages upon the earth. Once upon a time, according to the story, all peoples spoke the same language. But as punishment for their pride, the Most High God brought confusion upon the earth, peoples from different parts now speaking in different languages, unable to understand one another.
However, as we can see, it is a reversal on the day of Pentecost. Now, all these same peoples from various parts of the world are understanding the things that the apostles are telling them, a common language once again heard, even if the listeners understood it “in their own tongue.” The Spirit, moving and working through the apostles, allows them to speak in a language understood by everyone. The God who brought forth different languages in the past now brings together the many peoples, everyone understanding the words of the apostles.
For me, that part of the Pentecost story may be the most important, simply because it is not only borrowing from a story in the family archives, but is also imparting a theological truth at the same time. As I see it, the primary purpose of the Spirit is to bring people together into a community, regardless of country of origin, language spoken, or cultural divisions.
So, it makes sense, then, that the listeners should say, “Yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God.” The Spirit, filling the apostles with divine presence, draws all the peoples of the earth together in a circle around the apostles who tell them of the mighty deeds of the Almighty. It is a powerful and a beautiful image of a ruptured community restored, brought together and bonded together by the Spirit.
One well-known scholar once said that the fundamental lesson of the Book of Genesis was that, in his words, “in the beginning was community.” He is right. As we hear the story of the Lord God creating the world and its many creatures, including the human ones, it is clear that there are harmony and unity in the world, the Most High God walking among the creatures in the Garden, the man and the woman perfectly suited for one another, and the creatures at peace with their human counterparts.
Of course, that community was soon destroyed by the evil serpent who brought disunity into Paradise, pitting the man and woman against each other and against God, all other creatures soon following suit, all of creation at war with each other, preying upon one another and destroying irrevocably the harmony that had existed before the bite from the apple.
If it is true that the restoration of community is at the core of the Pentecost story–and I believe it is–then the first and most important result of the Spirit is a summons to all on earth to become a community, allowing the Spirit to move in and around us, bringing all of creation back to the original intent of God, a place of harmony and happiness, no longer riddled by divisions and disparate living, but united into a community of God’s children at peace with him and with one another.
Given that take on Pentecost, we have our work cut out for us. The surest sign of our culture today is not unity, but disunity. Instead of coming together around common purpose, we are tearing each other apart like beasts in the jungle. We live in an age in which we define ourselves by our differences, not by our commonalities. Everywhere we turn we see turf warfare, behaving like warring gangs in big cities who fight to the death for ownership of a single street corner.
If the feast of Pentecost is going to mean anything to us, other than a fantastical story told a long time ago, then it requires us to allow the same Spirit to enter into our hearts and minds, moving us towards one another, a Spirit that by its very nature binds together and does not break apart. Unless and until we do, we are walking on a path of self-destruction, for the truth of the matter is we cannot live without each other and, for that matter, we cannot live without the Most High God.
–Jeremy Myers
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