Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday May 19, 2024 – Pentecost
Scripture: Acts 2:1-21
I want to begin today where we ended last Sunday. If you were worshipping with
us last week, you might remember that we read the story of Jesus’s ascension –
40 days after his resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven as his disciples
watched on. Last Sunday I talked about
this strange period of 10 days that followed that holy moment of the ascension
as the disciples waited for their “what next.”
Jesus had told them to wait in Jerusalem and so after witnessing the ascension, that is where the disciples go to wait. I also mentioned last week that their “what next” was worth waiting for, and that is where today’s story comes in.
Pentecost falls on the 50th day of Easter – the “pente” at the beginning of the name comes from the Greek word for 50. This is the Jewish feast day of Shavuot, falling seven weeks after Passover. It is a feast that celebrates the giving of the Torah, the biblical books of the law. It is a festival closely tied to the harvest, a time when the first fruits of the harvest are offered to God. And in the time of the bible, it was also a pilgrimage festival when Jewish people would make a pilgrimage to the temple in Jerusalem.
So just like at the feast of Passover when Jesus was crucified, at the time of Shavuot the city of Jerusalem would have been crowded with people from all over the known world, having come to make their festival pilgrimage. The streets would have been packed with a cacophony of languages filling the air.
And so it came to be that 10 days into their period of waiting, Jesus’s disciples gather together to celebrate the festival. And what happened there was the beginning of their “what next” that they had been waiting for.
Last week, I also talked about the stories in the bible when God’s presence is more immediately felt, like in Jesus’s baptism, or the story of the transfiguration. Today’s story may be the most dramatic example of these. A sound like a mighty wind filled the room where they had gathered, drowning out any other noise. What appeared to be tongues of fire seemed to rest on the heads of each of the disciples. And then this collection of uneducated fishermen from Galilee found themselves able to speak the different languages of all of the pilgrims who were gathered in Jerusalem for the festival, so that the good news of Jesus could be heard by everyone.
It is a powerful and awe-filled story. I can’t help but wonder what it would have been like to have been there in that room that day. What were the disciples feeling as they heard the wind and saw the fire and found themselves able to speak languages that they had never studied?
Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit in power is sometimes referred to as the birthday of the church. If we were to read on ahead, 3000 people asked to be baptized that day, and the message of Jesus began to travel beyond Jerusalem, beyond Galilee, to reach far-flung corners of the world.
And it would be very easy to focus on the spectacle of Pentecost – on the wind and the flames and the languages. But the Holy Spirit is about so much more than spectacle.
When I was a student at AST, one of the classes I took was on the Holy Spirit; and for our final evaluation in that class we had the option to choose to create a piece of art that would express the theology that we had been learning using whatever artistic medium we chose. I chose music, but one of my friends did a painting.
What she did was create a beautiful abstract work that incorporated all of the colours of the rainbow and movement, and since visual art isn’t the artistic language that I speak, I can’t tell you all of the technical details, but somehow her painting seemed to radiate love. And then over top of the painting that she created, she laid a blank piece of paper, onto which she had made a bunch of little doors, a bit like an Advent Calendar. On one of the doors she had a picture of a dove descending from heaven, like the Holy Spirit at Jesus’s baptism. On another of the doors, she had a picture of flames. On another of the doors she had a picture of a waterfall, living water. On yet another door she had a picture of a tornado, or rushing wind. You could open each of the doors, and they would give you a glimpse of the abstract reality underneath, but you could only ever catch a glimpse.
Last week, I talked about the challenge of trying to depict the Holy, whether with words or with pictures, which is how we have ended up with humourous pictures of the Ascension with Jesus’s feet dangling down from a cloud. It is the same with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit isn’t a literal bird that drops feathers and might poop on your head. The Holy Spirit isn’t flames dancing in an enclosed room. The Holy Spirit isn’t a hurricane force wind filling your ears with the pressure of sound. And yet each and every one of these symbols reveals something about the Holy Spirit.
She is unpredictable and untamed like a dove. She is powerful and maybe a little bit dangerous like the flames. She is impossible to ignore and urgent like the sound of a mighty wind. And yet the Holy Spirit is so much more than all of this, even when we add all of the symbols together.
The Holy Spirit is the aspect of God who is working in and through all of creation. She is transforming all of us, alongside all of creation, into who and what God created us and calls us to be. She gives all of us unique gifts, just as those first disciples were given the gift of speaking in foreign languages, and then she nudges us into situations where we can use those gifts to share God’s love with the world.
Today is the moment when those disciples leapt into their “what next.” They might have longed to go back to those days after the resurrection when Jesus was with them in Jerusalem, teaching them directly about God’s kingdom. They might have longed to go back to the good old days when they were with Jesus in Galilee, watching him walk on water and heal lepers and feed crowds of thousands of people with a couple of loaves of bread. But they couldn’t go back – we can’t go back – we can only go forward into our “what next.”
Pentecost marks their jumping-off point into the unknown. They could have hidden in the room as all of this was happening. Maybe it would have been easier, at least in the short term, to hide away. But they trusted that God was with them, they trusted that God was putting words on their lips, and Peter stepped out into the crowd and began telling them about how God’s love was made known in Jesus. And nothing in the world would ever be the same again… but in the best possible way.
Last week, I asked about our “what nexts” both as individuals and as a church. What gifts has the Holy Spirit given to us; and where are we being called to use them? For we don’t need tongues of fire and a rush of mighty wind to let us know that the Holy Spirit is here, in this place, working in and through all of us as the church. And so I ask, what is our “what next” going to be?
And may the Holy Spirit inspire us, equip us, and guide us along the way. Amen.
One image/symbol of the Holy Spirit (descending like a dove)
Stained glass window in the chapel of the Panacea Museum,
Bedford, UK
What is your favourite symbol for the Holy Spirit?
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