Blown by the Just Spirit of God.
Today, Pentecost Sunday marks the end of the great
season of Easter. A season 50 days long - one seventh of the year. It is our
great Sunday which began on the day of the resurrection and ends today on a
Sunday. During this time have we celebrated the resurrection, ascension, and
the sending of the Spirit. Now we enter into Ordinary Time where we see these three
great themes at play in all creation, working and in through creation, and in
and through ordinary people of all cultures and ethnicities, forming God’s just
communities.
Pentecost is first and foremost a Jewish festival.
Tradition stated that 50 days after the Hebrew slaves were freed from Egypt
(remembered at The Passover) the Hebrews, now a free people, arrived at the
Mountain of God to receive the Law. Pentecost was a festival commemorating the
gift of the Torah. Torah was not seen as the rules to be obeyed to earn God’s
blessing, but a describer of what it meant to live in the presence of God
freely given.
Pentecost was also a harvest festival of Shavuot or
the Festival of Weeks. Leviticus 23: 15-22 describes this festival and what was
required. It ends with “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very
edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave
them for the poor and for the alien: I am the Lord your God.”
To live in God’s presence meant having the same passion for the poor as
God exhibited in freeing the Hebrew slaves. To live in God’s presence meant to
be a people living God’s justice, generosity and mercy.
All of this is at play in Luke’s account of Pentecost
in Acts. His telling is filled with drama, symbolism and imagery. Like the
Ascension it should shake our world. But it has become too familiar and is now domesticated
and safe. Frank L. Couch describes it as a “fear-inducing, adrenalin-pumping,
wind-tossed, fire-singed, smoke-filled” experience that “left those outside the
room described in the NRSV as “bewildered” (v. 6), “amazed and astonished” (v.
7), and “amazed and perplexed” (v. 12)”[1]
How might we describe our experience of this story?
The story of the early church comes out of today’s
events. That group of uncertain disciples became certain that all that was
hoped for was fulfilled, but not in any way they had anticipated. They became
known for their compassion and commitment to the poor, the outcast. They lived
out the Torah and shamed the ruling elite.
We are heirs of that story today. We should again feel
our world move as we listen to this story. It should lead us to question so
many of our presuppositions. As we listen and reflect on the account of the
first Pentecost, we are invited to make “connections to some of scripture’s
most primal, disorderly, prophetic roots (that) open doors into a liberating,
open-ended array of possibilities made possible by the unconstrained Spirit of God.”
[2]
And so we begin with all we have learnt from
crucifixion, resurrection, ascension; blown by the Just Spirit of God. Are we ready
for the ride?
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