A Second Look at Pentecost
The Church follows a liturgical year, beginning with Advent and ending with Christ the King Sunday. (Of course, when I talk about the seasons of the Church during a children’s sermon, they always say winter or spring or summer. :)) If you follow the Church year, it becomes a journey that takes you through colors and moods - Lent is purple and the most solemn season whereas Advent is filled with high expectations.
Recently we observed Pentecost, which often gets lost in the shuffle as the Easter season comes to an end. It may get lost for other reasons, too, because the idea behind Pentecost is rather difficult to grasp. Oddly enough, the season of Pentecost is the longest of all Church seasons, leading some ministers to say, “We are in the dog days of Pentecost.”
Pentecost is also the birthday of the Church and is found almost exclusively in the Book of Acts. Underneath the narrative of Pentecost - the disciples receiving the Holy Spirit and the mighty wind and speaking in different tongues - is the story of the disciples locked in a room with the fear that they will be killed by the same people who killed Jesus. They have a target on them and are afraid for their lives.
Yet these same disciples miraculously all of a sudden feel empowered, alive, and find themselves doing things that they never thought they could do. They are driven out of the room by an overwhelming power that is described as tongues of fire, a mighty wind, and they gain the power to speak in different languages.
Through the Spirit they discover a new world inside themselves that will take them to so many places, meeting so many people, and basically changing the world as the Church is being created.
I am always reminded of the great words of the Nicene Creed:
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
That is all I need to know about the Holy Spirit. Put differently, the Spirit introduces us to life in different ways. In ways nobody can really explain, so you can only trust. For me, the Spirit is about bringing life and redemption to the toxic world we live in of negative-thinking people who don’t care about helping others. The Holy Spirit is a power source for good, for healing, for health, in this world that is contaminated with the unimportant, the trivial, and the selfish.
If you begin to condense the work of the Holy Spirit, you begin to see that the life you need to live as a follower of Christ is not just being a spectator; it is about being actively involved in works of what the prophet Micah describes as “what God requires of us”.
He says,
“what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness
and to walk humbly with your God?”
The Church was not built on pessimists, naysayers, or critics. It was built by people who were moved by the Spirit. It was built by hope. They wouldn’t give up, and they had great grit, determination, and belief. The Spirit, this “lost person of the Trinity”, is nudging us, too, to make a difference in this indifferent world. If you feel a nudge to do something, it may be the Spirit.
MEH