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Pentecost B 2006 Acts 2:1-11, John 20:19-23
Early on during my time here I wrote a Reflections article for an early edition of our newsletter -- I think it was about
Pentecost – it was long enough ago that I don’t remember exactly whether it was about Pentecost or not, perhaps
only that it was a good story. In it, I told the story of a storefront church in the southwestern mountains of Virginia.
This struggling little mountain congregation had a huge sign in the front window: The King Jesus Fire Baptized Holy Spirit
Church. A boyhood friend of mine in South Carolina, where such churches were not uncommon, called me as soon as he read about
it. He said that he would pay for the construction and erection of the same sign out front here on Route 200 if I would agree
to the project. I think I laughed and hung up.
There are times when I wish I had considered it more seriously.
Perhaps a useful thing on this Pentecost in this place and in this time is to look again briefly at what Pentecost really
is, The King Jesus Fire Baptized Holy Spirit Church of the time immediately after the ascension of King Jesus, the first major
event after our Lord was no longer with us.
First, the meaning of Pentecost in Jewish history suggests a new "take" on our observance of the feast in worship. The word
"Pentecost" is based on the Greek word for 50; Pentecost was a feast observed 50 days after the Passover. One purpose of the
day was a spring harvest festival: a time of thanksgiving to God for the earth's bounty as required by the Law of the Torah
set forth in References to this feast may be found in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy.
Another theme of Pentecost was commemoration of the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai. Moses' encounter with God on Sinai
was accompanied by lightning, fire, and wind –the Ruach Yahweh. And the events in Jerusalem are described in terms
of divine fire and divine wind/Spirit. Both the Decalogue (literally, ten words) and the Holy Spirit are gifts from a righteous
and loving God, and the faithful human response to such gifts is gratitude and obedience.
The third theme, taking the Gospel from John for today, when Jesus breathed upon his disciples after his Resurrection and
ordered them to receive the Holy Spirit, and the Acts passage, when the first King Jesus Fire Baptized Holy Spirit Church
was born on that first Day of Pentecost – this third theme is how hard it is to live into Pentecost and the coming of
the Holy Spirit. The disciples didn’t get it at first – they didn’t get a lot of it at first. It took
the violence of wind and fire to get their attention, to overcome their fears, and to get on with their mission to the world.
And finally for Christians: When we retell the story and the history of Pentecost, with its symbols of wind and fire, gift
and response we in a real sense – the technical word is anamnesis whose English translation is liturgical remembering—we
in a real sense are there with Moses on mountaintop with the burning bush, with the disciples on that Pentecost of flame and
wind and voices, whether we can see the flames or not, whether we can feel the wind or not, whether we can hear the different
tongues or not. When we really enter into the anamnesis of that first Day of Pentecost, we are close to being The King Jesus
Fire Baptized Holy Spirit Church. And we, too, like the disciples gathered together in one place can get on with our mission
into the world.
But over the time between then and now we lost sight of the real power of that event. The feast of Pentecost originally concluded
the great fifty days of celebration that began at Easter. Its rites were exactly comparable to those observed at the beginning
of the season-the long vigil service, the baptisms, and the concluding sunrise service; but, because of the great dignity
of the festival it was tamed – after all having ones head on fire is unpleasant to contemplate. First, it soon took
on an extended season of its own. By the tenth century the Feast of the Trinity began to displace the eight day long Pentecost
celebration. In the Church of England after the Reformation, Cranmer’s Prayer Books did away with the long Pentecostal
season entirely. As devotees of the 1928 Prayer Book can remember, the Sundays after Pentecost Sunday were devoted to the
Trinity Sunday and the Sundays after Trinity.
We have recovered the Pentecost customs of the Early Church with its long season, although we retain Trinity Sunday, instituted
in the early 10th Century. But have we recovered the part about The King Jesus Fire Baptized Holy Spirit Church?
The English and other northern European churches also called Pentecost Sunday 'White Sunday' from the white garments worn
by the newly baptized on this day: Climatic conditions in northern lands made this feast more favored for the conferring
of baptism than Easter. English tradition also used “Whitsunday,” from the Old English word whit, meaning to
renew – that fits, when you think about it.
Consider the Collect for today. This Collect harks back to the Sixth Century early Medieval Church at the time of Gregory
the Great. This was the time in which the Church had come to accept fully that although Christ might return at any time, it
wasn’t likely to be as soon as the First and Second Century Church believed. And so the task was to live as if, as
if the Second Coming was imminent, but to survive in the world if it were not. The noteworthy point in this Collect is its
teaching that we may rejoice in the comfort (i.e. strength) of the Holy Spirit only if we allow Him to guide our judgment
'in all things. The Spirit first illumines our minds with the discernment of true and righteous courses of action, and then
He strengthens our wills so that we may accomplish His will with joy in the time between the First Coming and the Second.
As soon as Luke-Acts became widespread in the Early Church, Acts 2:1-1 was read every Sunday. This account of the Church's
first Pentecost, when the Spirit descended upon the disciples, was considered so significant by the Third Evangelist –
Saint Luke -- that he made it the key to his whole story of the spread of the gospel throughout the world: for the Spirit
empowered the apostles to preach boldly the good news about Jesus, even in the very city from which they had fled in fear
after the Lord's arrest, trial, and crucifixion. The occasion on that first day of Pentecost was auspicious. Many pilgrims
from all the provinces of the Empire were in Jerusalem to celebrate the harvest festival, and the proclamation of the gospel
at this time would ensure for it as quick and as far-reaching an extension as possible.
For Saint Luke, however, there was a deeper meaning in this event than its mere historical significance. It was the inauguration
of a new dispensation of grace superseding the old covenant of the Law, the giving of which, as we have stated above, the
Jews commemorated at Pentecost. The new law, just as the old, was given in a marvelous aura of wind and tire. Saint Luke’s
Gospel is telling us that this is the fulfillment of the prediction of the last prophet of Israel, John that Baptist, that
the One who would come after him would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire' (Matt. 3:11; Luke 3:16). A new thing was
created, sweeping away the old which had gone astray and awry.
And the first King Jesus Fire Baptized Holy Spirit Church was born.
AMEN
Note: Liturgical discussion adapted in part from Massey Hamilton Shepherd, Jr., The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary,
NY: 1950, pp 180-182.
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