Pentecost 2021

Pentecost 2021

‘When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

‘Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’ All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’

‘But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: ‘Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

“In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”’

Acts 2:1-21

 

‘When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.

‘I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, “Where are you going?” But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgement: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgement, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.

‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.’

John 15:26,27; 16:4b-15

 

Today is Pentecost. But what is Pentecost? At its heart, it was a harvest festival. The ancient near east civilisations were built on grain. As such, they were vulnerable to famine, and the successful completion of a harvest was a cause for major celebration. In Israel, as in Egypt, there were two main grain crops: barley and wheat. The earlier barley harvest was celebrated at Passover; the wheat harvest, fifty days later, at Shavuot, or Pentecost. The Jewish people had tied two key events from their history to these harvest celebrations: at Passover, they celebrated God delivering this people from slavery in Egypt, parting the sea and leading them out into the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula; at Pentecost, they celebrated God giving them the Commandments, through Moses, at Mount Sinai some several weeks later. Harvest festivals take on a deeper significance. As Jesus insisted, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ (Matthew 4:4, citing Deuteronomy 8:3) For Christians, these Jewish celebrations take on yet another layer of meaning. Jesus’ crucifixion, and resurrection—his passing from death to life, taking us with him—take place around the Passover. The risen and ascended Jesus sends the Holy Spirit from heaven fifty days later, at Pentecost.

Some five hundred years before Jesus (give or take a century or two), Judah had experienced a particularly disastrous invasion of locusts, an utter catastrophe in the life of the nation. The grain crops, both barley and wheat, had been entirely wiped out before they could be harvested. The storehouses and granaries were empty, awaiting a refilling that would not now happen. The urban population of Jerusalem, fed by the surrounding territory of Judah, were facing starvation; relatively secure and prosperous lives, thrown into turmoil. And the prophet Joel asked, ‘does this remind anyone of anything?’

A thousand years earlier again, God had delivered this people from a hard-hearted Pharaoh, sending a succession of ten plagues on Egypt. The seventh plague had been hailstones, so large they had destroyed the barley crop before it was ready to harvest. The wheat was late in coming up that year, and survived untouched. It would, however, be devoured by the eighth plague, an invasion of locusts beyond number. Moses presented himself before Pharaoh, and demanded that his people, young and old, sons and daughters, be allowed to go out of Egypt to celebrate the Lord’s festival. Pharaoh would permit only the old men to go. A ninth plague followed—three days of dense darkness—and a tenth—the death of the firstborn of every household, even livestock.

‘Does this plague of locusts remind anyone of anything?’ asked Joel. Surely God’s hand is in this, for judgement, of God’s own people who have become as proud and hard-hearted as ever Pharaoh was? Surely, we must repent, and call on the Lord for mercy, lest we suffer what comes next? (Indeed, there was no lasting repentance, and ultimately the king in Jerusalem had his eyes gouged out—darkness—and his firstborn son killed, while he himself was carried off into the Babylonian exile…)

But Joel continues. We are being humbled, but God will restore, will not forget us forever, will repay what the locusts have devoured. And then, God promises, ‘I shall pour out my spirit on all flesh’ and after that the nations shall be summoned to gather in Jerusalem, and be judged for having scattered God’s people among them, for carrying God’s treasured possession away from the land. And in the Valley of Decision, all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.

‘This is that’ says Peter. This is the pouring out of God’s Spirit on all flesh—young and old, sons and daughters. This is the gathering of the nations for judgement. This is the Valley of Decision…

One way of thinking about this pattern—this revelation, by which we come into a deeper knowledge of the kind of world we live in, a deeper knowledge of the nature of God and humanity—is as disruptive grace. That is to say, sometimes God breaks into our hard-hearted indifference in shocking ways. It is grace, because it comes from out-with us, as divine initiative. And it is disruptive, because this untameable force seeks to break us free from the things that hold us captive. By our indifference towards animals and their habitats and towards other people, especially the poor, we brought a pandemic on ourselves; but God folds this judgement in on itself, like origami, transforming it into grace, troubling and starkly beautiful. What opens up in this space is the possibility of a new future, of hope, that is big enough to embrace young and old, sons and daughters, those close by and those far from us, a diversity of life experiences [1]. For those with eyes to see, God turns up, in the pressure and pain of a pandemic; half-hidden behind a mask and fogged glasses on the bus, or peeling a mask off at the end of a work shift. Grace is held out to us, but must be received; and the longer we resist, the more pain we bring upon ourselves and others. Still, I wonder how many people have experienced a fresh appreciation of the need for and/or presence of God in their lives, over the course of the past year? Perhaps more than we can imagine. Perhaps you have discovered this for yourself? Or perhaps I have drunk too much communion wine.

This Pentecost, may the place of our deep collective loss become the place of breakthrough, the very place we experience the transformation of the Holy Spirit drawing us from death to life. Come, Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

[1] When the Spirit of God, poured out on all flesh, moves to bring forth a new world from the ruins of a dying world, it is ushered in by the prophetic call of the young and the old, sons and daughters, from many nations and for the nations, empowered to speak to us concerning where we have gone astray, and leading the way in how we might life our lives better, according to God’s justice and mercy and love for all creation. I think of the partnership between Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough, calling out our death-cult attitude to our planet, the Swedish girl who is dismissed for being young and naïve and not understanding what she is talking about, and the English man put in a box labelled ‘national treasure’ so we can ignore him too. The Spirit of God cannot be contained in a box; but, if we want to know where that Spirit is blowing against us, in disruptive grace, and where that Spirit is heading, we need to listen to the children and young people among us, and, as older men and women, invest our dreams in the vision God has given to them. Do you hear the sound, like the rush of a violent wind?