Today is Pentecost Sunday and what a mighty account of the young church we have to engage with. It is a pretty wild scene that Luke sets – the Spirit certainly doesn’t arrive politely. Allow yourself to imagine what it must have been like if you were present there: devout Jews hearing God being praised in their own language… and by Galileans! The shock of hearing it from those you least expect – for us, it might be like hearing God be praised and the Spirit filling a Donald Trump rally.
Or to be one of those 120 Jesus folk gathered, to suddenly have flames blazing above their heads, their entire house full of roaring winds. I remember as a young Christian pondering the imagery of this scene, picturing the Holy Spirit to be some kind of magician at work. However whilst the Spirit’s magic is jaw dropping, the implications of this text is far more wondrous. For Pentecost is not about magic tricks. It is about the Kingdom of God and the empowering of his church. It declares the new age where the law has been fulfilled through Jesus saving work on the cross and now the Spirit reigns.
Pentecost is a momentous event in God’s narrative.
It is very easy for us Western Christians to forget how Jesus’ life and the church fit into God’s story. We are products of our culture and, for my generation in particular, individualists, elitists constantly being fed materialist propaganda selling us the lie that we are the centre of the story, that our individual happiness is highest priority and that we are to order our life, relationships and purchases accordingly. I read the Bible, still high from the propagandic Kool-Aid I drink each day, and I expect Jesus to rescue and serve me, my prayers often centred around my life with perhaps a mere afterthought for the greater church and the world. It is MY story. I am the protagonist. Jesus is my sidekick and he sends the Spirit to help ME.
This is a lie that people in the church, especially in my generation, often swallow and it is damaging. We must always be on guard to step out of our story and into God’s story when we approach engaging with Luke’s account of Pentecost.
My story as Christian did not start with Jesus being born to combat my sin and dying so I can go to heaven. Instead the Bible provides us not two stories (old and new) but one story: God’s story. God is the protagonist here, and not me. And it is into God’s story that we are invited.
To shake off our Sydney middle class stories, I would firstly like to step back and look at what Pentecost would have meant to the Jewish community that witnessed this event.
Pentecost falls at the same time as the Jewish Festival Shavuot where they celebrate two things: the wheat harvest in Israel and Moses receiving Torah – the laws by which Israel was to live to serve God. And it is into this context that the Holy Spirit comes to empower the young church. Peter’s sermon in verses 14-21, where he recalls the prophecy of Joel, ties the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost into this metanarrative. For here we have God pouring out his Spirit on all flesh, fulfilling Joel’s prophesy:
“I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams;
18 even on my male servants and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.
Pentecost marks the Spirit filling for all people. It wasn’t reserved for the apostles alone but fell on all 120 gathered. It provides an inversion to what took place in Babel. In Genesis we see God scattering the people through confusing their languages when they pursued power above God. And here, through the gift of the Spirit, those language barriers break down and all hear the good news of Christ in their own tongue. It is by the Spirit that this miracle takes place. What God promises to Ezekiel all those years ago – that he would revive the bones of his people and fill them with his breath and give them new life – we now see coming to pass. The Spirit is the breath of God doing more than even Ezekiel imagined. For it is not Jew alone that receives at Pentecost; the promise is for all.
Jesus himself also promises the Spirit to his followers, vowing not to leave them alone, instead sending them the Holy Spirit Advocate who will continue to teach his followers everything they need. This wonderful gift that Jesus entrusts his church with is the new marker for God’s people. Whilst the Jewish community turn to Torah to mark out their calling as God’s people, in Christ the law has been fulfilled. At Pentecost a new mark is given and a new people created.
So how does Luke’s account of Pentecost affect us here in Paddington?
Firstly, we are to be wary of our own individual middle class stories becoming our identity. We must recognise in the words of theologian Gordon Fee- We are SPIRIT PEOPLE! We are not under the Law. We are stamped by the Spirit and we belong to God and we must live out his topsy-turvy kingdom now. People should look at the church and see God’s kingdom in action. Our possession of the Spirit should mark our every interaction with each other here in our church and with our wider community: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We need to ensure that we give space for the Spirit here and we must be on guard to not creep back under the Law here in our community.
Secondly, we must not become servants to our theology. I am personally so very proud of our church and what we teach. But we must always ensure we are leaving space for the Spirit to move, to teach us and help us become more like Christ. For it is not our terrific biblical exegesis alone that fosters God’s kingdom.
This is where I believe we have a lot to learn from the Pentecostal tradition. The Pentecostal movement is growing rapidly and whilst it is easy to criticise them for irresponsible treatment of the scriptures, we cannot fault them on their expectation of the Spirit’s power amongst them. The beginning of Pentecostalism is incredible. It involves an African American man, William J Seymour listening to Bible college lectures from the hallway – banned entry due to his colour. Seymour was also disabled; he had only one eye. He was far from powerful. And yet the Holy Spirit chose him to work through. His services were marked with miracles, healings and speaking in tongues. A revival was taking place and it did not matter what colour you were, whether you were able bodied or disabled, rich or poor, educated or uneducated. The Spirit was being poured out on all – even those with a shoddy theology – and praises to God resounded.
This infilling of the Spirit which marks the Pentecostal experience not only ties individuals to those around them through shared experience of the Spirit, but it also ties them into God’s narrative. Psalm 104 cries, “When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground”. Here, the Spirit is at work in all of creation not only going back to the Jews but further – to evolution of all animals, and further again to the beginning of everything where the spirit is found hovering over the face of the deep. Pentecost is a very high point in a very old story, affirming all people, animals and the world in which we live.
I often describe myself as a recovering Pentecostal who has found refuge in the Anglican church for my sometimes tired faith. I for many years attended Pentecostal churches and am one paper away from completing a Masters at Alphacrusis College – a Pentecostal Bible College in Sydney. I have been surrounded by people speaking in tongues and I have been slain in the Spirit – falling to the ground under the Spirit’s spell when being prayed for. That is equal parts beautiful and embarrassing. I remember taking a friend of mine to visit my church and the pastor called her up to the front. He prayed for her – for salvation and for healing from scoliosis. Her right leg was 15 cm shorter than her left due to the contortion of her spine. Before my eyes I watched her leg extend to match the other as her back straightened. And boy did the congregation praise God! My friend became a Christian, and her prayers were always marked by great expectation of the Spirit’s power.
I had glimpsed the reign of the Spirit. This is something that the Pentecostals have got right. The Spirit is real and I would be lying to say that I do not miss that fierce expectation my old churches had to see the Spirit move in great power in every single service. Perhaps we should be praying to see the power of the Spirit in action here. To see signs and wonders of heaven breaking into our world now.
That being said, I have found great rest and strength since attending Paddington Anglican church. You see, I longed for a church which understood that faith was not about me but about community. I find incredible strength in liturgy, participating in the prayers of the community when I feel like my faith is lacking. Too often I found myself back under the weight of the law when I couldn’t see God at work in my own life or when I was just too tired to pray.
Since being here, I have been carried by the faith of those around me and those who have gone before me – we are Spirit People.
Our job as Spirit People is to let the reign of the Spirit take place. We are to live in a topsy-turvy community in direct opposition to the power-driven, self-focused world we live in. We are to live out that often awkward and clunky now/not yet tension. For Pentecost declares that heaven has begun- it is here in us. Imagine if people were to look at us and see what Heaven is like. “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” we pray each week. How it grieves me that when non-Christians describe their experience of the church, they describe feelings of not belonging, or not being accepted due to their past or their sexuality, that they couldn’t tick enough boxes required to join.
And yet the King of heaven was convicted as a criminal, utterly despised. He was a god who walked on earth, lived amongst sinners, and then died on a cross so we can belong, belong to him and to each other, sharing in the Spirit and participating in heaven on earth.
As Christians we are to live in God’s story and not ours. Individually we may choose to follow Jesus, but he leads us to a people. His people. A people he died for and a people he is committed to. And he gives us his Spirit, who marks us and works in us. We are done with the Law. We are under and in the Spirit and together- we are bound for glory.
A Lawyer’s View of Pentecost – by Ben Witherington
THE BARRISTER’S BRIEF BRIEF ON PENTECOST
The filigree flame of fire fell on the fellowship
Pursuant to the prayer and praise and paeans of the plaintiffs
Such that there was no room in the upper room,
And they fled like men fleeing a burning building.
But even the Temple courts could not contain the ebullience and effervescence
And so they were deemed drunk, tipplers before their time.
Yet all that they had imbibed was Spirit,
Which was so like fire in their bones that their wayward words
Leaked out in languages unknown to the speakers,
As if the babble of Babel had been set in reverse,
To unite a divided Empire that pretended Pax Romana.
Who knew the cost of Pentecost then or there,
Or the momentousness of the movement set in motion?
Who could have guessed the Guest who had inhabited them that day?
If possession is nine tenths of the law, then this magnificent possession
Became a magnificent obsession to lay down the Law and take up the Gospel,
And so tip the world upside down such that peace came from grace and truth,
Not law and order,
And testimony was borne not to a crime but to a crisis
Not to progress but to rescue,
Not to an Emperor, but to a Savior,
Not merely to the end of the old age,
But to the dawn of the new one.
As for me it appeared that at Golgotha,
Court was adjourned once and for all,
For the sentence had been executed,
The price paid,
And no appeals, summons, pleadings, stays or briefs
Could now change that outcome.
No de facto or de jure actions could in anyway retrieve the prior state of affairs.
But oddly with this outcome it is now the Law and all those under it
Who ever since have been on trial.
As if it were not enough that a ‘criminal’ had become King of Kings
Now on top of all else, all those who live in the Domain he has laid claim to
Are told that new occasions call for new duties,
For there is a new pact called new covenant governing the way the wheels of justice turn.
They grind slowly no longer, for they have ground to a halt until he returns.
And what interim rules he left!!— ‘no oaths’ ‘no violence’ ‘no depositions’ ‘no suits’
Only testimonies on His behalf, only confessions of his lordship, only mandates to love One and all, as if it were ‘all for one’ instead of free-for-all.
Thank goodness he did not demand we like our enemies!
Yes, of course I have perused the Deposit, the nomina sacra, the ancient words,
Fully of odd stories, ad hoc letters, rhetorical discourses, even apocalypse of sorts
I must say—it hardly reads much like lex nova, more like sage sayings, and prescient promises.
So what’s left for a lawyer to do?
Consider this my last will and testament—
I have laid down the law, and determining I have a stake in this matter, I have taken up a cross. While dying daily is painful, it beats facing the music and the musings of the messiah, when he sits on the bema seat on judgment day. I trust my day in court then will go better than his did in A.D. 30 although as it turned out, he was vindicated by a surprising reversal, ex post facto, for it appears that the Spirit was as good at revivifying bodies as inspiring proclamations at Pentecost.
Pentecost – Reflection by Byron Smith
In the beginning, the Spirit of God hovered over the deep. All of creation is spiritual.
In the garden, the Spirit of life was breathed into the first humans. Every person is powered by divine energy.
In the flood, the Spirit preserved creatures of all kinds, who shared that universal breath. All life is holy.
In the times of Moses and David, the Spirit rushed upon those who were to lead the people. The Spirit cares about the wise exercise of political authority.
In the times of the prophets, the Spirit spoke through them of God’s unswerving commitment to justice. God liberates the oppressed and condemns exploitation.
In the time of Jesus, the Spirit healed the sick, fed the hungry and released those trapped in shame and exclusion. God’s kingdom is good news for the poor.
In the tomb, the Spirit raised Jesus from death, vindicated him against the false accusations of empire and beginning a new creation. The Spirit brings life and truth.
At Pentecost, the Spirit was poured out on all flesh without distinctions of gender, age or social status. Every voice matters.
But what on earth could the outdated and abstract doctrine of the Holy Spirit have to do with Australia in the midst of a federal election in 2016?