Today marks a holiday celebrated 50 days after Passover (For us 50 days after Easter). The name of the holiday is Pentecost - meaning 50th. From the time of Moses, this day was one of the high holy days of the Jewish faith. It later became a holiday uniting the Jewish world after the exile, for people would come to Jerusalem from east and west and north and south to worship and celebrate this feast. But when the people gathered to celebrate after Christ’s resurrection, no one could have guessed what it would become.
In preparation for this day, I googled the word “Pentecost” hoping to find what others in the faith had to say about this epic day. I discovered a sermon that had been preached by the head of an association committed to non-violence. Disturbed by the imagery of a mighty or violent wind, he spent most of the sermon down playing the violence and succeeded in taking the wind out of God’s spirit. At one point he assured his listeners that “the sudden rush of the Spirit strikes witnesses as violent, yet it does not violate consciences and lives.”
So begins our effort to domesticate Pentecost. It was only a matter of time I guess. Christmas has become a rather benign image of a sleeping baby, not a God who invades the world. Easter has more to do with bunnies than it does with an empty tomb. And the violent wind of Pentecost isn’t something we need concern ourselves with, it will not “violate consciences or lives”. It’s hardly an image that shakes us up or should give us cause for concern.
Until we look to the Bible. Since the time of Abraham, God’s involvement with His people has caused upheaval in their lives. Abraham is called to uproot a comfortable existence for a life that he cannot imagine. All that he had is swept away and God creates a new people.
Since that time, God’s people have expected upheaval and known that it might even be unpleasant. The prophet Jeremiah complains in chapter 20 that “you have overpowered me”. Another way this can be translated is “you have violated me”. So much for a Spirit that won’t “violate consciences or lives”. When God gets involved with His people He doesn’t just involve He invades.
This does not mean that our God is a mean and angry God. Just because something is invasive does not mean it isn’t good for you. If you have a tumor, an invasive surgery can save your life. This violent wind that moves as Christ’s spirit is the same breath of life that God breathed into us in the beginning. So, only a new act of creation can create us anew. Jesus, the new Adam, gives us his Holy Spirit; the mighty wind that created the world is, at Pentecost, creating Christ’s church. And creation isn’t a gentle process. Anyone who has witnessed the birth of a baby can testify to this. In creation there is strain and upheaval. So it is when Christ creates his church. We are reshaped and reborn and forever changed.
As the Holy Spirit moves through Acts we continue to see this dramatic change. And the change is dramatic and physical. Paul is blinded when he encounters Christ. The Philippian jailor finds God in the midst of an earthquake.
In fact, earthquakes abound when God shows up. The church in Acts prays for boldness and the building is shaken. Christ’s resurrection causes an earthquake. And the Hebrew writer speaks of a time when all will be shaken apart and only that which is of God will remain. When God is at work, things get shaken up. The Holy Spirit makes a clean sweep –we try to cling to certain things, but God sweeps it all away.
Wind can be awesome when it is out of control. Imagine the power of a hurricane. It can destroy everything in its path. We hide from the wind because it can destroy us. And yet, in a single day, a hurricane can release the amount of energy necessary to supply all of the United States' electrical needs for about six months.
Only God can harness the power of the wind, the power of His spirit. So, to try and gain access to this power apart from God is futile and dangerous. We cannot harness this wind or bend it to our purpose. We cannot use this wind to go where we want to go. We can only be blown away by it, caught up in it, and trust that it will take us where we most need to go.
That is not to say that God’s Spirit is out of control, it is simply out of our control. Only through relationship with Christ are we able to see some control of the wind. Remember, Christ is the one who calms the storm when the wind seems out of control. God, who controls the wind, can harness its power and use it to supply our need.
God takes everything from us so that we can receive back from Him what it is we truly need. But that doesn’t mean that we get to pick and choose what gets taken away. Think of how the Jews have to rethink their approach to the Gentiles. Their entire way of thinking about “chosen people” is shaken. In a more modern context, think of our own prejudices and preferences. Or the relationships we might try to cling to. Think of the son who goes off to college only to find Christ. What will his unbelieving girlfriend or parents think when he returns home for the holidays? Or, one that hits all of us close to home, our schedules. We are caught up in a whirlwind of activities and find no time for God. God comes in like a whirlwind and makes us make time. When God gets involved in our lives His spirit sweeps everything away, not just our sin, but our very lives.
Pentecost is meant to be the day that blows us away. Out of this chaos, the God of all creation begins a new creation, not by destroying but by transforming, by the changing wind of the Holy Spirit.
Because of its power, God's wind changes everything. It is up to us to choose our response. We can open our hearts and celebrate this amazing gift or in our fear we can work to control it.
If we do open our hearts to it and allow this mighty wind to sweep away all that we might give devotion to, it is amazing to see what remains. As we see in the end of Acts 2, at the end of Pentecost “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” By allowing God’s Spirit to be at work within His church, these people discover an entirely new way to be and they are made into a new creation. We can participate with them as members of Christ’s church. And when we do, we will see God work in amazing ways, adding to our numbers every day those who are being saved.
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