This Sunday, we will be gathering to celebrate Pentecost, one of the important festivals of the Christian Church. The English name Pentecost comes from the Greek word for “fiftieth.” According to the Book of Acts (chapter 2), the first Pentecost happened during the Jewish “Feast of Weeks” (Shavuot), a festival celebrated 7 weeks after Passover. Ever since, the Christian Church celebrated Pentecost 50 days after Easter Sunday (counting inclusively, i.e., including both the first and last days).
On the first Pentecost, Jews from all over the ancient world had gathered to sacrifice at the Jewish temple. The Book of Acts specifically names more than a dozen geographical places, large and small, Jewish and non-Jewish, rural and urban, from which people came. They represented the whole earth.
Then the Spirit comes upon them. And here’s what happened next: Even though they all spoke different languages, they understood each other. The text says that the folks doing most of the speaking were “Galileans” but everyone heard what the Galileans said in their “own language,” their native tongues (Acts 2:6).
“Galilean,” by the way, was shorthand for “backwoods folks from the hills” – they had a strange accent and spoke in a really distinct dialect – maybe a bit like an Appalachian dialect is regarded in the U.S. In other words, the preachers on that first Pentecost were country folk who were frowned upon and seen as unsophisticated, uneducated, and uncivilized.
But regardless of whether the preachers spoke with a country twang or British flair (or Hindi, Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish, or German), the point is: They all understood what was being said as if it was being spoken in their own language.
It is the Holy Spirit that allowed the people who were present at the first Pentecost to understand one another. That day, reconciliation happened and was translated into action - witnessed in the amazing number of 3,000 baptisms that took place that day. (Acts 2:31)
On the first Pentecost, a really diverse group of people understood each other, as the Spirit of God fell upon them. It was a divine moment of reconciliation among people from many different tribes and nations and languages. What happened to them was the exact opposite of what had happened when the people attempted to build the tower of Babel (Genesis 11). At Babel, God scattered the pretentious human race. And at Pentecost, God reunited the scattered people into a new beloved community - made one not by their own hands or by a shared single language, but by the Spirit of God.
Ever since that first Pentecost, God has entrusted Christ’s Church with the message of reconciliation in and through Jesus Christ. You and I are called to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. You and I are called blessed because we are called to be peacemakers. You and I are called to witness by word and deed to the new heaven and the new earth in which righteousness dwells.
How can we do that, you ask? Come to church this Sunday to find out more!
