5 Things You Didn’t Know About Pentecost
I want you to imagine with me a little of what life might have been like for those early believers who saw Jesus ascend into heaven and waited for him in the Upper Room. You can read the real story in the first and second chapters of Acts. But for just a few minutes, let’s put you into the story with them.
The Preparation
Before we do that, though, let’s take a look at what’s happening there in Jerusalem where you live. It’s time for Pentecost, a Jewish festival not dissimilar to our Thanksgiving, an ingathering and celebration of the harvest. At Pentecost, as Acts describes, people would make a religious pilgrimage back to Jerusalem from all over the known Jewish world.
And that means everybody who lives in Jerusalem is now committed to public hospitality. In other words, all of your houses are now bed and breakfasts. Only you’re not charging. You’re just making room for people because they’ve come to be part of the same celebration that you are.
And so everybody in Jerusalem is also overloaded with responsibility. Gotta get the extra rooms ready. Gotta make sure you have enough food to take care of all these people who are coming in from all over the world. And wait a second: does an Arabic Jew eat the same food as a Cretan Jew?
This requires much more preparation than normal. You see, back then, people didn’t travel much. For its time, Pentecost was an extraordinarily cross-cultural event.
So, think about it. You’re running a house, you’re going to have people in. You’re not really sure how many, so you just have to be open to seeing how many people you can put up. You’re preparing all the food. You sort of remember who came last year, and so, maybe you’ll see them again, who knows?
And in the midst of all of that, one of the members of your family is a disciple of Jesus. Say what?
Let’s pick up the story with you working in your home and thinking about your wayward family member. We’ll call him Ephraim.
The Promise
This is crazy stuff. Yeah, I saw Jesus, and yeah, he did astonishing things. He’s a rabbi like no other. But none of us except Ephraim believes Jesus is God in the flesh. That’s a whole different category. That’s actually close to blasphemy for good Jews like us. How can he believe something like that, anyway?
[Ephraim returns home.]
“Well, what happened to you today?” you ask.
“Well, I know you’re gonna think this is crazy, but we saw Jesus rise bodily up to heaven.”
“Yeahh … did he tell you anything before he left?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“He said we were to wait in Jerusalem until we were clothed with power from on high.”
“What’s that?”
“He didn’t say.”
“How long are you supposed to wait?”
“We don’t know, but we’ve committed to gathering at the place where we experienced the Last Supper with him, and we were going to meet daily to pray together until something happens.”
“You’re going to do what? Do you know, we could have 20 people in our house in the next two to three days? A gazillion things need to get done. And you’re, you’re bailing on me? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Well, umm, I need to meet with my friends. Jesus made us a promise.”
“Ahh yeah, you know where he’s going, Frank? He’s going back to meet with those other crazy people, and they think something’s going to happen if they pray long enough. Good luck with that!”
The Power
Do you see what’s going on? God is, even in the middle of that craziness, beginning to set his followers aside from their deep loyalties to family (which trump everything) so that they are willing to be obedient to Jesus.
Even if what he asks doesn’t make sense. Even if it costs them in terms of people not understanding, and perhaps even making fun of them.
That’s what the Christ-followers at that time were enduring. And they didn’t know how long they would have to endure it. Jesus said “wait”—but he didn’t give them a time frame.
You see, a part of the power of Pentecost is that if I’m going to say yes to the gift of the Holy Spirit, I no longer have the right to live life on my terms.
That’s huge. I want you to know that when I come to the celebration of Pentecost, I shake a little in my boots. Because quite honestly, I like life on my terms. I like being able to have a life where I can do what’s right for me.
But I can’t. Doing what’s right for me is actually considered idolatry. It means I’m putting my will above God’s even while I’m saying (or singing), “Come, Holy Spirit.”
Do you see what a conflict of interest that is?
And so what happens in Pentecost? Everything that could possibly happen to make Christ’s followers look utterly foolish, to make them worthy of scorn. The Holy Spirit came pouring down upon them in a sound-and-light show like you and I would have never imagined. They’re way in the Upper Room, and as the Holy Spirit is falling, they start pouring down the stairs and out into the streets.
The Price
That’s a part of what the Holy Spirit does. He will inevitably take you from the Upper Room and out into the streets.
You see, Pentecost is a public phenomenon. A part of the essence of what it means to be taken by the Spirit of God is a willingness to be absolutely public about who you are as a child of God and a joint heir of Jesus Christ. It is no hidden thing. It means something.
And when the Holy Spirit fell upon those waiting in the Upper Room, they didn’t just sit there wondering what the noise was. They literally poured down in the streets, and that’s when they were subject to ridicule.
“Ohhhh, I don’t think I know him.” Never mind that he’s my son.
“Oh, I know what’s going on with these tourists. They’re drunk.”
They were ridiculed. They were made fun of. I realize that doesn’t sound like some of our perceptions of God, particularly those that say God wants to make us more like us. Not so. What God wants to do is to make us entirely available to him regardless of the personal price.
Regardless of the personal price.
It was an extraordinary kind of embarrassment. But what came out of the mouths of these local yokel Jerusalemites were languages from hundreds and hundreds of miles away. That was the thing that turned people’s heads. They heard them speaking in their own languages—Parthians, Medes, all the different languages, people groups we would call them—declaring the wonderful words and works of God.
That’s what enabled Peter, who himself had been incredibly transformed, to stand in the center square, preaching and calling people to repentance.
In other words, if you thought you knew what God was like, you have some repenting to do. If you wanted to live life on your terms but now want to be a part of this, you have some repenting to do.
You need to let go of the things that don’t line up. You need to be willing to say, “God, I will repent and come under your authority, no longer being double-minded, saying, ‘Jesus is Lord, but I still want what I want.’”
No. You have to be willing to come under his authority, to say, “Do whatever it takes in me to cause me to so bend to your will that you can do your work in and through me.”
Because in the end, the work of the Holy Spirit, the fruit of Pentecost, is Jesus manifesting his words, his works, and his nature both in and through you. That’s what we read in the Gospel of John: “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do” (John 14:23a).
In other words, the Holy Spirit is out to replicate the character, power, and nature of Jesus in your life, not so that you can feel good about yourself, but so that God might so pour himself through you (in what are often very public ways) so that people will come to know the Son even as you have come to know him. “You will be my witnesses,” it says in Acts, “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8b).
So the question is: Are you up for that?
Are you up for saying yes to “God, I need you to do this, because I can’t do this on my own? I need you to work something new in me so that I’m willing, because I have to confess to you, God, I’m not sure I’m so willing for life to be on your terms as opposed to mine. That requires a level of sacrifice and an absence of rebellion that is not presently true of my heart. I need you to do this in me. And out of that, O Lord, flow through me, that your will, your works, your words, your life might flow through me into the lives of other people.”
Because in the end, that’s what the gifts and the fruit of the Spirit are. It’s the character and the works of Jesus. If it doesn’t look like Jesus, it’s probably not the Holy Spirit at all.
The Possibilities
So, Pentecost. It’s challenging, it feels out of control. It doesn’t fit neatly into an hour and a half worship service on a Sunday morning. Pentecost means anything is possible. God can just do what God wants to do, and all I have to do is to keep saying yes.
Which is the hardest part of all.
“I didn’t know it required that, God.” Well, guess what? Does it look like Jesus? Then come join the party.
So in this festival, this great day of this flow of the red of the Holy Spirit and the blood of the martyrs, which is what the red symbolizes, the call is to step into that flow. Even if it means, “Oh God, that scares me to death. If you want this from me, you have to take me there.”
He’ll do that. God will do that. What’s the old cliché? “Make me willing to be willing.” He knows how to do that very well, because he knows the rebellion of our hearts far better than we do.
So I would invite you, as we enter into this Pentecost season in the church year, to ask God to show you. “Lord, help me live less on my terms and more on your terms, and show me what that is.”
He will do that. If you want more of the gifts and manifestations and the power of God in your life, that’s the cost. That’s the invitation.
Otherwise you will misuse those gifts and cause people to go running in the wrong direction, to watch you perform as your own circus. I’ve seen it, haven’t you? But that’s not the Holy Spirit.
The real meaning of Pentecost is yielding to God’s authority. Pentecost represents the true meaning of what it means to call Jesus Lord.
So on this day, “OK, God. Show me.”
And he will.
Are you ready for the power and possibilities of Pentecost, of the Holy Spirit in your life? Share this blog and your response on Twitter. Please include my username, @revgregbrewer.
(This post is an adaption of Bishop Brewer’s sermon on May 15, 2016, at Christ the King Episcopal Church, Lakeland.)
Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.