The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
June 12, 2011
Vol. 14 no. 24
Pentecost is a mess. Multi-cultural, tongues wagging, high winds swooshing, flames igniting, spirits rising sky-high, emotions becoming deeper. Officially, Pentecost lasts only day, the Sunday 50 days after Easter; just as officially we now will live in the season of Pentecost the rest of the Christian year, nearly six month worth. So the mess goes on.
At first we have high energy, but it is a tribute to human ingenuity that we can make the rest of Pentecost as boring as any other time of the year. We have difficulty keeping up the energy, physically and spiritually. The Pentecostal churches really are not any better at it, for they institutionalize (“tame”) their Pentecostal enthusiasms down to a manageable size. In any event, bored, tired or doing it by rote, we need the Holy Spirit.
Speaking in different languages under the power of the Spirit on that day was not a religious parlour trick, but a fundamental characteristic of our faith. There was likely a million people in Jerusalem for the harvest feast of Pentecost, seven weeks or 50 days after Passover – Acts 2:9-11 presents a laundry list of nationalities and ethnic groups who were clustered around the spirit-filled disciples. We declare the Christian message as the Good News for the entire world, doing so by speaking in every person’s particular language - unity through diversity is how we have accomplished our mission. That also means we are never completely finished because language changes continually, so we need to preach the Gospel with different vocabulary. Fully human languages, fully divine Gospel.
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan