Pentecost

Acts 2:1-21

Like the Ascension last week, Pentecost is more an event to be experienced rather than a theological concept to figure out. I think it was W. H. Auden who once wrote "A poem should not mean but be," and that is very much Pentecost as well.

And how cool that Pentecost falls on Mother's Day this year, because often in the early church the third part of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is depicted as female (both the Greek and Hebrew words for the Spirit are in feminine gender). Like the best mothers, the Spirit is depicted in the story for this Sunday as moving through chaos, helping people move past differences to communicate and build relationships.

A couple of interesting things

• We were told back in chapter one that the folk gathered waiting for the Spirit were not just the 11 (now 12 again), but also some women who had followed Jesus, Jesus' mother and his brothers. So these original prophet/preachers were a diverse bunch.
• If you check out the nationalities of all those who heard the Spirited-speakers that day, you discover that Asia, Africa and Europe are all represented. Not an accident, I think, but rather a foreshadowing of where the gospel would spread first.
• The use of the Joel scripture indicates even greater diversity. The Spirit now will not only move in select prophets and leaders, but in everyone from the greatest to the least in society, of all ages and social conditions and genders.
  
• Fire, wind and water are all part of this tale as well: flames above the heads of the believers, the "violent" wind heralding the Spirit's presence and getting people's attention, and then, following the entirety of Peter's sermon (not in today's text), we get waters of baptism for 3000! The imagery of the Joel passage Peter quotes includes cosmic elements in the coming of the Spirit.
  

The marks of the Spirit then included holy, life-giving chaos, breaking down barriers of communication between people and people, and people and God, and the creation of new community among folk who would not ordinarily be in community with one another. Altogether amazing, and still the ways we can see the Spirit at work today.