Happy Pentecost! Did your church celebrate Pentecost this last Sunday (May 19)? If not, you can still celebrate with the Eastern Orthodox church, which (based on their Easter calendar) celebrates Pentecost beginning Sunday, June 23, with three days of feasts and celebratory worship! But Pentecost is actually something we should be celebrating every day. What is Pentecost, and why celebrate it?
WHAT IS PENTECOST?
Pentecost was the Old Testament Jewish Feast of Weeks, or feast of the “first fruits” harvest (Ex.34:22), which was celebrated 50 days after the Passover Sabbath. Jesus was crucified on Passover Friday and was in the tomb through Sabbath Saturday. But then on Sunday, when the priest in the Temple was to offer the “First Fruits,” Jesus overcame death, or as Paul said, Jesus was the “first fruit” of those who have fallen asleep (I Cor. 15:20). The risen Jesus was with his followers for 40 days, and he then ascended to assume his powerful place over all human history. But before he ascended, he told his disciples to “wait in Jerusalem for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about” (Acts 1:4). And then he explained what this “gift” was: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses…to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
And 10 days later, on Pentecost Sunday, while Jews from all over the world were celebrating the Feast of Weeks in Jerusalem, the powerful energy of God came suddenly like a violent wind, filling the followers of Jesus. They began to speak in the various languages of the visitors to Jerusalem. Peter preached to the mass crowd that day, describing the powerful working of God in the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus, as well as the coming of the Spirit which they were witnessing (Acts 2:14-35). Three thousand people became followers of Jesus that day! How stunning an event!
And yet, according to Jesus and the writers of the New Testament, the coming of the Spirit was not a one-time event. The Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is that same gift Jesus promised you and me—the Spirit of God living in you (Rom. 8:11), the Spirit of God whom Jesus said “lives with you and will be in you” (John 14:17). God’s own Personal Presence has come upon this earth, just as God promised in the Old Testament and as Jesus assured us. And nothing has been the same since! We should be celebrating Pentecost every day, opening our hands and hearts and saying, “Come, O Spirit of God, invade my life!”
GOD IS STILL COMING AND STILL WORKING
We often think of the resurrection as a separate event, sort of isolated from the coming of the Spirit and the formation of the church. We often just think of the resurrection as our “proof text” that Jesus was who he said he was, and his resurrection is our guarantee of eternal life. And that is all true. But the New Testament presents what God has done in Jesus as all connected. The “Event” is the coming of God to us (the Incarnation), his Cross, his Resurrection. But the “Event” is also Jesus’ Ascension to power in heaven, the coming of what Jesus and Paul called the “promised” Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit of promise, and the formation of the community of Jesus’ apprentices, filled with hope and God’s own Spirit. The cross and the resurrection were what Jesus had just “begun to do” (as Luke says in Acts 1:1), but he’s not finished yet! The very Presence of God Himself is alive, active, powerfully present and moving throughout the world, making real in our own lives what Jesus has done for us, opening our eyes to the love of God. The Spirit is the experiential Presence of the love of God poured into our hearts (Rom. 5:5), the energy (Greek, dunamis) of the life of God (Col. 1:29), strengthening us with power in our inner being so that Jesus may dwell in our hearts, and so that we may know the love of God and be filled to the full measure of all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:16-21). Easter and Pentecost belong together, because in Pentecost God brings to us the same powerful, death defying love he exerted at Easter.
I WILL NOT LEAVE YOU AS ORPHANS
Jesus promised that he would not leave us as “orphans,” but would come to us (John 14:18). He came not only in the resurrection, but continues to come now through His Spirit. God has always longed to “dwell” with humans, to create “fellowship” with us. We come into the Presence of God and God’s Presence comes into us so that we may experience God’s deep love for us. Here are some things that might help us begin to think about the Personal Presence of God in our hearts by His Spirit, who is “Christ in you, the hope of glory” ( Col. 1:27).
- Jesus has brought a revolution in our understanding of God: God is a Community of Love. Jesus has revealed to us that God is not some isolated, solitary Deity, but rather is a community of self-giving love: Father, Son, and Spirit. From all eternity, God has been full of love within himself, and he created us so that we could be independent creatures who can experience and enjoy that same love. Jesus taught and prayed this throughout John 13-17, summed up in this last verse: “I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them, and that I myself may be in them” (John 17:26).
- Jesus the Son reveals the Father’s Love. God didn’t just tell us facts about himself, he has shown himself as he really is (a community of Father, Son and Spirit), and he has invited us into relationship with himself. There is no other “God.” God is an extrovert, and the Son and the Spirit are his “out-going,” the very “radiance” of the Father.
- The Spirit shines the spotlight on all that Jesus has done and is doing. Just as Jesus has revealed exactly what Father God is like, the Spirit takes what Jesus has done and makes it real and understandable to us, so that we experience God within our minds and emotions. Jesus says, “The Spirit of truth, who goes out from the Father, will testify about me. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take what is mine and make it known to you” (John 15:26; 16: 14, 15). The Spirit’s work begins with our experience of the love of God, and then matures us in his love so that our character becomes more and more like the character and heart of God, expressed so perfectly in Jesus his Son. “The Holy Spirit has no ‘Face,’ but it is through the Spirit that we see the Face of Christ and in the Face of Christ we see the Face of the Father.”[1]
- Through the Spirit, we experience in our hearts the love of God. The Holy Spirit, God’s own Spirit and the Spirit of King Jesus, has “poured” God’s love into our hearts (Rom. 5:5). The Spirit of God touches our hearts and emotions deep down, assuring us that God is a Father and we are his children (Rom. 8:16). The Spirit in our hearts is a “downpayment” or “deposit,” guaranteeing what is to come forever (2 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 1:13). The Spirit especially helps us in our suffering, suffering with us with his own groans that are too deep for words (Rom. 8:26).
- The Spirit creates a community of love that is the place and the means whereby we become more like Jesus. Just as God is a relational Being, we humans are relational to the core. We desperately need community and other people, and God himself creates that community. The church is not only the place but also the means of transformation.
- The Spirit of Jesus transforms our minds/identity/community/habits/character to become more like Jesus (God revealed to us). In Jesus, we have seen the future, and we are beginning now to live in anticipation the life of the future. The reason Christians live differently is not because we are trying to gain some “prize” in heaven someday. The reason Christians live differently is because this is the way life is supposed to be lived. The “prize” is beginning now as we learn that we don’t have to live the way the world lives. King Jesus has come to us (just like Moses went into Egypt) and has rescued us now from the death-dealing ways of this world. We are thankful that God has awakened us and is teaching and training us “in advance the language of God’s new world.”[2]
In the age of the life to come, we will have bodies, just like Jesus’ resurrected bodies (1 Cor. 15). God created our amazing bodies, and God’s Spirit works through our bodies even now. Neuroscientists have shown us that the neuropathways in our brains can actually change through what we think about and what we do. God’s own Spirit works within our physical bodies to transform us (remember, we are the “temple of the Holy Spirit”). This is a constant transformation of mind and behavior, empowered by Spirit through practices—through the Word, formation through prayer, all within community of disciples.
Oh, Holy Spirit You are welcome here
Come flood this place
And fill the atmosphere
Your glory God
Is what our hearts long for
To be overcome
By Your presence, Lord.[3]
You can read more about the Spirit of God in my new book, How to be Human in an Inhuman World: Colossians for Daily Living, available on Amazon or through Sulis Press:
[1] Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons (London: T&T Clark, 2001), 63.
[2] Wright, “Why Christian Character Matters,” in James K.A. Smith and Michael L. Gulker, eds., All Things Hold Together in Christ: A Conversation on Faith, Science, and Virtue (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), 186.
[3] Holy Spirit lyrics © Capitol Cmg Genesis, Jesus Culture Music