Understand and Connect: SALT's Commentary for Pentecost Sunday

Pentecost (Year A): Acts 2:1-21 and Numbers 11:24-30

Big Picture:

1) Pentecost (from a Greek word for “fiftieth”) is the fiftieth and last day of the Easter season. Next week is Trinity Sunday, and then nearly six months of “Ordinary Time” begins (“ordinary” here means not “humdrum” but rather “ordered” or “arranged”), during which this year’s walk through the Gospel of Matthew will continue.

2) From ten thousand feet, the Christian Year appears divided almost in half: about six months of holy seasons (Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Eastertide), and about six months of Ordinary Time. Like a pendulum swinging back and forth, or a pair of lungs breathing in and out, the church alternates between these two modes each year: high holidays, and then everyday life. The joys of celebration, and then the grunt work of growth.

3) Pentecost is the Christian reinterpretation of the ancient Jewish pilgrimage festival, the Festival of Weeks, or Shavuot (pronounced “sha-voo-OAT”), celebrated 50 days after Passover. For the ancient Israelites, this festival was an explicitly diverse, inclusive harvest celebration (see Deut 16:11; Lev 23:16), and over time, it also came to mark the reception of the Torah at Mount Sinai. For Christians, Pentecost celebrates the reception of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church. Happy Birthday!

4) The passage from Numbers is in the context of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness after the exodus from enslavement in Egypt. The people are nostalgic for their former life in Egypt, and have been complaining to Moses — and Moses is overwhelmed. To help spread the burden and responsibility of leadership, God tells Moses to gather the seventy elders of Israel, so the divine spirit may be “put on them” as well (Numbers 11:25).

Scripture:

1) The community of disciples are gathered because of the Festival of Weeks (Shavuot). Jesus had promised the arrival of the Holy Spirit not long after his departure — and sure enough, on the festival day itself, the Holy Spirit arrives. The scene is spectacular and chaotic: a violent, rushing sound like wind, evoking the creation in Genesis 1:1-2; and then “divided tongues, as of fire” — not a fire that destroys, but rather like the fire that Moses encountered at the burning bush, which was “blazing, yet it was not consumed” (Exodus 3:1-2).

2) The Spirit’s immediate effect is linguistic: many are empowered “to speak in other languages,” and at the same time, each person hears each testimony in their native tongue. Think of a meeting at the United Nations, in which everyone hears the proceedings (through a headset) translated into their language. The upshot of all of this is a sense of togetherness and unity: diverse as they are, everyone understands and can communicate. Accordingly, they’re dazzled, bewildered, and taken aback: “What does this mean?” (Acts 2:12).

3) As if to answer this question, Peter stands and speaks. He cites the prophet Joel, adapting those ancient words to illuminate the present: the final and decisive chapter of history has arrived, the dawn of God’s joyous Jubilee that Jesus declared early in his ministry (see Luke 4:18-19; Luke-Acts is one continuous story, written by the same author), and now comes the long-promised “pouring out” of the Holy Spirit upon “all flesh” (Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17). Jesus both heralded and inaugurated this new era, and the Spirit will empower a community through whom the movement’s message of healing, liberation, and joy will go out to the ends of the earth. The church is born!

4) On one level, from a Christian perspective these events provide another layer of meaning for the ancient harvest festival: the Spirit comes in order to gather in the sheaves of God’s great harvest of redemption.

5) On another level, these events echo the old story in Numbers, when God’s Spirit spreads the burden and responsibility of leadership among all 70 elders, causing Moses to exclaim, “Would that all God’s people were prophets and that God would put the divine spirit on them!” (Numbers 11:25).

6) And on yet another level, the story of Pentecost reverses the ancient story of Babel’s Tower: in an arrogant attempt to “make a name for ourselves,” humanity tries to build a tower with its top in the heavens — and God scatters them by diversifying their languages (Gen 11:1-9). Here in Acts, instead of humanity presumptuously ascending toward heaven, God graciously descends to earth; and instead of humanity linguistically fragmenting, the Spirit brings us together, bridging divides so we can understand and connect.

Takeaways:

1) The birthday of the church is a perfect time to reflect on what “the church” is in the first place. This week’s passage points toward a portrait of the church as a dynamic community of people following Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit to carry out God’s creative mission of healing, liberation, and joy for the sake of the world.

2) This community is strikingly diverse, inclusive, and egalitarian. The Jews Peter addresses are immigrants from all over the known world (“known” to Luke, that is!) who now live in Jerusalem, and the movement will soon open up to include Gentiles as well (Acts 10). In this way, Luke casts the church as a spirited community of bridge-builders, visionaries, and dreamers, male and female, slave and free (Acts 2:17) — and soon enough, this egalitarian, communitarian ethos extends to the church’s social organization: “they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:43-47). (On the early church’s socio-economic life, check out this short essay by theologian David Bentley Hart, “Are Christians Supposed to Be Communists?” His provocative answer, by the way, is both Yes and No…)

3) Likewise, this is a perfect week to reflect on how we understand the Holy Spirit. The portrait of the Spirit in Acts draws on ideas at least as ancient as the vision in Numbers, in which God’s “breath” or “spirit” — both ru’ah (“ROO-ahkh”) in Hebrew — brings renewal, insight, and responsibility, such that “all God’s people were prophets” (Numbers 11:29). But for all the drama, Pentecost is only the beginning: throughout the Book of Acts, again and again, the Spirit mobilizes the church and opens up new horizons for ministry (see Acts 4, 8, 10, 13, 15, 19, and so on). Breath means new life — and new life means new growth, change, and ongoing development. The Spirit protects, but also challenges, provoking and pushing us along, calling us to open up. And thinking this way about life in the Spirit is the perfect segue into the (nearly) six months ahead of Ordinary Time, the season of everyday life and growth.  

4) So, “Happy Birthday,” yes — and also, “Let’s go!” The church is not a building, nor is it a particular membership or group of people — nor is it a gathering of people together in one place. Rather, at its heart, the church is a mission, God’s mission, loving and protecting our neighbors as we would love and protect ourselves — and the call, the challenge, the adventure continues. In an age of distrust, fear, and fragmentation, the church’s mission — the essence of Pentecost — has never been more pressing. Understand and connect!