The Problem with Pentecost
The Day of Pentecost, as celebrated by the church, has its own inferiority problem. It doesn’t have the crowds of Christmas and the hoopla of the Season. It doesn’t have the welcome change in weather and relief from Lent of Easter.
Pentecost has an image problem. There is no image.
There is a sound like rushing wind and fire, but not really. The disciples heard a sound like that of a rushing wind. They saw only “what seemed to be” tongues of fire. That’s a problem.
It was a phenomenon. No evergreens. No bunnies. Just an event of sound and fury, but what does it signify?
As the Rector of a Church for many years, I can tell you there is another problem with Pentecost. It moves.
Christmas is fixed. Easter is the end of something most people want to be finished with anyway: Lent. But Pentecost is a movable feast. Sometimes, it shares Memorial Day weekend. I remember in 2008 when it shared the spotlight with Mother’s Day (a test for preachers). This year, some of my grandkids will be at church camp for Pentecost.
But I love the Feast of Pentecost. It is the one day of the church year when we get a perfect before-and-after view, when we see what the church was in one sentence, who the church became in another, and what the church was commissioned to do in a third verse.
Let me show you:
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