Pentecost Sunday, in one sense where the Christian story starts, needs reclaiming from those who, in my opinion, place too much emphasis on the individual’s so-called ‘spiritual’ experience. And what is the event Luke describes? Nothing to do with ecstatic utterances or semi-trance-like states, (neither of which are uniquely Christian experiences anyway), but the words of Peter heard ‘in our own language’. Actual spoken languages like French or German. What is Luke saying? This Spirit is for every nation; it transcends all human boundaries and cultures.
Luke’s version of how the Spirit came is only one of the accounts of how the first followers of Jesus were empowered to share what they believed about him. We are used to the regular liturgical pattern but Luke’s is not the only version of events. Every account of the life, death, teaching and resurrection of Jesus is a version ‘according to’ someone, or some community, not the version. Pentecost was a Jewish celebration day Shavuot, a 24 hour vigil 50 days after Passover, celebrating the giving of the Law to Moses. According to Luke, Jews from all over the known world were gathered in Jerusalem. It’s a multi-national jamboree.
And what is the event he describes? He has Peter quote the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.’ Unfortunately, Luke then seems to suggest that only the disciples actually had this experience, which rather misses his own point! This Spirit is for ‘all flesh’. The ‘spiritual’ dimension to life means transformation for the whole world. This experience puts right what the ancient story of Babel in Genesis 11 had outlined as the problem with humanity. We just don’t talk to, or listen to, each other. It’s a dialogue of the deaf most of the time. The Jews had forgotten that they were supposed to be a ‘light to the nations’, not a self-saving sect. Jesus’ Way offers a different dimension, not just another exclusive group who think that they alone have all the answers.
Why were there so many barriers between people? Why are there still? In these stories language acts as a symbol for division and confusion. When you can’t understand what people are saying, and they can’t understand you, our ability to co-operate and respect each other is undermined. The coming of the Spirit in the way that Luke describes it challenges all our pre-judices about seemingly unavoidable distinctions of race and nationhood, and, in modern contexts, religion, gender, class, culture, etc. The Spirit unites; it does not divide. Surely this means that Christians must challenge those who try to put the barriers back again by calling for more emphasis on ourselves, our own nation or religion first, people like us? There is no ‘us’ and ‘them’ anymore. Just one common humanity, where each person is equally important.
We have to speak in a twenty-first century language about all this; one that fits with what people know to be true in the rest of their lives. Which brings us to a very fundamental underlying issue. How do we conceive of ‘God’ who does this renewing and creative thing among us? Just saying that ‘He’ is ‘up there’ being God all day makes absolutely no sense. ‘He’ is not. It’s a big question but one that is rarely asked, just assumed.
So what then is this ‘Holy Spirit’ that sustains the world, including, but not only, those who walk in the Way of Jesus? I prefer to use the phrase, ‘a spirit of holiness’ to describe how human beings can relate to this idea of an empowering life that moves within us, as it did in Jesus. We need a range of images and comparisons to express this sense of an enabling and restoring Spirit; wind, fire, energy, breath. They are there in both the Old and the New Testaments if you look for them. The ruach (feminine in Hebrew) breathes through all creation and is the expression of what cannot be known. As the prophet says, this spirit is universal; it blows wherever it wills. It cannot be contained in creeds, doctrines, liturgies or sermons! Its source cannot be given a name that defines or describes it. YHWH was intended to be unpronounceable. It sustains all that we seek to be. It stimulates our hopes and dreams; it gives us a vision of how things could be, not a judgemental despair at how things are. It gives us an ability to read the signs of the times and make prophetic statements that help to bring about positive change.
‘God’ is found when we encounter our deepest selves, not as an ‘Other’. We may even say, as the NT writers did, that ‘God is Love’ and leave it at that, to express the significance of that inherently human value. Wherever good is done, prejudices overcome, relationships healed, barriers broken down; there a spirit of holiness can be found. It is as if we are in tune with the underlying rhythm of the Universe; its breath lives in our breath. The temporal echoes the eternal. We are brought closer to the more excellent ways of love, peace and both a personal and communal fulfilment as this spirit of holiness fills the gaps between us. It’s another way of carrying on with Jesus’ call to seek the ‘kingdom’ in everyday life. This Spirit is alive in us so we had better get on with it!
Ben Whitney’s reflections are online at ben-whitney.org.uk. He writes: ‘This series of weekly reflections on the passages in the Common Lectionary, is intended to support those who are still hanging on to attending (or even leading) Christian worship, if only just! I also hope they will be an encouragement to those, like me, who hadn’t darkened the doors for years, to give it another try, if they can find a welcome somewhere.’