Sunday, June 5, 2022

                                                John 14: 8-17, 25-27

Pentecost is such an exciting day for the Church. It represents the first manifestation of the power of God in the Holy Spirit since Jesus death and resurrection. Acts chapter two is an exhilarating story of deafening wind that blocked out all other noise, tongues of fire descending on the disciples, crowds of people from every part of the world gathering to hear God being praised in their own language, and thousands coming to believe in Jesus. It is the day the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples and the beginnings of the church, the body of Christ; us. And it all begins in Acts 2:1 with “When the day of Pentecost came, … ;” so the day of Pentecost already existed. It’s as if Canada’s confederation were celebrated on May 24th instead of July 1st and we referred to it as Victoria Day. We, the Church, celebrate Pentecost as the day Jesus’ promise to send the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, was fulfilled, but there was already a Pentecost Day.

The word pentecost is Greek meaning 50th. Actually, it was the Hebrew festival of Shavuot (Shá-vu-öt) translated ‘weeks’ in Hebrew. In Judaism the Festival of Weeks is a harvest festival that is celebrated seven weeks and one day after the first day of Passover (the Feast of Unleavened Bread). It was inaugurated by God through Moses both in Deuteronomy 16:9 “Count off seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain. Then celebrate the Festival of Weeks to the Lord your God by giving a freewill offering in proportion to the blessings the Lord your God has given you”, and in Leviticus 23:16 “Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of new grain to the Lord.” The date for the "Feast of Weeks" originally came the day after seven full weeks following the first harvest of grain. By Jesus’ day the festival had been standardized to the second day of Passover. Forty-nine days, or seven weeks, is counted, called the Counting of the Omer, from the second day of Passover and is immediately followed by this festival, Shavuot. Hence, Pentecost on the 49th day from Easter Sunday, 49 + 1 is 50 days from the Passover Sabbath. Enough math!

Why the day of Pentecost? Why did Jesus wait these forty-nine days after his resurrection and ten days after his ascension to bestow on his disciples the promised Holy Spirit? Certainly, it is true there were lots of Jews from all over the Roman Empire and beyond who came for this festival but many of them, coming from so far away, would have been in Jerusalem already since Passover.

Pope Leo I's Sermons 75–77 were given on Pentecost Sunday and I think his insight in this question was quite profound. In these sermons, dating to the 5th century, he draws an analogy between Jewish practices and the Christian feast day: "As once to the Hebrew people, freed from Egypt, the law was given on Mt. Sinai on the fiftieth day after the sacrifice of the lamb, so after the Passion of the Christ when the true Lamb of God was killed, on the fiftieth day from his Resurrection, the Holy Spirit came down on the apostles and the community of believers.” Leo calls this the Second Covenant and says that it is "established by the same Spirit who has set up the first".

On Passover, the people of Israel were freed from their enslavement to Pharaoh; on Shavuot, they were given the Torah and became a nation committed to serving God. It was at Mount Sinai that God, in a great show of fire and storm, gave Moses all the law that would teach the Israelites, the people of God, how to worship, the design of the Tabernacle, the order of Priests, and the social order for living in peace and justice with one another. In the same way, we, the Church, the people of God, were freed from sin and death by Jesus’, the true passover lamb’s, sacrifice at the cross and his resurrection, and at Shavuot, Pentecost, in a demonstration of fire and wind, were given the Holy Spirit. The law, as promised, was written in our hearts (Jeremiah 31:31-34). The new covenant with the church was established.

It is also significant that the pentecost, or 50th year was the year of Jubilee when slaves were freed, and all land was returned to its original family. Leviticus 25:8-13 says “Count off seven sabbath years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty-nine years. Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan. The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines. For it is a jubilee and is to be holy for you; eat only what is taken directly from the fields. In this Year of Jubilee everyone is to return to their own property.” Pentecost is a day of release, like the Jubilee. Debts are forgiven, chains of enslavement were broken, and we are restored to our inheritance, heirs with Christ to the Kingdom.

There is a journey, from the cross to the resurrection to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The covenant of law made with Abraham’s children began in Egypt with the plagues that culminated in the Passover when they left captivity but were not yet free, not yet a people. Fifty days later at mount Sinai they received the law and the instructions for the temple and worship and how they were to live with one another. They were given the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey that they were going to. Although they had to pass through a desert land God promised to care for them; water from rock and food from the sky, a cloud to guide them by day and a pillar of fire by night.

I’m reminded of the passage in Revelation 12, the analogy of the woman and the red dragon. “The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” and her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of” The woman is the people of God, the children of Abraham from whom Jesus was born and who defeated the plans of Satan and was taken up to rule at the right hand of God. And the woman, the people of God but from the new covenant, the church, us, are hidden away in this wilderness to be cared for as the children of Israel were fed and watered and protected as they passed through the wilderness on their way to the promise land. As Jesus said, we are in the world but not part of the world (John 15:19, 17:14-16).

The Day of Pentecost is our Mount Sinai. It is the day we, the church, the people of God began our journey to the promise of the covenant with Jesus. Our promised land flowing with milk and honey is Christ’s second coming when we will be with Him and reign with him. And like the Israelites in the wilderness we have, in the tent of meeting, God’s Holy Spirit dwelling with us, seated on the mercy seat between the two cherubim but now, for us, this mercy seat is in our hearts, and we may come to him whenever we wish.

Our mana from heaven is the word of God, as Peter in Acts 2, quoting the prophet Joel said “Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
    your young men will see visions,
    your old men will dream dreams.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
    I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
    and they will prophesy.”

And here we are today, with ordinary people like you and I, prophesying, or preaching and teaching, spreading the Gospel by our words and the actions of our daily lives, fulfilling Joel and Peter’s words spoken in the Spirit. Worshipping God together in the hope of this new covenant, that we are redeemed and assured that Jesus will come again.

The evidence of Pentecost is that the Holy Spirit was poured out then and is still at work in us today. As it says in 2 Corinthians 1:21-22, “He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” and in Ephesians 1:13 “When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.”

May these words comfort us with the assurance of the Holy Spirit, poured out at Pentecost, that we are being upheld on our journey through this wilderness to that glorious day when Christ comes again.

Amen