The Proclamation of Pentecost

Ever been afraid to take God at this word? Have you struggled to do what you believe he is asking of you? The Apostles were certainly in that kind of spot on the Feast of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-42). And yet they go from being behind locked doors and shuttered window because of the fear they had about what their lives were going to be like now that Jesus had returned to the Father.

Remember last week, how when Jesus was being taken up, he was blessing them. It occurred to me that he is still blessing them and us. Jesus lives to make intercession for us and to see that his Church is blessed. Therefore we need to learn to receive that blessing that Jesus offers, recognizing that we often don’t know what it is we are being blessed for until we actually get there. The blessing he offered them is there for us to live in, if we are smart enough to take it up and live in it. And if you need an example of what I mean, then consider this – the Bishop will bless the whole congregation at the end of the service on Sunday. What are you being blessed to do and to be this coming week? Do you know?

What I find most fascinating, is that in learning to worship and in worship to remember and recall all of the great things that God has done especially in Jesus, is that witness is the other side of that coin. When they were together, in prayer and in living in fear of what those who had Jesus put to death would do to them, the Spirit came to them and they suddenly found themselves outside boldly telling the world what they had known on the inside – that Jesus is Lord. People in the City for the Feast of Pentecost got to hear in their own languages (mother tongues) what God had done for the world in Christ. There was no denying what God was doing. No misunderstanding for people: everyone could connect with what the Church was saying because they were hearing in a way that they could easily comprehend. They had a choice. People could believe what was being preached and proclaimed or not.

Hearing that their rejection of Jesus led to his death and that there was a second chance to put their faith and their lives in the hands of Christ caused thousands that day to do just that. And three thousand people became followers of the Lord Jesus. Making Christ known is what Pentecost and the life in the Spirit is all about.

I know Christians who have and continue to make it more about what a person has got in terms of spiritual gifts. As I consider Pentecost, that is not what the Spirit or the Feast are about. It is about proclaiming in a real and living way that the world put Christ to death but God raised him from the dead, vacating our judgment upon him and offering life in the name of the risen Lord.  The Spirit comes to teach us about Jesus and to reveal all the truth about him and his life with us – even yet. As we are prayed over and blessed; Jesus prays for you and for me that we would be united in love with him as he is with the Father that we might be one. He prays for the unity of his Church and for his Church as we live out his incarnation through the Spirit. This means that every Christian can and must produce the fruit of the Spirit. Jesus will make sure that each community has the gifting it needs to do the ministry that needs to be done. The Spirit makes Jesus real and present to us, “That we might know him in the breaking of bread and in the prayers, ‘ so that we might, “Do this, in remembrance of me.”

Jason+