Pentecost, like Easter, is a Christian holy day superimposed on a Jewish holy day. Its classic text is from Acts 2. It recounts a dramatic event that occurred in Jerusalem when Jews there were joined by others from many diaspora countries, marking the summer pilgrimage festival commanded by Leviticus 23:15–22 and other texts from Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. It became associated with celebrating God’s giving the Law on Mount Sinai fifty days after the liberation from Egypt.
Luke (the author of Luke-Acts) reports that precisely seven weeks after Jesus’s death, “… suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”
The Galileans among them, who probably spoke Aramaic, began speaking in the languages of the pilgrims. What was this? Was the punishment of many languages imposed at the tower of Babel being undone? Or were even more languages being spoken making communication yet worse?! Were people speaking languages that they did not understand?! Or were they all able to speak and understand all the other languages?
Had the pillar of fire that led the Israelites from Egypt to Sinai to receive God’s instruction there returned to lead them again?! And if so, to where? Was the fire—along with thunder, lightning and trumpet blasts that had engulfed mount Sinai, terrifying the Israelites at the foot of the mountain—now among these Jews gathered to honor and celebrate the Sinai theophany?
Luke has Peter refashion words from the prophet Joel, who had anticipated that God would pour out his spirit on, well, everyone on the great and awful day of the Lord, when blood and fire with smoke would engulf the earth and the sun would be darkened and the moon look like blood. But in Luke’s rewrite, that will also be a glorious day because all who call upon the name of the Lord will escape the destruction that awaits everyone else.
Such confusion. Such turmoil. Such fear. Such division. In times of great confusion, when the ground is dropping out from under our feet, where are stability, order, and a path forward to be found? It is only by trusting that God will pour out his spirit once again that we may understand one another across dark divides. And so, on Christian Pentecost the church prays, “Come, Holy Spirit.”
Ellen T. Charry
Theologian in Residence