The Pentecost invites us to be part of something bigger. An invitation which continues to be revolutionary.
Pentecost and the call to community
Pentecost | Acts 2:1-21
Rushing wind! Tongues of fire! A spectacle of visuals and a cacophony of sounds so stunning and mystifying it must be utterly bewildering. Awesome—in every sense of the word.
But! The most striking component of the Pentecost event is potentially the easiest to overlook.
Everyone could hear the good news. In their own language. In spite of the spectacle. They could hear it and understand what was being said.
I love Pentecost because of this spectacle. Because it is so fully engaged with how bonkerballs this moment is. There is no way that we, in an attempt to capture the feel of this moment, could possibly oversell it. It is impossible. If we brought in three dozen students to speak at once in 36 different languages while trapeze artists dressed in fire costumes swung above our heads it would be but a speck of dust compared to the real event. In sheer spectacle alone.
But that’s the thing! Pentecost is not just the spectacular. It is the inconceivable intimacy God displays in the midst of grandiosity. God connects with every single person while simultaneously blowing the group away.
This is a big WE moment and yet every conceivable little ME gets their own ME moment. At. The. Same. Time.
Incredible Range
For us to fully appreciate the scope of this event, we have to acknowledge the inhuman, impossible, incredible range God is displaying here. A kind of miraculous talent to account for every last one of these thousands of people at the same time that God is accounting for the whole of the people.
This is an amazing attention to both the big picture and the detail. That range alone is a miracle. But it is the fidelity required to pull that off that makes this so impossible for us. Because the whole, the big WE gets a common event, but each ME gets its own personal message.
And not because God had someone on staff who could speak the language. The miracle may be the speaking in many languages, but that isn’t the purpose. The purpose is for everyone to hear. Everyone got a personal message within the big message.
We’re pretty good at focusing on one or the other. The big message for everybody or the personal message that goes out to each. Some of us are really good at personal notes. And some of us are good at public speaking. Few of us are exceptional at both.
But here’s the thing none of us can do: deliver a personal message to every person within the public speaking. Literally saying different words that are also the same words.
To do what God does in the Pentecost is impossible for us.
And the proof is in our brains.
You no doubt know the word multitasking. This is the idea of doing two or more things at the same time.
In many circles, being good at multitasking is a badge of honor. We take great pride in being able to get two or more things done at the same time.
What we all fail to realize is that multitasking is a myth.
Our brains create neural pathways through repetition. The more we do something, the more our brains get used to doing, the easier our brains have in doing it, and therefore the less work it does to make it happen.
It’s a lot like the drive to and from work or the store or a family home. You can literally drive most of the way and not realize you’ve even really been driving.
This ease in doing repetitive tasks we have learned to do gives us the impression that we can do two things at the same time, but our brains don’t process them as simultaneous. It rapidly switches between them—back and forth—meaning you are giving your singular focus to one thing at a time, but switching so fast it seems like you are doing both.
Of course, here’s the plot twist.
Some of that task-switching leads to better learning.
Remember those articles in the ‘90s about listening to classical music while studying? And we know plenty of people who knit or crochet to listen. Studies show that doodling raises people’s recall better than note-taking. And, of course, handwriting notes has been proven over and over to be infinitely superior to typing.
While our brains aren’t actually doing two things at once, there is something about task-switching that can improve our ability to do either of them.
But every time we switch between tasks, our brains use energy. And so the more we do it, the more fatigued we become. So we can’t do this forever.
They say that public speaking or performance, for instance, is exceptionally tiring for your brain, comparing one hour of it to a full workday.
So we aren’t wired to do things simultaneously but cooperatively.
That’s why we must see this miracle, not as a perpetuation of a myth: the defining pinnacle of productivity: but as something we can only truly mimic when working together.
I love the Pentecost.
And while you know my favorite always seems to be the one we’re celebrating, Pentecost is totally my favorite. It just inches out the Epiphany if we have to keep score.
And I love it because it highlights the necessary synergy of humanity with the Holy Spirit to make the kin-dom real. This is the third part of a trilogy when the Fellowship is formed and then the journey is on and now they are arriving to fulfill the mission. This is the climax and resolution of the Jesus Event. What all that teaching was preparing the disciples for. This.
This is when our part in the story begins to take center stage and we realize that it isn’t only about what Jesus did in the world a long time ago or simply living a good life now.
The Spirit comes to us. All of us. WE. And she comes to us, here and out there, as ME. So that WE may ALL may be filled with the Spirit. WE may ALL be the love received by the world and spread throughout the world.
And yet none of us does this work alone. None of us is the WE. We aren’t built that way. We’re built to work together.
A people of transformation, living transformed, and transforming still, in a new world, still becoming, and inviting more and more in.