For Sunday Pentecost
Collect
Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
The Day of Pentecost is famous for the many languages and the tongues of fire. It’s a spectacle in the grandest sense. Booming sounds of rushing wind, incredible transformations of sound, and an irrepresable sense of import. There is so much size to this moment, we can hardly address its depth.
On the day of Pentecost, Christians often try to match the spectacle in church in small ways, “raising our game” this one day by doing bold tricks, like reading from Acts in multiple languages. Some churches have been known to hire fire swallowers! These kinds of spectacles, like having someone play Jesus riding a donkey on Palm Sunday, might be novel, but I’m not sure they really help the full nature of the story hit home.
It also seems that there are some who look past all of this excitement to hone in on the evangelistic character of the day with all of the subtlety of a Mack truck. Like, never mind all this nonsense, God’s trying to convert the world to Christianity. Umm…no, let’s not think this therefore means we have to learn languages to convert people.
Most of us, however, I think are just trying to capture the excitement. It’s like the disciples’ graduation day, with tongues of fire instead of mortar boards. Most of us want to bring the right kind of energy. Not unlike the Wedding at Cana, when Jesus turns water into wine (which the steward describes as the good stuff) or the woman at the well, whose excitement for “living water” draws her closer to Jesus. John’s image of living water is the right vibe for the event, I think.
‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water,’ he notes. Which is to say from within one is the saving grace for another. In short, relationship is central as our hearts can produce the living water others need — and, I suspect, others produce the living water that we need.
In all of the spectacle and power of Pentecost, it still boils down to relationship. Our relationship. That the triune God reflects relationship in three persons, that we reflect that relationship with the persons, and we embody that relationship with one another. All of this keeps the water flowing.