Feast of Pentecost
2014
As you may or may not have deduced
from my red socks, today is the Feast of Pentecost. This is the day, 50 days
after the Resurrection of Jesus, when the Holy Spirit was poured out into the
world. It’s also, technically, the birthday of the Church (Happy Birthday),
because once the Holy Spirit came and empowered the disciples, they no longer
continued to meet in secret, but went out into the world preaching the Gospel.
But apart from simply being an
excuse for us all to wear red, and have a party—the Day of Pentecost is a
significant event. As I said, this was the birth of the Church—what’s more,
though, for us this means that we are empowered by God’s own Spirit to do the
work of the Church. So God is no longer far away. We no longer have to go to
Jerusalem to find God in the Temple, and Jesus is no longer relegated to any
certain time or place geographically—because the Holy Spirit is with us…
Now this may not seem like a big
deal to us—I suppose part of this is because we may not have ever known a time
when we didn’t have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. But, if we take a look
at the history of God calling people—prophets, kings, priests—all of them had
only a measure of God’s Spirit, and it was kind of like something that these
people wore like a garment.
So, Moses for instance… Moses, the
man who defied Pharaoh, announced a series of plagues to Egypt, parted the Reed
Sea, and led Israel out of captivity in Egypt—even this guy only sort of wore
God’s Spirit. In fact, at one point in the Book of Numbers, God tells Moses to
call together elders from the 11 tribes, and God would “take some of the Spirit
which was on Moses, and put it on the elders…”
Even Elijah, the prophet who called
down fire from heaven, which consumed an offering to God; the guy who called
down fire to consume groups of soldiers who had come to arrest him; and the
same guy who later on got taken into heaven in a fiery chariot (there seems to
be a theme here)—even this guy passed God’s Spirit on to his disciple Elisha by
giving him his mantle…
The point is that these are two
major figures in the Old Testament, and important people in the history of
Judaism and Christianity. Yet, we’re to understand that neither of them
possessed the Holy Spirit as a gift in the same way we do now…
The trouble is, that even if we
think all of this is very cool; we may still wonder what all of it means. I
mean, obviously none of us is going to need to call down heavenly fire; and likely
we’ll never need to part any large body of water to escape slavery (no matter
how useful either of these things would be). So…what does it mean to be people
sealed by God’s Holy Spirit?
Well, along with a host of gifts,
many of which are outlined in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians; we’re
given the power to be Children of God. Through Christ we’re reconciled to God,
but it is also the Holy Spirit which marks us as belonging to the Church—which
is pretty important, especially since this wasn’t always the popular
perspective.
See, in the early days of the
Church, there was a major shift in understanding. Suddenly, the disciples were
beginning to understand that these reforms that Jesus was bringing to Israel
weren’t just reforms, and they weren’t just for Israel. Instead, what Jesus was
ushering in was a Kingdom which far surpassed ethnic and cultural borders. We
read in Ephesians that the wall that had separated us had been destroyed in
Christ—and therefore, through him there is a much broader understanding of who
is included in God’s Kingdom.
And as we see in the story of the
Day of Pentecost, God’s message was heard by all kinds of people in all of their
respective languages; this further affirming that God has always had a much
more generous idea of who gets to be called “God’s People.”
Some time ago I came across an
interesting, short documentary about something called the “Overview Effect.”
According to the Overview Institute, the Overview Effect
“refers
to the experience of seeing firsthand the reality of the Earth in space, which
is immediately understood to be
a tiny, fragile ball of life, hanging in the void, shielded and nourished by a paper-thin
atmosphere. From space, the astronauts
tell us, national boundaries
vanish, the conflicts that divide us become less important and the need to create a planetary society with the
united will to protect this "pale blue dot" becomes both obvious and imperative (www.theoverviewinstitute.org).”
Basically, the term “Overview
Effect” was coined to describe what astronauts and cosmonauts have experienced
when seeing the Earth from space. It’s described literally as a cognitive shift
in awareness, one which prior to the developments in cognitive science had nothing
to compare it to scientifically, and only later found cognates in ancient
religious texts.
What strikes me about the Overview
Effect is that from this experience that astronauts have had, there has spawned
an institute—an actual non-profit organization who are not studying the effect
per se; instead, they’ve devoted themselves to sharing the power of the message
of this experience. Their mission is to challenge people to see beyond
political borders, ethnicity, all of it. Because the fact is, for all that we
find these things to be so extremely important to our world; they want to
remind us that our world is just a
pretty blue marble in a sea of void…
Something has to change in the
world, all of us know it, but one of the main reasons we haven’t changed enough
is because our perspective is so small. It’s the belief of the Overview
Institute that this greater perspective could change everything.
What’s interesting, is that there
was a time in First Century Palestine—in a small room in Jerusalem, where a
small huddled group of believers received a different kind of Overview Effect.
When the Holy Spirit came rushing
in, blasting windows open, and alighting on their heads likes flames of
fire—the disciples received more than just a cognitive shift. They received an
imperative call to share the hope that has been given in Jesus Christ: the
promise that while each of us is important, we are part of a much bigger
community to which we are responsible.
And far from being resigned to
spend the rest of their lives within the some 200 square miles that contained
all of Jesus’ earthly ministry—they stepped out into the world and began
changing it forever…
With the Overview Effect, science
seems to have claimed this perspective—and somehow the Church has all but
forgotten it.
But most importantly, we’re called
to love as Christ loves us—we’re called to seek and serve Christ in all people;
and we need to know that it makes all the difference. Because we’re not being
sent out into the world to do these things like naïve idealists. We go out to
do this work because it is the work of Christ; it’s the work of his Father, and ours. And we do this work because we have had a cognitive shift
through the Holy Spirit—a shift which calls us to not only see others from
God’s perspective, but calls us to see others as a deeply integrated part of
ourselves—and all of us, all of us called to God’s People.
So, let us go forth, rejoicing in
the power of the Spirit—power which causes us to see all things from a new
perspective, and empowered by that same Spirit to make a difference.
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