Kevin J. Vanhoozer, an American theologian once remarked: “It is well known that Pentecost reverses Babel. The people who built the tower of Babel sought to make a name, and a unity, for themselves. At Pentecost, God builds his temple, uniting people in Christ. Unity – interpretive agreement and mutual understanding – is, it would appear, something that only God can accomplish. And accomplish it he does, but not in the way we might have expected.” John 14:26 reminds us: “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”
Pentecost is fundamentally a celebration and acknowledgment of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. This, sometimes difficult to comprehend, personification transcends the possible fear that the disciples may have been experiencing, at the enormity of the assigned task facing them. It replaces weakness with power, strength and courage. The Christian holiday of Pentecost falls exactly fifty days from and including Easter Sunday. “Pentecost” is a transliteration of the Greek word pentekostos, which means “fifty.” It comes from the ancient Christian expression pentekoste heKevin J. Vanhoozer, an American theologian once remarked: “It is well known that Pentecost reverses Babel. The people who built the tower of Babel sought to make a name, and a unity, for themselves. At Pentecost, God builds his temple, uniting people in Christ. Unity – interpretive agreement and mutual understanding – is, it would appear, something that only God can accomplish. And accomplish it he does, but not in the way we might have expected.” John 14:26 reminds us: “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”mera, which means “fiftieth day.” It is essentially the “baptism” of the Apostles with the Holy Spirit.
But Christians did not ratify the term “Pentecost.” Rather, they borrowed it from Greek-speaking Jews who used the phrase to refer to a Jewish holiday. This holiday was known as the Festival of Weeks, or, more simply, Weeks. This name comes from an expression in Leviticus 23:16, which instructs people to count seven weeks or “fifty days” from the end of Passover to the beginning of the next holiday.
John: 4b-15 reminds us: “ I have told you this, so that when their time comes you will remember that I warned you about them. I did not tell you this from the beginning because I was with you, but now I am going to him who sent me. None of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ Rather, you are filled with grief because I have said these things. But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because people do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned. “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.”
I wonder how often we wake up in the morning of a new day in our lives, and say to ourselves “Today is the day....” Today is the day when I will choose what I wish to do with the rest of my life. Today is the day that I will go for the interview for the job I have always wanted. Today is the day I will start a new school. Today is the day I will start my diet etc. “Today is the day” can be associated to almost anything that we want to do. But do we ever feel deep within us that today is the day that we will receive a special gift from God and a new beginning? Probably not. This would be a very special day indeed. But they do happen and they happen when we least expect them.
At an important time in our lives, when we may not anticipate a new beginning, a new approach, or a new road in which to walk down, we may never realize that it is, in fact, guided by God. But that is exactly what is going to happen to the Apostles and loyal disciples of Christ. A day in their life that they will never ever forget. It is not just a day when they would like to choose what they would wish to have for breakfast, it is a day that will have a marked effect on the rest of their lives. It is a day that they will be filled with the Holy Spirit, A day when everything will be clear in their minds, A day when they have the necessary tools to spread the Good News of Christ to the world. A day when fear no longer prevents them from saying what they need to say and the message that God wants people to hear. A day when the Christian Church is born. Today the apostles and disciples of Christ will be baptised with the Holy Spirit. Speaking in tongues can be considered a valuable tool of life given by God, and not to be feared, it is a special gift from God that strengthens our prayers and resolve as we perform our godly deeds.
Tools are extremely important in life as they provide the necessary aid to perform. They have definitive functions and can be the way and the means of achieving a particular quest. Without the right implement, however, a task becomes much harder to complete. If one wishes to make a small hole in a brick wall to insert a rawlplug to enable a screw to be driven in to hold a picture etc; sturdily, but uses a fork instead of a drill, then extreme difficulty may occur in accomplishing the task. If a tradesman is assigned a special job, but doesn’t have the necessary equipment, what chance does he stand of completing the task well? But if a tradesman receives a new set of tools as a gift, which includes every tool he will ever need, how much more credence will he have in completing the task in hand? How much more confidence will he have in himself to do the job, and to do it to a good standard? Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian philosopher once remarked: “We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.”
The Apostles were given different, but effectively even greater and more creative tools. They were the perfect gift from God with the right choice. They had everything they would ever need. Choices, whether they be the right ones or not, are individualistic. Only the chooser needs to bear the responsibility for any errors made. Life teaches us that only I am responsible for my personal life and the choices that I make. I do not need to feel guilty for the choices other people make. More importantly we must not allow ourselves to be controlled by past choices, especially bad ones. Sometimes the choices that we make not only affect us, but others as well, both now and in the future. This must always be taken into consideration when making a particular choice. Jesus had to make choices in His life on earth as well. Probably one on the biggest was whether to die for us to save us all. He could have saved Himself but chose not to. Saving others was more important to Him than His own life. Acts 2:33 reminds us: “Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.”
Amen.
