When Pentecost & Memorial Day Converge

When Pentecost & Memorial Day Converge

Acts 10

Memory is a gift from God. We love to retell the stories that we love most about our lives and our family or nation.

We build what we call memorials as monuments to the past. We choose to set up meaningful tokens of memory for events and persons who have impacted our lives.

Here we are on Memorial Day weekend celebrating the church's birthday while remembering those in our nation's history who lay down their lives for the American ideal of freedom.

There will be visits to monuments tomorrow, monuments set up to honor the fallen of all the wars that the United States has ever fought. Preparations are being made for the 155th Memorial Day celebration at Arlington National Cemetery where tomorrow at 11 AM, in one of our enduring traditions, the president will lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. This symbolic gesture reminds us of what Karen Durham-Aguilera, the executive director of the Office of Army Cemeteries said, "Every day at Arlington National Cemetery is Memorial Day." Memorial Day is one day that we focus on something that we should do every single day.

Memorial Day began as Decoration Day following the Civil War as Americans remembered those who had died and laid flowers at their graves. Following WWI, this day began to evolve into what we know today as Memorial Day. Tomorrow we will honor those who have laid down their lives for the ideal of freedom. We will take a moment to reflect, pray, offer thanks to God, and enjoy the freedom of living in a place where it is acknowledged that all men and women are created equal and that the Creator has given us certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We owe our gratitude to God and to those women and men who lay down their lives to protect that freedom that our great nation acknowledges we have been given by God.

This time of year is one where two different holidays converge. While we are celebrating Memorial Day on the American calendar, the church calendar invites us to remember another momentous event. Today is Pentecost Sunday, the day we celebrate the birthday of the church.

Pentecost was already a day of celebration for the nation of Israel. It was one of the feast days that Yahweh gave them to spend time reflecting, remembering, worshipping, and resting. God believes in rest! If you were to add up all the sabbaths and feast days that the Torah commanded ancient Israel to observe it would equal three months out of every year!

Pentecost was one of those days off. Pentecost, which means fifty, was observed by the Jews fifty days after Passover. It was at Passover that they remembered the way that the LORD had delivered them out of Egypt. They celebrated by eating lamb around a table where they retold the story. Jesus fulfilled the types of this story and as heaven's greatest Soldier lay down His Life as the Lamb of God. He rose again on Easter Sunday proving His ultimate victory over the greatest war to be fought for humanity's life, liberty, and happiness! After His resurrection, He spent forty days with His disciples speaking to them the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. He then ascended into heaven, but not before He told them to go to Jerusalem and wait for the Promise of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit has always been working in the world. The Spirit of God is at the bookends of Scripture. Genesis 1 (Author's Paraphrase) reads:

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was formless and empty. And the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. And God said..."

Revelation 22:17 (NIV) sums it up:

"The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life."

The Holy Spirit begins creation and at the end along with the church invites everyone who will hear to enter the New Creation won by the memory of Heaven's Greatest Soldier, the Lord Jesus Christ!

Psalm 33:7-9 (NIV):

"By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth. 7 He gathers the waters of the sea into jars; he puts the deep into storehouses. 8 Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the people of the world revere him. 9 For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm."

Job 26:13 says, "By His Spirit He hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent."