Whitsunday (Feast of Pentecost)
In the 23rd Chapter of Leviticus, the Lord lays out to Moses and the people of Israel the appointed feasts and holy days that they are to mark throughout the year and how they are to mark them: Passover, the festival of trumpets, the day of atonement, the sabbath, etc. The Lord also tells them that they are to celebrate the Festival of Weeks, saying, “And from the day after the sabbath [following Passover], from the day on which you bring the sheaf of the elevation-offering, you shall count off seven weeks…you shall count until the day after the seventh sabbath, fifty days; then you shall present an offering of new grain to the Lord…you shall present with the bread seven lambs a year old…one young bull, two rams; they shall be a burnt-offering to the Lord, along with their grain and drink offerings, an offering by fire of pleasing odour to the Lord.”
The Passover, of course, is always celebrated in the first month of the Jewish Calendar – Nissan – on the 15thday, but this calendar is closely tied to the solar calendar, and so the date moves with Passover always landing on a particular full moon at a certain time of year and about 85% of the time Easter happens at the same time, as the Passover was the backdrop to the crucifixion and holy week. Fifty days after the Passover, now deep into springtime and the growing season in the Levant, the first-fruits of what is grown and reared and brought and offered to the Lord as offerings, as laid out in Leviticus: a giving up of the first of what we have to God.
The festival was a great and holy day for all Jews and many made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate the day, something we hear noted in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles this morning, which says, “Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem,” living and there for this great celebration.
But for us, today, of course is Pentecost, literally ‘fiftieth’ in Greek – fifty days from Easter, a few more from the events of Holy Week…fifty days from Passover. And we’d be forgiven if at first we thought that these two festivals are related to one another only by the coincidence of occurring (about 85% of the time) on the same day. The one is a celebration of the holy spirit, the other is a more ancient harvest festival. And so if you think the date is the only similarity they share – I forgive you; because Pentecost remained and is still a kind of harvest festival for us.
As the readings remind us today, the disciples were, even after fifty days, still perhaps sort of mired in that confusion that has hung over them since the resurrection. They had been present at Jesus’ ascension last week, but still so much this time since Easter, as the Acts and the Gospels tell us, was inside: hiding for fear after the resurrection, Jesus appearing to them while inside, and today in a house perhaps preparing for the Festival of Weeks, a house into which a great energy and fire bursts, another terrifying spiritual event,
And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
And while the scene that unfolds seems to us to be somewhat chaotic, with even the city around hearing the commotion and coming running, and we can see even immediately that this is not a spirit of chaos but a spirit of order, “Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.” This whirlwind of fire, spirit, and wind brings mutual understanding to those who speak a different tongue, and it even brings – at last – a measure of order and clarity to the chaos that was the last 50 days, for the disciples. At last, what Jesus said he would complete, he has completed and the comforter has come.
And the spirit is a spirit of truth, as Jesus tells them in the Gospel today, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.” This abiding Spirit of God is how we learn of God, know of God, and how we recall what Christ has taught us; it is a spirit of truth and which communicates the truth of God to us, a spirit which imbues us with those sevenfold gifts of the spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.
That is: Pentecost was no longer a festival in which we bring gifts and offer them to God, a but a festival in which we celebrate the gifts that God gives to us. So how then are these festivals of Weeks and Pentecost similar, as I asked in the beginning? Well, they are of course both festivals of harvest.
This is the day that we often call the birthday of the church, and just look at what happens, what we’ve already said: formerly, since Jesus’ resurrection, the ministry of the disciples has been confined to their own circle, locked in upper rooms or whispered about on beaches and while at work, but now it is as though the doors have been at last and for ever flung open. The whole of the city, people of every tongue and nation heard the goings-on and were drawn to it, and from here on – as the Acts of the Apostles tells us – the Disciples are renewed in mind and spirit and the work of building the church and bringing the world to Christ begins.
So no, this is certainly not a festival of harvest in that we bring things to offer God, but it is a harvest festival because it is the Spirit in us which allows us to grow, the Spirit which makes us desire to bring ourselves our souls and bodies to God, and the Spirit which places in us and grows our desire to go out and to bring others to God.
God planted his own son in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and he was made man and grew and returned to the Father; and now, as he promised, he has sent the Spirit to be sown in us and to sow the Word of God itself in us, planted in us not so that the spirit can grow, but so that we can grow in the spirit.
With it sown in us, we now we give ourselves to the transformation that it makes possible. This whole stretch of time since Advent work together, in perfect harmony, to show that what began with Jesus’ coming down to us at his birth is finally fulfilled in us by God’s coming to make a home in and with us so that we may one day be drawn back up into His glorious life. As the great 16th century poet, George Herbert, wrote:
Listen sweet Dove unto my song,
And spread thy golden wings in me;
Hatching my tender heart so long,
Till it get wing, and flie away with thee.
