The Experiences Of Pentecost

Sometimes, I like to imagine myself standing with a few inquiring friends just outside the door of that upstairs room in Jerusalem and witnessing the Holy Spirit's descending on Jesus' followers before the whole neighborhood went ballistic. I still wonder what we would and would not have heard and seen that morning. Most likely, we would have heard the sudden outbursts in other languages. But whether we would have heard noise like a "strong, driving wind" or seen "flames like tongues of fire" (Acts 2:2-3) resting on everybody in the room, I am not so sure.

Clearly, the crowd that gathered before we got there heard the noise of both the wind and the speeches, but reacted primarily with bewilderment about both. Luke makes no mention of their seeing the flames at all. So Peter may have had a tougher job of it than the Christian tradition has acknowledged, trying to persuade people on the church's birth-day that his eleven companions were not simply "drunk." (vs.13) Yes, nine in the morning might have been a little early for inebriation; Peter had a point there. However, there really is no time of any day or night that makes testimony like Luke's any easier to accept at face value.

Confused, dejected disciples and perhaps a hundred or so followers besides were desperate for assurance that they had not spent the last year or three of their lives for naught. They needed nothing short of a miracle to convince them that the man who had just died ignominiously as a crucified criminal was in truth their peoples' Messiah. Is it all that difficult, therefore, to imagine their conjuring up the miracle out of their own collective imagination, perhaps with the assistance of spirits other than the One about whom Peter spoke?

Well, in truth, it is. What makes it difficult to write off all the hoopla of the day of Pentecost --- the noise, the flames, the strange utterances, the awe and wonder, the knockout sermon, the three thousand conversions --- as something like mass mania is the fruit that it bore. From that day forward, new communities of lively faith and hope came into being, honoring and serving a loving and reconciling God and placing the needs of others above hopes for self-gain, even to death upon more crosses.

No matter how many times I read this story, I can still feel the tremble of the question to Peter, "what are we to do?", the thrill of Peter's answer, "Repent and be baptized," and the triumph in the lives of those who took Peter's challenge to heart and put themselves at God's disposing for the good of suffering people all around them. And therein lies the truth of all the experiences that have energized Spirit-filled Christians from that awe-inspiring morning right down to the present day. Their experiences of hearing, seeing, and feeling became and become true in their acting to serve others in the name of God, and to put others' well-being ahead of their own.

Not every Christian, of course, reads Luke's narrative of the Day of Pentecost this way. For many, break-outs of tongue-speaking and other spiritual histrionics portend only break-downs of authority and structure in the church. In their view, spontaneous outbursts of spiritual fervor should be snuffed out as quickly as possible by generous applications of ritual, doctrine, moralism and scolding. On the other end of the spectrum are Christians for whom Pentecost signifies a divine mandate to every would-be Christian to seek the gift of tongues --- or some other spiritual gift just as dramatic --- as an indispensable sign of genuine faith.

But what people did and did not hear, see, and feel that long-ago morning has very little to do with what actually gave the day of Pentecost its lasting significance. Hearing, seeing, and feeling many of the same things in and around that crowded room, some in the gathered throng apparently chose to put the whole thing behind them, return to their homes and work, and get on with their lives. Others, however, chose to strive for transformed living as agents of reconciliation and hope. These same possibilities re-present themselves in every new visitation of the Holy Spirit.

Philosophers remind us that experience includes not only our perceptions of and feelings about things, events, and people that affect us in some way. It also includes what we do to affect them. The choices people made on Pentecost were just as much a part of their experiences as what they heard, saw, and felt that day. And for us, too, it is the choosing and the acting that will make all the difference to the life of faith.