This Sunday, May 31, is Pentecost. Along with Christmas and Easter, Pentecost is one of the three great festivals of the church. Of course, Pentecost marks the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the church as recorded in Acts 2.
We try in our congregation to make a big deal of Pentecost in our worship, with all sorts of extra flourishes. Just as the Holy Spirit is the low-profile member of the Trinity, so Pentecost has seemed pretty minor compared to Christmas and Easter. Several years ago in Sunday School, a young boy, after hearing the story of Pentecost, responded, “How come I’ve never heard that story before?”
Talk of Pentecost always raises questions about the role and work of the Holy Spirit today. In the past few decades, the influence of Charismatic-Pentecostal Christians upon all Christian churches, including the RCA, has been huge. A few weeks ago, Church Herald blogger Dave Cheadle wrote about the importance of the “signs and wonders” as evidence of the power of Holy Spirit in the church. http://heraldblog.squarespace.com/dave-cheadle/2009/5/12/full-gospel-preaching-words-signs-and-wonders.html
I am largely sympathetic and supportive of these charismatic impulses in the church. I accept and believe in most of the more “far-fetched,” extraordinary gifts and outpourings of the Holy Spirit.
No doubt Pentecost and the Holy Spirit may have been ignored and undervalued for centuries, but I am beginning to feel that we are to a point of overcompensating for those centuries of under-appreciation.
In my pastorate, I have found that the church of Jesus Christ is really a lot more like the fragile, all-too-human, yet wondrous, grace-filled churches we encounter in Paul’s letters than the church as it is portrayed in Acts. I have grown weary of being beaten up and guilted and made to feel inferior because our churches today don’t meet the inflated standards portrayed in Acts. (My growing aversion to Acts is especially odd given my fondness for its companion volume, Luke).
I have grown cynical about “Spirit-filled” Christians lecturing quiet, faithful believers about their lack of joy and evidence of the Spirit. In my experience, if you look ten years later, that “Spirit-filled” Christian is now burned-out, says it was all “just a phase” while the quiet, faithful Christian is still plugging away. Increasingly I see churches that ten years ago shouted about “doing church a new way” now in crisis, looking for counsel, assistance and still more money from what they once called “dead-churches”. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church seems to indicate that over-fascination with the Holy Spirit has always led to an inherently unstable, divisive, and prone-to-arrogance kind of faith.
Sunday we will celebrate Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a big way. I am increasingly convinced that the most important signs and wonders from the Spirit are gifts like long-term faithfulness, quiet compassion, unseen service, perseverance, sensing the presence of God in ancient traditions, and the Spirit-given ability to live and love together for the long haul. Blessed Pentecost.