BLOG 5/24/15. PENTECOST, THE WIND OF GOD, AND A NEW RACE

BLOG 5/24/15. PENTECOST, THE WIND OF GOD, AND A NEW RACE

The whole Christian church is unimaginable apart from that which the Christian church (ostensibly) celebrates today: Pentecost. The Spirit of God, or ‘the Wind of God’ (depending how you translate it) literally created a whole new race of humanity—in a sense they were recreated to be what they were intended to be originally, or maybe truly human. Here were thousands of Jewish folk in Jerusalem from all over the known world, and who were there for one of the proud Jewish nation’s significant feast days. Only weeks before in that same location, similar crowds had appealed to the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate, to execute Jesus as one they considered a liability to their way of life, and the orthodox traditions of the Jewish nation.

But in the meantime, after having condemned him in something of a ‘kangaroo court’ setting, and having executed him in the most inhumane fashion, and heaping upon him all kinds of derisive taunts, . . . he was resurrected from the dead and seen by hundreds. His faithful followers were trying to figure it all out, and to obey his instruction that they were to wait in Jerusalem for the coming of the Holy Spirit, who would endow them with power (none of which made much sense to them, but they were determined to follow through). They met together continually, and waited. Then . . .

Check this: on the day of the Pentecost feast the Holy Spirit came upon them quite dramatically (sound like rushing wind, and tongues of fire, like: unmistakable). What happened is totally super-natural. The divine life of God came into their human lives and so began the creation of a whole new race of men and women. They became a new humanity. Thousands believed. They, literally, had dynamically dwelling in their human bodies the very same divine Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead. Add to that the fact that they began to speak in other tongues, the language of heaven, and the languages of the nations represented there at that celebration in Jerusalem.

This was all very pragmatic in a sense. First, their eyes were opened to what was really taking place in and through the whole event of Jesus, and their ears were finally opened to hear what he had been saying to them all along. They were given hearts, or wills, to be responsive to God’s will, and to be obedient to his guidance. Apart from this, what has now taken place in the intervening generations, and globally, is beyond comprehension. They became quite willing to engage in costly obedience, including giving their lives and possessions. They forsook security, or permanence, and created colonies of new creation humans who became pilgrims and strangers wherever God led them, but everywhere they went, they were the incarnation of the life of God, they were the Body of Christ, in relationships, in lifestyle, in their passion to share the message, but most of all in their total passion for the glory of Jesus Christ, and in their zeal to live out his teachings. They were Spirit-filled.

A later writer would say this as follows: “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—these things God has revealed to us through his Spirit. Pentecost: When the mighty wind of God blew upon ordinary human beings and created a new race of humankind.

But you’d never know this reading the Atlanta Journal Constitution on this Pentecost Day (it is totally eclipsed by Memorial Day) because we have created in our culture a humanly explainable entity called ‘the church’ which does not even need the Holy Spirit, or depend upon that supernatural power, only a religious Christianity that does not require new eyes and new ears and new hearts—only comfortable, secure, respectable, and somewhat permanent institutions to provide us spiritual activities, alas! But there are everywhere in the world, under radar, those colonies of God’s new creation that are, in fact, inhabited by the Wind of God, and they are dynamic and multiplying and out of control in every nation.

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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