Pentecost? Whatcha talkin’ bout?

The 1980’s a sitcom, “Diff’rent Strokes” chronicled a family life of a wealthy white industrialist who adopts two African American children. This show gave us  one of the classic lines of that decade.  One of the show’s main character, Arnold, played by Gary Coleman would often say, in a deep voice, “Whatcha you talkn’ about Willis?” to his television brother with a confused look on his face.  Check out the video clip here:

As we celebrate Pentecost this Sunday, we often want to run past the details because they are so crazy!  Fire, wind, xenoglossia, prophesy, dreams, and tongues!  Whatcha talkin’ bout?!?  This is crazy!  What the heck is going on?

Most Christians take the “Whatcha talkn’ bout” approach to this whole business of Pentecost, speaking in tongues, and the out pouring of the Holy Spirit.  Do we need to speak in tongues in order to be filled with the Holy Spirit?  What can we make of this event in scripture?

Here is what you need to know about Pentecost:

Originally, Pentecost was a Jewish celebration.  So how does this correlate with the disciples in Acts?  Mark Suriano tells us more:

They had gathered there for the Jewish festival of Pentecost—also called Shauvot or Weeks—the third of three major festivals called for in Deuteronomy 16. The festival, according to Deuteronomy, occurs seven weeks following the day the sickle is first put to the grain and is a celebration of harvest and the giving of the firstfruits to God. The significance of the day for the passage from Acts is in its connection “to Jesus’ declaration that ‘the harvest is plenty but the laborers are few’ (Luke 10:2). It may have also connected them to the Joel passage…for in Joel a precursor to the outpouring of the spirit is the harvest: ‘the threshing floors shall be full of grain’ (Joel 2:24a)”

On this day, as we read in Acts 2, the disciples were assembled in house in there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind and it filled the house.  Divided tongues, as of fire, rest on them and the were able to speak in other languages.  This becomes an incredible event because what happens in this house with 11 disciples is now pouring out into the streets.

In verse 6 the scripture states that because of this sound, other Jews gather to see what was happening.  Jews from all over the known world were in Jerusalem.  Some thought this event was incredible and some thought that these people were drunk.   Peter stands up and offers an understand from the prophet Joel: God said he was going to pour out his Spirit in amazing ways.

Many of us think that this was the “Golden Age” of spirituality because we don’t “see” this type of thing happening today.  Some Christians believe all that “crazy Holy Spirit stuff” only happened then.  However, as Rev. Canon Charles K. Robertson puts it:

It began with Pentecost, but it could not stop there. Because the good news is that the golden age is not sometime back then, whenever then was. No, the golden age is NOW, and every now yet to come. Indeed, it is the journey itself, as we encounter the living Christ again and again in new and unexpected ways, in new and unexpected people we meet along the way.

It is critically important that we do not see Pentecost as a ridiculous religious moment, but rather a moment in time where God made himself known in a real and dramatic way.

Matt Skinner Associate Professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary St. Paul, MN has a very thoughtful way of understanding Pentecost:

What does Pentecost mean? The gift of God’s Spirit indicates that something new in human history has begun… The times have changed. The Spirit has come to mark the church—every member of it—as belonging to God and as God’s agent in the world… The foreign languages are not an instance of trickery or mass hysteria… God is at work here, equipping people to communicate about God.

This Sunday, we are going to explore what it means to be a people of Pentecost. If you are in Ballston Spa this Sunday, I invite you to come and worship with us at First Baptist Church @ 10:15 a.m.

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