• First Reading Acts 2:1-21
• Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
• Second Reading 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
• Gospel John 7:37-39

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This is it! Today is the day!

Last week we talked about the ascension, about the disciples asking Jesus when they would free Israel, when they would overthrow Rome, when they would get to start the revolution!

They had been following Jesus for weeks, months, and years. He had preached a new order. They had marched on Jerusalem, even stormed the temple to overturn the money-changers’ tables, starting the riot that prompted the authorities to arrest him and put him to death.

They had watched Jesus be tortured and killed. They had gone to the tomb to find it empty and, not knowing what to believe, some locked themselves in a room to hide while others fled toward Emmaus.

And then Jesus appeared to them again. Jesus walked the road with those who fled, teaching them the scriptures to give them the grounding they needed before they could recognize him. He appeared in the empty room and showed the men that what the women had told them was true. He revealed his wounds to Thomas to prove that it had all really happened. He spent forty more days with them, in Jerusalem, Galilee, and Jerusalem again.

And so, they decided they were ready to fight; that it was time to fight. And Jesus only answered part of the question, replying “not yet” immediately before ascending to heaven. As the disciples are still staring, in shock and wonder, two angels appear and tell them to stop wasting time, to start getting ready and they return to that upper room, where they pray for ten days.

This is it! Today is the day! Today is the day to start the revolution!

But the revolution is not what they had planned. The Holy Spirit does not present them with a cache of weapons or knowledge of military tactics. They do not receive training in insurgency or asymmetric warfare.

Jesus told them they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, sure, in Judea and Samaria, great, and to the ends of the earth.

This is what the Spirit equips them to do. They spill out into the street and it is not just any day: it is Pentecost, or Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks. This is one of the major pilgrimage holidays, one for which Jewish people from throughout the ancient world would return to Jerusalem if they were able. It is this spread and influence of the diaspora that gives us the name. In Hebrew, the festival is Shavuot, in English, we translate that directly, the Feast of Weeks, because it is seven weeks after the second day of Passover. Among the Greek speaking Jewish diaspora, it took on a different name, the Greek Pentecost, for fiftieth, because seven weeks from the second day of Passover is 50 days from the first day of Passover.

The presence of these people from the diaspora, sharing Greek and maybe Hebrew as common languages, but each with a different first language based on where they are from: “Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs” each heard the disciples’ speaking in their own language. The gift of tongues in this encounter in Acts is not glossolalia, is not an outpouring or overflowing of the Spirit that requires interpretation by another, as it seems to have become by the time of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, but it is the gift of language so that all may hear and understand the Gospel of Jesus in their own language, in the most direct and accessible way for each individual. This gift did not wash out the individuality of the speakers—even though they are suddenly speaking Greek, Latin, Arabic, and many other languages besides their own Aramaic, they are still recognizably Galilean. The Spirit has not erased anything from them but has added the ability to move into new languages and cultures.

And all this is happening on Pentecost, Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, a holiday with double significance. In the traditional Hebrew calendar, it is the first harvest festival, marking harvest of the first wheat crop of the year, of which a portion was offered in the hope that the next crops would be successful. More importantly, it celebrates God giving the Law, the Torah, to Moses at Sinai.

In the Christian church, our Pentecost celebration has come to focus almost exclusively on the gift of the Spirit, through which the church is equipped to do ministry in the world, but that gift cannot be understood without God’s prior gifts of the Law to Moses, Jesus ministry on Earth, and the cross and resurrection.

This is the point that Paul is trying to get the church at Corinth to understand in his letter. The Corinthians, they are a church that loves their status, their hierarchy. They have turned the message of grace, that all things are gifts from God to mean that some gifts are more valuable, and that therefore the people who have received those gifts are better than others who have received lesser gifts. Paul says to them “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”

Last week we talked about time, and how time is a gift from God, so the disciples needed to use the time following the ascension to prepare. It was not theirs to waste. Paul is expanding that. There are many gifts, but one Spirit. There are many ways to serve, but they all serve the same Lord, and there are many kinds of work, but only one God.

God’s gifts do not follow a prescribed pattern or order. God’s gifts to one person do not raise that person over another or diminish someone else. They are given as God chooses so that people can put those gifts to the service of the community.

Paul leaves the corollary unsaid: if it is not in service to the community, it may not come from God. We are all part of the same body, we are all connected to each other through Christ, and so what helps one must help another, and when we hurt one another, we are hurting ourselves.

This is a lesson we still struggle to learn.

Last week, I asked how you would spend the week, the seven days that then remained before Pentecost. I challenged you to spend that time in prayer, to remember that time does not belong to us.

I spent time this week reading about Amy Cooper, and yes, I watched the video of her using the threat of state violence against someone who asked her to leash her dog. I watched people argue about whether that part of the park actually required leashes in an attempt to justify Amy Cooper’s response. It does, but even if it did not, Christian Cooper being mistaken about a park rule would not justify a threat on his life.

I read about George Floyd, and the protests, and the riots, and maybe the riots are being instigated by the same groups of white supremacists who, three years ago, marched on my hometown, Charlottesville.

I turned my attention back to the text, and I read that the disciples, enflamed and empowered by the Holy Spirit had drawn a crowd, and that crowd was bewildered, and some of them “sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’”

I wondered how the story would be different if, instead of sneers and condescension, the crowd had been afraid. If some in that crowd were money changers at the temple, or others whose profits of the temple economy had been disrupted by Jesus, whose tables had been turned over. If, instead of a crowd of devout Jews from across the ancient world, it had been a Roman patrol. What if that patrol had included the soldier who, not two months prior, had lost an ear to an attack by Peter?

I wonder, in this moment, what are the demands placed on us by our faith if we are truly to follow a savior who was unjustly murdered by the state? If we remember that crucifixion kills by asphyxiation. We do not ever hear the last words of either of the two men crucified alongside Jesus, but they may well have been “I can’t breathe.”

I wonder how much longer before we can learn that we are one body in Christ. Today is Pentecost. The Spirit is moving in our world. The Spirit has never stopped moving. What more must we do to prepare ourselves? What is preventing us from listening? This is it. Today is the day. What good news will we proclaim?