Description
The Season of Pentecost is such a dynamic time of year – celebrating God’s Spirit alive in the church. Many churches use this as an opportunity to celebrate the church and even hold birthday parties for the church. In the reading from Acts 2:1-21 the focus is on the power of the Holy Spirit and how the Spirit enables the early church in its mission.
The book of Acts, written by the Apostle Luke, follows on from Luke’s Gospel, and tells the story of the early church. Jesus had been rejected by the Jewish nation. Now Jesus tells his Jewish disciples to go and take the message of salvation “from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and then to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
In Acts, Luke gives a detailed picture of the coming of the gift of the Holy Spirit. He sets the event in the Jewish festival of Pentecost which was the fiftieth day after Passover. Called the Festival of Harvest it was one of three major annual festivals (Deuteronomy 16:16). This Pentecost is the first festival after Jesus’ ascension, and it is from Luke’s account of these events that Pentecost – for Christians – has become associated with the coming of the Holy Spirit.
For the disciples who gathered for the festival, this would have been a special occasion for the emerging Christian community (they weren’t called Christians until Acts 11). They were gathered for a purpose that Jesus had given them. It is significant that also gathered were people from all over the known world – listed in Acts 2:8 in geographical order from east to west – including some countries that may not have been around at the time in history .When the gift of the Holy Spirit came in Acts 2, it came with such energy and generosity that it empowered, inspired, and motivated those gathered to go out and to share God’s good news with everyone.
The second part of today’s reading from Acts 2, is a story about how the Holy Spirit unites and breaks down barriers. All those people gathered from different parts of the world could suddenly understand one another. This got people’s attention. Peter, with newfound confidence and empowered by the Holy Spirit, addresses this international gathering, telling them about God and the Good News of Jesus – an address that resulted in thousands of new believers (Acts 2:41).
It is from this dynamic Pentecost event, that the church grows, and the good news of Jesus is spread – as it did on the Day of Pentecost and as it does throughout the world today.
