The Spirit, Out of the Box
Commentary
Acts 2:1-21 is the obvious choice for your Pentecost lectionary text and perhaps you have used it on many occasions. However, the lectionary includes several options and I explore them in this Charting the Course to try to show there is more than one way to experience God’s Spirit.
Through what lens do we see most clearly the Spirit of God, and how should we interpret what is lived before us? On the Day of Pentecost, we glibly describe what occurred and we interpret that Spirit through the images of the rush of a mighty wind and something that looks like tongues of fire. These powerful images are correct and scriptural, but God’s Spirit is present throughout scripture, manifested in many different ways. When it comes to the Holy Spirit and Pentecost, it’s not a matter of thinking outside the box, but refusing to insist the Spirit is boxed into a limited number of ways to be experienced.
One of the most obvious things overlooked at Pentecost is Pentecost — the feast that had been celebrated for centuries among God’s people. That’s one place to start.
The passage from Numbers warns us against restricting the presence of the Spirit to those who shared a common experience while commenting on the limitations of an ecstatic theology.
The Spirit is present in the community, the whole community. In the first letter to the Corinthians we are introduced a biological description of God’s presence among us as a people, celebrating the different ways the Spirit is manifested in us individually.
And in a resurrection passage from John’s gospel we see a gentler, but powerful manifestation of the Holy Spirit among God’s people.
Acts 2:1-21
For many of us who have gardens, harvest is fun. Our gardens provide fresh taste and variety to our meals, and if we can the vegetables, they’ll grace our tables when temperatures get colder, but that harvest is not a matter of life or death. After a summer in which the tomatoes disappoint us — we’ll still find tomatoes in the store.
As for our farmers, a bad harvest is a tough blow, but some have crop insurance, and in any event, it won’t mean starvation for them.
But for many people in most generations, harvesting has been a matter of life or death. The Feast of Weeks, one of the three holy days which Moses commanded everyone to attend, signified that the barren earth had once more through hard work and God’s blessings given life and hope.
The word Pentecost refers to the fifty days after Passover, which was the time when the first fruits of spring planting were harvested. Our Jewish cousins celebrated “Shavuot,” or “The Feast of Weeks. Part of Pentecost was the confession of faith mandated by Moses, which began, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…(Deuteronomy 26:5).” Pentecost is a celebration of thanksgiving and dependence.
This confession gave God the credit for making them a people and leading them to freedom. Isn’t this an important confession for us as Christians today? We all come from somewhere else, whether recently or hundreds or even thousands of years ago.
Numbers 11:24-30
In this passage, Moses takes aside seventy elders to the tent and when the Spirit of the Lord comes upon them they fall into an ecstatic state, running around, jumping, hollering all the things we associate with speaking in tongues. But then the text tells us the elders did not do this again. They prophesied no more. This suggests they were acting like they prophesied.
In other words, they were not real prophets. They were just acting like prophets, so people would think highly of them.
Now the text says that they received the Holy Spirit. But they had in their minds one way in which people with the Spirit are supposed to act.
I’m reminded of the nonsense that some people spout — that the only way to show the gifts of the Spirit is by speaking in tongues, or acting just a little nuts. That’s like trying to put God’s Spirit into a box and saying this is the only way the Spirit acts. Or that the only conversion experience has to involve an emotional reaction to some kind of preaching. One has to “come forward” in order to be a Christian.
It’s interesting that Joshua is so alarmed that Eldad and Medad, who did not travel with Moses and the seventy elders to this spiritual event, receive a full measure of God’s Spirit. Now Joshua is no villain. He’s not one of the complainers who cause the journey to continue for forty more long years. He’s the successor to Moses! He’s faithful! Yet he’s alarmed because someone who is not part of the inner circle is claiming to share in God’s Spirit. Moses does not need an inner circle, however, nor is the Spirit confined to one particular event or owned by one particular group.
We sometimes speak of being born again as a particular kind of experience that has to be recreated in exactly the same way in each believer to be authentic. Moses warns us against this attitude and reminds us we ought to be grateful that the Spirit is alive and present among us in so many different ways.
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
In this chapter Paul outlines the other way, the first way, before he reveals the better way in 1 Corinthians 13. That better way is love. It’s streamlined. It’s simpler, in the same way that Jesus streamlines the Law of Moses by collapsing it into two commandments — you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
But there are many different ways of learning. For those who learn through analogies with the natural world, the apostle Paul uses the analogy of the human body for the body of Christ. The body does not consist of one organ or body part, but many.
And before this section Paul simply tries to write analytically. This section is for those who understand computer manuals and instructions for hooking up stereo components. He lays out the facts logically — there are many different ways the Spirit of God is manifested, through various gifts, and we share these gifts as one body. We don’t have to insist that our gift is the greatest — or the least — and we do get to celebrate everyone’s gift. We need all the gifts of the Spirit just like we need all the body parts and just like, to jump ahead to the next chapter, all we need is love.
John 7:37-39
The first half of the year as described in Leviticus, the biblical book of rituals and cleanliness, recognizes the celebrations at the barley and wheat harvests; and the second half of the year is marked by late harvests of fruits, grapes, and olives and the beginning of the rainy season that makes the harvest possible for the next year.
To bring about the balance of three festivals or feast days in each division, the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread have been compressed into one celebration. They were originally two separate events celebrating two different periods of Israel’s early life. The Passover comes from the period before the settlement when Israel’s forbears were primarily shepherds moving from spring pasture to summer pasture. The Feast of Unleavened Bread presupposes the settlement period. After Israel’s settlement in the land they are celebrated as one event.
The first half of the year celebrates benefits received in the spring and summer in the barley and wheat harvests. The worshiper, however, is forbidden to eat any of the new grain or produce, until the first fruits are brought to the sanctuary: “You shall eat no bread or parched grain or fresh ears… until you have brought the offering of your God (v.14a).” The perspective of the worshiper is defined by the gift God’s sufficient harvest. The celebration requires such a point of view and devotion. The concluding festival of the spring/summer, Pentecost, incorporates the recognition of this generosity and brings within the worshiper’s horizon a vision of those in need: “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of the field, or gather the gleanings of your field; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord (23:22).” For this reason, the book of Ruth is read at the Festival of Weeks as a demonstration of obedience in the context of a rich harvest. (taken from Ten Reasons to Love Leviticus by Robert W. Neff and Frank Ramirez)
John 20:19-23
Some call this the Pentecost of John’s Gospel. In this deceptively quiet scene, something tremendous is unbottled and the apostles are filled to bursting with a Spirit they can neither hold nor control! Some see this action of Jesus breathing the Spirit as akin to birthing imagery. The language suggests Genesis, where God breathes into the human being. This breathing, this abiding, continues with us, through us.
Through what lens do we see most clearly the Spirit of God, and how should we interpret what is lived before us? On the Day of Pentecost, we glibly describe what occurred and we interpret that Spirit through the images of the rush of a mighty wind and something that looks like tongues of fire. These powerful images are correct and scriptural, but God’s Spirit is present throughout scripture, manifested in many different ways. When it comes to the Holy Spirit and Pentecost, it’s not a matter of thinking outside the box, but refusing to insist the Spirit is boxed into a limited number of ways to be experienced.
One of the most obvious things overlooked at Pentecost is Pentecost — the feast that had been celebrated for centuries among God’s people. That’s one place to start.
The passage from Numbers warns us against restricting the presence of the Spirit to those who shared a common experience while commenting on the limitations of an ecstatic theology.
The Spirit is present in the community, the whole community. In the first letter to the Corinthians we are introduced a biological description of God’s presence among us as a people, celebrating the different ways the Spirit is manifested in us individually.
And in a resurrection passage from John’s gospel we see a gentler, but powerful manifestation of the Holy Spirit among God’s people.
Acts 2:1-21
For many of us who have gardens, harvest is fun. Our gardens provide fresh taste and variety to our meals, and if we can the vegetables, they’ll grace our tables when temperatures get colder, but that harvest is not a matter of life or death. After a summer in which the tomatoes disappoint us — we’ll still find tomatoes in the store.
As for our farmers, a bad harvest is a tough blow, but some have crop insurance, and in any event, it won’t mean starvation for them.
But for many people in most generations, harvesting has been a matter of life or death. The Feast of Weeks, one of the three holy days which Moses commanded everyone to attend, signified that the barren earth had once more through hard work and God’s blessings given life and hope.
The word Pentecost refers to the fifty days after Passover, which was the time when the first fruits of spring planting were harvested. Our Jewish cousins celebrated “Shavuot,” or “The Feast of Weeks. Part of Pentecost was the confession of faith mandated by Moses, which began, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…(Deuteronomy 26:5).” Pentecost is a celebration of thanksgiving and dependence.
This confession gave God the credit for making them a people and leading them to freedom. Isn’t this an important confession for us as Christians today? We all come from somewhere else, whether recently or hundreds or even thousands of years ago.
Numbers 11:24-30
In this passage, Moses takes aside seventy elders to the tent and when the Spirit of the Lord comes upon them they fall into an ecstatic state, running around, jumping, hollering all the things we associate with speaking in tongues. But then the text tells us the elders did not do this again. They prophesied no more. This suggests they were acting like they prophesied.
In other words, they were not real prophets. They were just acting like prophets, so people would think highly of them.
Now the text says that they received the Holy Spirit. But they had in their minds one way in which people with the Spirit are supposed to act.
I’m reminded of the nonsense that some people spout — that the only way to show the gifts of the Spirit is by speaking in tongues, or acting just a little nuts. That’s like trying to put God’s Spirit into a box and saying this is the only way the Spirit acts. Or that the only conversion experience has to involve an emotional reaction to some kind of preaching. One has to “come forward” in order to be a Christian.
It’s interesting that Joshua is so alarmed that Eldad and Medad, who did not travel with Moses and the seventy elders to this spiritual event, receive a full measure of God’s Spirit. Now Joshua is no villain. He’s not one of the complainers who cause the journey to continue for forty more long years. He’s the successor to Moses! He’s faithful! Yet he’s alarmed because someone who is not part of the inner circle is claiming to share in God’s Spirit. Moses does not need an inner circle, however, nor is the Spirit confined to one particular event or owned by one particular group.
We sometimes speak of being born again as a particular kind of experience that has to be recreated in exactly the same way in each believer to be authentic. Moses warns us against this attitude and reminds us we ought to be grateful that the Spirit is alive and present among us in so many different ways.
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
In this chapter Paul outlines the other way, the first way, before he reveals the better way in 1 Corinthians 13. That better way is love. It’s streamlined. It’s simpler, in the same way that Jesus streamlines the Law of Moses by collapsing it into two commandments — you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
But there are many different ways of learning. For those who learn through analogies with the natural world, the apostle Paul uses the analogy of the human body for the body of Christ. The body does not consist of one organ or body part, but many.
And before this section Paul simply tries to write analytically. This section is for those who understand computer manuals and instructions for hooking up stereo components. He lays out the facts logically — there are many different ways the Spirit of God is manifested, through various gifts, and we share these gifts as one body. We don’t have to insist that our gift is the greatest — or the least — and we do get to celebrate everyone’s gift. We need all the gifts of the Spirit just like we need all the body parts and just like, to jump ahead to the next chapter, all we need is love.
John 7:37-39
The first half of the year as described in Leviticus, the biblical book of rituals and cleanliness, recognizes the celebrations at the barley and wheat harvests; and the second half of the year is marked by late harvests of fruits, grapes, and olives and the beginning of the rainy season that makes the harvest possible for the next year.
To bring about the balance of three festivals or feast days in each division, the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread have been compressed into one celebration. They were originally two separate events celebrating two different periods of Israel’s early life. The Passover comes from the period before the settlement when Israel’s forbears were primarily shepherds moving from spring pasture to summer pasture. The Feast of Unleavened Bread presupposes the settlement period. After Israel’s settlement in the land they are celebrated as one event.
The first half of the year celebrates benefits received in the spring and summer in the barley and wheat harvests. The worshiper, however, is forbidden to eat any of the new grain or produce, until the first fruits are brought to the sanctuary: “You shall eat no bread or parched grain or fresh ears… until you have brought the offering of your God (v.14a).” The perspective of the worshiper is defined by the gift God’s sufficient harvest. The celebration requires such a point of view and devotion. The concluding festival of the spring/summer, Pentecost, incorporates the recognition of this generosity and brings within the worshiper’s horizon a vision of those in need: “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of the field, or gather the gleanings of your field; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord (23:22).” For this reason, the book of Ruth is read at the Festival of Weeks as a demonstration of obedience in the context of a rich harvest. (taken from Ten Reasons to Love Leviticus by Robert W. Neff and Frank Ramirez)
John 20:19-23
Some call this the Pentecost of John’s Gospel. In this deceptively quiet scene, something tremendous is unbottled and the apostles are filled to bursting with a Spirit they can neither hold nor control! Some see this action of Jesus breathing the Spirit as akin to birthing imagery. The language suggests Genesis, where God breathes into the human being. This breathing, this abiding, continues with us, through us.
