Why God’s Mission Needs Pentecost
Technology is great until it stops working. My computer crashed on me last night—too many open browser tabs, too many open applications. It couldn’t handle it and crashed. I had to shut it all down and restart it. Every once in a while we need to recalibrate our devices to the original factory settings. This is a great picture for God’s mission in the world, restoring us to our original Creation settings. The celebration of Pentecost plays a vital piece of God’s mission to put the world back together again.
Pentecost is the birthday of the Church. As such, it’s a really big deal. We should be making as big a thing of Pentecost as we do Easter in our churches. A mentor of mine recently wrote this on Facebook about Pentecost:
Easter is light.
Pentecost is Fire.
Easter fulfills the departure from Egypt.
Pentecost fulfills the glory descending into the Tabernacle.
Easter commemorates a historical event.
Pentecost points to a personal event.
Easter is the Victory of the Son.
Pentecost is the Victory of the Spirit.
Easter is the triumph over death.
Pentecost is the triumphant Life.
Easter is the Resurrection working in Jesus.
Pentecost is the Resurrection turned loose in the church.
At Easter, God SHOWS his Power.
At Pentecost, God SHARES his Power.
Easter proclaims an objective miracle.
Pentecost promises a subjective miracle.
Easter secures our Redemption.
Pentecost effects our Transformation.
Easter makes us WITNESSES.
Pentecost makes us EVIDENCE.
In the Christian calendar, Pentecost is part of a narrative thread running from Ash Wednesday to Lent to Good Friday to Easter to Pentecost to Ordinary Time. In Lent, we sit in the brokenness of the world, crying out in lament, and embracing repentance. On Good Friday, we witness the final terrible consequence of humanity’s defiant “No!” to God with the murder of Jesus. On Easter, we see God turning the tables, resurrecting Jesus, and beginning the work of new creation. And with Pentecost, we are invited to join the story.
In addition, there’s also a narrative thread tying Pentecost to Babel, Sinai, and Revelation that show us what God’s mission in the world is.
Pentecost and Babel
“Come, let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world” (Genesis 11:4).
In Genesis chapters 3–11, we find not a single story of “The Fall” but a string of successive stories about humanity’s stubborn rejection of God’s good order for the world. The stories reach their climax in Genesis 11, the story of the tower of Babel.
This story begins with all humanity as one single culture. Can you imagine that? The Linguistic Society of America reports that as of 2009, there were 6,909 known languages in the world. But this story is more than a simple explanation of how the expansive ethnic diversity came to be.
To build a tower that “reaches to heaven” was a means of attempting to manipulate and control the deity. It represents an attempt by humanity to relate to God on our own terms. A structure such as this in the ancient world represented a dwelling place for the deity, like a temple. It’s on par with saying, If we build your house, then we own you. It’s not too different than David’s offer to build God a house in 2 Samuel 7 (that story has a very different outcome, though).
And so, as a result, humanity is cursed to not understand one’s neighbor. If we suggest that Pentecost solves a problem, we need to ask what problem it resolves. The problem, evidenced in Babel, is first, that humanity wants to usurp God’s authority in the world, and second, that different languages now represent a massive barrier to the unity of humankind.
A corrupted humanity, working in concert together, has tremendous potential for destruction, and so God intervenes. A redeemed humanity, working in concert together, has tremendous potential for beauty, and so in Acts 2, God intervenes and pours out the Holy Spirit, God-in-Us. Pentecost undoes the curse of Babel.
Pentecost and Sinai
Pentecost in the Christian calendar is celebrated 50 days after Easter. In Acts chapter 2, the first followers of Jesus are celebrating the Jewish Harvest Festival, outlined in Deuteronomy 16. Like Easter’s connection to Passover, Christian Pentecost takes the story told at Harvest Festival and adds a whole new twist. Harvest Festival was celebrated 50 days after Passover to remember God’s giving the Law to Israel at Sinai. It was this giving of the Law that made this ragtag group of slaves God’s people, a nation of priests.
Harvest Festival was a big deal. Likewise, Pentecost is a big deal for the Church. It’s the day the Church became the Church—the day a ragtag group of outcast fishermen, revolutionaries, and tax collectors became God’s people. And this Church is God’s plan for putting the world back together again.
Pentecost and Revelation
“After this I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9).
Acts chapter 2 isn’t the end of the story that began in Genesis 11. Rather, it’s a way station pointing forward still towards the vision in Revelation. In chapter 7, John describes an innumerable crowd around the throne and the Lamb inclusive of every culture. The story in Acts 2 is the middle of a sandwich.
The resolution of this story is not one single culture, as was the state of humanity in Genesis 11. In Revelation 7, every distinct culture still exists, but now, rather than warring with one another, we are all rightly ordered together with Jesus at the center. What a dramatic twist to the story.
What Pentecost means for us now
I live in the United States where issues like immigration and racism are hot-button political issues. Pentecost speaks directly to these issues and every other issue that relates to “the other.” Because of Pentecost, there is no “other.” There is no “I” and “them.” There is only “we.” Because the end of this story is all of us, rightly oriented around Jesus.
Whether we’re awake to it or not, each of us holds onto a certain amount of ethnocentrism. This means we believe our own culture is the right one—the way that our tribe does things is the normal and best way to do things. In his book White Awake, pastor Daniel Hill writes about a conversation he had with a South Asian/Indian friend who told him, “When white culture comes in contact with other cultures, it almost always wins.”
Because of Pentecost, there are no cultures that win or lose. There will no longer be “dominant cultures.” Cultural identity is not done away with. The Holy Spirit isn’t speaking in one single language in Acts 2. The image of nations around the Lamb in Revelation isn’t homogenous. Instead, they inspire a picture of a cultural ecosystem in perfect balance and harmony—shalom. Because the Holy Spirit comes on everyone, then both the foreign-born refugee and the native are inspired and animated by the Holy Spirit. Pentecost cuts the legs out from racism and ethnocentrism in all their forms.
We should be making Pentecost as a big deal as Easter. It’s a party. It can be an exuberant party celebrating that God has made a way for us to lay aside every cultural division and rivalry. The Church can become a single rich tapestry of beauty because of Pentecost. God’s mission is the work of putting the world back together again, and this is how Pentecost fits in the story.