Acts 2:1-21
There is a little bit of Bible math that I want to share with you today as we begin unpacking this strange and glorious feast of Pentecost. Pentecost itself means fiftieth in Greek, the name used by Greek-speaking Jews in the ancient world to describe the fiftieth day after the Passover. This feast, coming seven full weeks plus one day after the feast of the Passover, is one of three festivals that all Jews who were able would make pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem. This context matters, because it means the city of Jerusalem was filled to the brim with Jewish people from every corner of the known world, the perfect audience for a miraculous multilingual fireworks display.
For us as Christians, the feast of Pentecost has come to mark the fiftieth day after the resurrection, the Easter season. More church math here- Lent, the season of preparation through penitence, fasting, and self-denial, is forty days long. Easter, the joyful season that celebrates the defeat of death and the resurrection of Jesus, is ten days longer, a reminder that even our well-meaning fasts are overtaken by the light of Christ. But there’s something that happens in that last ten days that we don’t usually get to hear about on Sunday. On the fortieth day of Easter, which always falls on a Thursday, the Church remembers the day that Jesus ascended into heaven. The Feast of the Ascension is not often observed by churches that do not have daily worship services, so many of us are less familiar with the story.
The short version is this- Jesus rose from the dead, and in resurrected form he visited with the disciples for forty days. These forty days include the walk to Emmaus, when Jesus revealed himself to his disciples in the breaking of bread. They include the first visit to the disciples hiding in the upper room, and the second visit to make sure Thomas had no reason to doubt. He preached to them, he prayed with them, he shared meals with them. And then one day he was teaching them on the mount of Olivet, and they were asking him questions, and he was giving his usual perplexing answers. He told them that the Holy Spirit would come upon them, and that they would be his witnesses through all the world. And then he was lifted up, seemingly beamed up into the clouds. The poor disciples were left standing with mouths agape, staring up at the sky in shock and wonder. It took the appearance of two heavenly messengers to snap them out of it, and only then did they return to Jerusalem to await the coming of the promised Holy Spirit.
Here’s where that Bible math comes back up again. There are ten days from the Ascension until Pentecost. Ten days between Jesus disappearing into the sky and the tongues of flame descending upon the disciples. For ten days, the disciples of Jesus were grieving all over again, another sudden loss of their same beloved teacher. They did not understand, just as they had not understood when he taught them about his death and resurrection before it happened. They had no idea when or if they would ever see him again, and they did not know what he meant when he said the Holy Spirit would come upon them. For forty days they had what everyone who has ever lost someone desperately wishes for – more time. They could see him, hear him, touch him. This person they had lost, whom they had buried, was with them, and then he was gone. I have to imagine that even the most astute, most faithful among them was deeply grieved. I have to imagine that they experienced the ascension as yet another loss, a separation. For ten days, they grieved, and waited, and wondered what to do. The only recorded act of the apostles during those ten days was the elevation of Matthias to the position among the twelve that Judas had forsaken. The only thing they could think to do was try to make themselves feel whole again, acknowledging the complicated empty space in their midst.
It is at the end of those ten quiet, hard days of waiting that the day of Pentecost, this day, comes. They are all gathered together in one place, because of course they would come together on this holy day of pilgrimage. I imagine the tone in the room is nuanced, like the first family celebration after the death of a loved one. The festival is to be celebrated, the traditions will continue, but everything is different now.
It is into that room, at the end of those ten days of held breath, that the breath of God comes like a rushing wind and an illuminating fire. It is in the midst of grief and confusion that the Holy Spirit descends. The gift of the Holy Spirit is not something that only comes to the prepared, to the eternally positive and the unshakeable believer. The gift of the Holy Spirit comes also to the bereaved, and the confused, and the waiting. She comes to the afraid and the alone and the angry. The Holy Spirit does not wait for Jesus’s disciples to figure everything out before she comes. This is how we know she speaks to and through us too.
With the enlightening of the Holy Spirit, the true meaning of the Ascension is revealed. Not a loss, but a change. Not a disappearance, but a broadening of presence. While Jesus walked the earth, he knelt into the particularity of being human. The incarnation is by necessity a limiting, a diminishment chosen and embraced by a limitless God. God incarnate can only be one person, in one place and time, among one particular people. That is the nature of being human, and God took it on for our sakes. But God ascended, Jesus at the right hand of the Father who fills all things, has left behind the limits of human particularity. By ascending into heaven, Jesus did not leave the disciples. He became omnipresent, available to be among them wherever two or three are gathered, everywhere all at once. By ascending, he came to them in an entirely new way, a way that is not limited by time or space or understanding. It is by ascending that Jesus ultimately comes to us, all these thousands of years and miles and generations later. He is with us still, and by the gifts of the Holy Spirit we know Jesus is Lord, everywhere and always.
Mother A Writes 