This Sunday, May 19, Christians celebrate Pentecost, the middle child of Christian holidays, wedged between Christmas and Easter. Pentecost doesn't call attention to itself. There's no tinsel, no pastel colored eggs.
There is, however, a distinctive magic to Pentecost -- full-blown ecstasy, an almost illicit experience of God.
That first Pentecost, after tongues as of fire rested on everyone and Jesus' friends and family spoke in other tongues, people gathered around to watch at nine in the morning. What they saw didn't look like many Sunday morning church services.
What they saw looked more like the aftermath of a party. "All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, 'What does this mean?' But others sneered and said, 'They are filled with new wine'" (Acts 2:13). They weren't drunk, of course, but they looked like it.
Wouldn't that be something, to be so taken up with God that onlookers think we're drunk with sweet wine? Wouldn't it be remarkable to ride the edge of ecstasy? "Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?" Annie Dillard asks.
Pentecost. Crash helmets. Signal flares -- tongues as of fire falling on each of us.
Yet that's only half the story of Pentecost. When Jesus' friends and
family spoke up, ecstasy became acuity, drunkenness took shape in
deliberate truth-telling. "Amazed and astonished," jaw-dropped onlookers
asked, "How is it that ... in our own languages we hear them speaking
about God's praiseworthy acts" (Acts 2:11). God's praiseworthy acts is
shorthand for God's eager participation in history. At the heart of
Jewish Torah, Moses encouraged the Israelites to "acknowledge God's
praiseworthy acts, God's mighty hand and God's outstretched arm"
(Deuteronomy 11:2). In profound ancient poetry, we discover the words,
"Sing to God, sing praises to God; tell of all God's praiseworthy acts"
(Psalm 105:1-2).
Read more: Jack Levison: After the Jelly Beans Are All Gone Comes Pentecost
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