Thursday, May 16, 2024 | Trey Comstock
Pentecost sits in a prominent spot on the list of important Christian concepts that I managed to completely miss. I remember at some point in my late teens showing up at church, and my girlfriend at the time and her whole family wore matching red outfits. I inquired as to occasion, to which I got a mildly exhausted, “It’s Pentecost.” I played it off, as if I definitely knew what she was talking about. I definitely did not. She often served as my religious expert. She had plans to go and study religion in college. She felt a call to ministry. I took on the role of dumb, himbo hanger on and video producer. I made cool videos about our youth group’s adventures. She knew things, read things, and got consulted on serious faith things. That day, I learned that we wear red on Pentecost because it involved something about fire and continued to not understand it at all. This dynamic might help explain, why that particular relationship failed.
I often wonder who to blame for my general ignorance. I attended church, at least once a week, for my entire adolescence. I started performing in church services and church programs as soon as I could talk in sentences. My brother, Drew, and I went to Sunday Schools, youth groups, youth retreats, Vacation Bible Schools, essentially without fail. Even when we lived in a country that didn’t speak English, we attended an English speaking Protestant church that met in our school’s theatre. Paul describes himself as a “Pharisee among Pharisees,” in reference to his religious upbringing. In that same vein, as to the amount of time spent in church, I was a Methodist among Methodist. However, Paul clearly learned a ton. I embarrassingly didn’t. I honestly don’t remember anyone explaining Pentecost to me. I think that there was a cake once, for the “birthday of the Church,” but, as with so many things, I got to university level investigation of Scripture before I knew about the descent of the Holy Spirit.
As a pastor, I swung in the other direction. Easter receives the place of honor as our most important holiday. Christmas has a marketing department so good that in Japan, a historically Shinto country, families preorder large buckets of KFC chicken to eat as together on Christmas. In terms of importance, Pentecost stands right there with the other two. The entire basis of Church, our main experience of God in the world, the whole of Christian history from Pentecost day onward trace back to that moment, in that room, on that day, in Jerusalem. I developed an inside joke with my first confirmation class that to most of the their questions, “The answer is probably the Holy Spirit.” This, then, due to the fact that I both controlled the church sign and have low impulse control, went up on the church sign. It’s not actually a joke, though. The answer to most of our questions about the Christian life get answered by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit arrived, to stay, on Pentecost.
We got a new version of God among us, and this one remains with us to the end of the age. From the Holy Spirit, we know God’s prevenient grace, pulling and nudging us into a relationship with God. This same Spirit gives us our abilities, gifts, and graces. The Holy Spirit convicts us, when we need convicting, comforts us, when we need comforting, and guides us, when we need guiding. Whenever a group of people comes together to do God’s work, the glue that binds them is the Holy Spirit. This includes the Church. When we love, care, forgive, hold accountable, or take holy action, we know the Holy Spirit. The true purpose and activity of the church is to relive Pentecost, every day, to come together, to receive the Spirit, and to let the Spirit propel us into work in the world - collectively.
Pentecost sets in motion the age in which we still live. If we think of the larger arcs of the divine-human relationship, Genesis lays out the age of creation to the flood and the arc of Abraham and his descendants. With the Exodus, we get the age of God’s people that then becomes the nation of Israel, that then, falls apart leading to the Exile. God’s people return from Exile, rebuild what they can, but live without God’s king. This lasts a few hundred years until Christ comes into the world, lives, teaches, dies, rises, and ascends. With Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes down, and everything else that has happened between God and God’s people continues that part of the story. This puts Pentecost on the same level of significance as the covenant with Abraham, the parting of the Red Sea, and placing King David on the throne. It’s the most important plot point in the divine-human story until the end of the age and the arrival of the New Jerusalem.
In that light, I wonder how I missed it. I wonder why we don’t talk about it more. The occasional “Happy Birthday, Church” cake feels wildly insufficient. The other members of the Top Three Christian Holy Days list get a lot more effort, and they each celebrate something that happened, while the story of Pentecost continues, unbroken, in every church, to this day. To miss the significance of Pentecost is to miss the ongoing significance of God’s work around us, in us, and through us.