Pentecost Addition May 23, 2021

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING

On Pentecost, we celebrate the fulfillment of Jesus' promise to send the Holy Spirit to dwell in us and guide us, bringing understanding and unity. However, for those present for the events described in the reading from Acts, in which the Holy Spirit descended and rested upon them, celebration wasn't exactly what those gathered were thinking about. Terror might be a more appropriate word. Shock, perhaps. Mystery. It felt like anything but a celebration; it was disruptive and frightening! After such an experience, your life is changed forever. Once you have lived through something so monumental, you are never the same.

And that is the point. That is why we celebrate. Because on this day, the church was born. On this day, the apostles - students of an itinerant rabbi who had taught his followers for only a few years - were filled with the Holy Spirit, turned upside down and inside out, changed utterly. On this day, not only the apostles but also three thousand others (Acts 2:41) were filled with the Spirit that transforms us and enables us to see others as our siblings in Christ. Often, the aftermath of crisis makes strangers into friends.

Several thousand people who had been turned inward, thinking of themselves, their needs, and their concerns, were made a community turned outward, thinking of their relationships, their neighbors, and the needs and concerns of others. "When the Spirit of truth comes," Jesus had said, "he will guide you into all the truth" (John 16:13). The Holy Spirit, blowing through a diverse group, signals a formation of community, a binding together to make a new way of living. And this is what God showed the apostles, the others gathered in that room, and the several thousand who were baptized: when the Holy Spirit blows into your life, nothing is ever the same. And that's cause for celebration.

contents from: https://www.augsburgfortress.org/