Pentecost is celebrated as the birthday of the church. We call to mind the moment when the promised Holy Spirit was poured out on those first believers some 2,000 years ago and it is fair to say that the world has never been the same since.
I posed the question last Sunday: ‘At what point did we turn the power of the Gospel from a force into a farce?’ Please don’t hear me complain – or feel sorry for me - when I say that I spend a great deal of my life in Christian leadership being frustrated.
I have so many questions: When did we turn Jesus into some religious icon instead of the living resurrected heart beat of the church? Where along the way did we make Jesus our resident four leaf clover or rabbit’s foot who will be our good luck charm? Why is the Bible the most popular and yet the least read book in the world? Why do people say that they follow Jesus but know very little about him and show little interest in finding out about him? When did we make Jesus into a great moral teacher when he was crucified for teaching heresy and sedition?
‘When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them’ Acts 2:1-3
This reading is the beginning of the description of the great day of Pentecost. Remembering that the people here gathered were Jews and that the feast they ‘were all together in one place’ for was the Feast of Weeks (Hebrew ‘Shavuot’). It was a time to celebrate the culmination of the season of harvest, seven weeks after the festival of first fruits.
I call to mind our 10.02 prayer focus – ‘Jesus said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.”’ Luke 10:2
It is not a commonly known fact; but Jesus had a degree? He was known by those of us in the loop as Jesus of Nazareth MWBA. For three years Jesus, with his band of followers went from place to place preparing the ground for harvest. Some places were harder than others and the best he could do was clear away the stones and a few weeds for a plough that might come later. In other places he was able to plough a furrow or two and even sow a few seeds and sometimes enjoyed a harvest. The MBWA? He had a degree in something that we all could take note of in a world that is growing way too complicated. Jesus did his work through Ministry By just Wandering Around.
At Pentecost the amazing revelation to these male and female followers of Jesus – children of Israel – was that they were the harvest! The clearing of stones, preparing of ground, sowing of seed and nurture of soil over which Jesus had toiled was now ‘ripe for the harvest’. Through my reading of Scripture and study of the church throughout history I have come to a sure and certain conclusion: nothing has changed.
We, as followers of Christ, are part of that great harvest and the seeds of the harvest are called to be planted into the many and varied places where we live so that generation by generation God continues to find fertile soil.
Blessings - John
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