Pentecost… Today

SUN., JUNE 3, 1990, 7:17 AM
STONIER HALL, RUTGERS

This is Pentecost Sunday, the first one to be designated as such in your home church, and you shall not be there for whatever celebration there will be. You hope there will be some mention of it in the service in which you will participate… in the church with the quite audible bell. Well, no guarantee there, so I offer you, in this somewhat familiar place, some thoughts on this recognition of Me, the Holy Spirit. Hear, o son. Yes, indeed.

It is interesting, isn’t it, that Christian churches and denominations that have been avowedly Trinitarian in their creeds, in their liturgy, have given little consideration to this Holy Spirit Who is this third aspect of this Trinity. The story of the original Pentecost “Sunday” is admittedly brief, but not much more brief than the fragments that make up the Christmas story. Yet in its brevity it is dramatic and highly symbolic. Hear several reasons for this difference.

Yours is a materialistic culture. Interestingly, this materialism has developed in a rather unholy relationship with My favorite religion, Christianity. Most Americans profess belief in Me, as Almighty God, and most of these also acknowledge Jesus Christ as being important. (At least God and Jesus are favorite expletives in the profanity vocabularies.) Jesus is quite material. The manger scene, with “parents” Mary and Joseph, is a familiar one, as are the carols of Christmas that extol My physical birth. Then there are many renditions of Me as a man in My ministering time, even a few which portray Me smiling… even laughing… which I do like. The Easter story is another familiar one, with emphasis on the Last Supper (tangible), the betrayal (tangible), the trial and crucifixion, and then the Resurrection. The emphasis in post-Easter observations is on My continuing to be in the earth in bodily form… the nail holes in My hands…

Thus, it is important for your culture to be committed to a God Who has come to earth in material form. Never mind that I was not a materialist in My preaching… and present day preachers aren’t supposed to be such, either. I was material and historical. I was “real.”

As Holy Spirit I have no body and no clear identification. To come as wind and fire is spooky… not as understandable and acceptable as being born in a stable. As Jesus I did some miracles, but most of the remembered ones are material in nature. I healed infirmities. I blessed five loaves and two fishes and let them feed 5,000 people. I turned water into wine. I calmed a stormy sea. Ah, these are miracles to remember!

As the Holy Spirit I let the preaching of an unschooled disciple, speaking in Aramaic, be heard and understood in the many languages of those who came to listen. This is not at all material, a mystical rendition of simultaneous translation, which cannot yet be done electronically.

Another important reason that many of you Protestants haven’t been attracted to Me is because of “Pentecostals.” These are Christians who believe and practice the gifts of the spirit, especially speaking in tongues. They are generally seen as a wild, undisciplined, non-liturgical lot, and they call themselves Pentecostals. Hence, the term is “taken.”