Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:25-35, 37; Romans 8:14-17; John 14:8-17,(25-27)
The Rev. Drew Brislin
Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?”
Happy Pentecost, everyone! I don’t know if that’s an official greeting, but there it is. Today is a significant celebration in the life of the Church. Often referred to as the birthday of the Church, Pentecost doesn’t quite get the same attention as Christmas or Easter. There’s no Pentecost Bunny hiding treats for kids, and aside from the red vestments, there aren’t many decorations.
However, one meaningful tradition we’ve started in recent years is reading the Pentecost story from Acts in different languages. I’m grateful to those who participated in that this morning. I’ve heard it said that Christmas is irrelevant without Easter, and Easter is incomplete without Pentecost. So yes, today is a very important day—even without all the frills.
But what makes today so special? After all, this isn’t our first encounter with the Holy Spirit in Scripture. So why do we focus so much on the sending of the Holy Spirit—or the Advocate, as John’s Gospel calls it—on this particular day?
Many of us have recently attended commencement ceremonies. While these mark the end of a student’s high school journey, they are also called “commencements” because they represent a beginning. In the same way, today we mark a new beginning in the life of the disciples—a beginning for a new community of believers committed to following in the way of Jesus.
When I think of the Pentecost story from Acts, I’m always reminded of Star Wars. My brothers, friends, and I collected the action figures and other toys, as I’m sure many of you did as well. We loved recreating scenes and crafting our own adventures. This often involved trying to mimic the characters’ languages—especially R2D2 and Chewbacca. They didn’t speak English, yet somehow everyone around them understood and what they meant.
In our reading from Acts this morning, we learn that when the Holy Spirit descends, the disciples begin speaking in different languages, and yet everyone understands each other. Even those present with the disciples just listening understood in their own native language. It’s a moment of miraculous communication. It was as if they were at the United Nations and had their own personal translator. We see something similar in today’s Gospel reading as well, where Jesus tries to explain his mission. When Philip says, “Show us the Father,” Jesus replies, “I’ve been with you all this time, and you still don’t get it?” Philip has seen everything Jesus has done, yet he still wants more proof. I think all of us have probably had experiences where we were talking to someone or they were talking to us and what was being said seems to just go straight by our heads. It’s almost as if you had a left-brain person and a right brain person trying to explain the same thing to each other but because they process differently, they are unable to understand each other.
I empathize with Philip. Even if I saw God face to face, would I fully believe what I was experiencing? Jesus goes on to explain—again with what sounds like theological algebra—that He dwells in the Father, and the Father in Him. If you’ve seen Jesus and witnessed his works, you’ve seen the Father. Jesus is the tangible presence of God in the world. When we encounter Jesus, we are offered a new experience of God. Still, Jesus knows that understanding this isn’t easy. So He promises that the Father will send the Holy Spirit—also referred to as the Paraclete or Advocate—to be with them. The message is clear: they will not be alone.
As I’ve mentioned before, numbers in Scripture often signal important transitions and help us to understand what is happening within a story. The number fifty, in particular, marks moments of transformation and renewal. There are around a hundred such references throughout the Bible. For example, the Ten Commandments were given to Moses on Mt. Sinai fifty days after the Exodus. The Jubilee celebrated every fifty years, which was a time when debts were forgiven and the enslaved were set free.
In Jewish tradition, Pentecost (referred to in Judaism as Shavuot) is the Feast of Weeks, marking fifty days after Passover and commemorates the giving of the Torah, which is the first five books of the Hebrew Bible to the Jewish people. The church Father St. Augustine viewed the number fifty as symbolizing the fullness of time and the perfection of divine law—that it signified a new beginning or transcendent reality seeing it as both moments of divine intervention and renewal.
These “great fifty day” events are unifying events among God’s people. And today, perhaps more than ever, we need to be reminded of God’s purpose of unity. While the world around us often highlights our differences, Pentecost calls us back to what we share. As the Church, we are called to model this unity—to each other and to the world.
We affirm in our Baptismal Covenant that we will “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.” That is a powerful, unqualified statement. While the creators of Star Wars may not have been inspired by Pentecost, they seemed to understand the value of communication across differences Language was never a barrier to community in that universe. Everyone had something to contribute. And that perhaps our best communication happens when we listen more than we speak.
Listening is an act of invitation—welcoming others into our community and allowing space for the Holy Spirit to move. Maybe that’s why the retail world hasn’t commercialized Pentecost. It’s an important day, but it doesn’t lend itself to consumerism. It is not a day that makes us feel warm and fuzzy. Instead, it is a day, an event that calls us to action. It calls on us to be the church.
There’s a quote attributed to St. Francis: “Go out and preach the Gospel in all places and at all times; and when necessary, use words.” When we listen in order to understand—not just to respond—we make space for others and for God. We do the work of unification, building a Spirit-led community that’s more than a social group. It becomes a Church that answers Jesus’ call to love and serve. As we commence this new season after Pentecost, this season that is often referred to as the ordinary season let us be extraordinary in our love and compassion and invitation to grow our community through radical welcome.
The Christian mystic Thomas Merton said it best:
“The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear brothers (and sisters), we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.”