Reflection

Pentecost

It’s almost one hundred days since we began the journey to Pentecost.  To be precise, it was ninety-six days ago that we stopped and covered our heads in Ashes.  Ash Wednesday marked the beginning of our acknowledgement that the life we have within us comes from the God, who breathed life into us, bringing us into being.  The Genesis narrative of the creation of man and woman is testament to that – from the earth (dust or ash) God formed human beings.

Each year the Church gives us a season of renewal so that the life given to us by God can be renewed.  We pray and hope that God will breathe new life into us: that our weary and dry bones will be given new flesh and raised up.  The prophet Ezekiel uses the image of a valley of dry bones, to which he was sent, to talk of God’s promise for the future (Ezekiel 37:1-14).  The Lord tells Ezekiel that he intends to breathe life into these bones.  He intends to give them flesh and bring them to life.  The Lord God is speaking to Ezekiel at a time when Israel (God’s covenanted people) had spent decades already in exile at the hands of the Babylonians.  Their Temple had been destroyed.  It was probably the lowest point in the life of the People of God.  It is at this point that God promised to his people that he will not abandon them to death and destruction.  He will put new flesh and new hope into his weary and worn people.  And he will do the same for us.  He will come to us when we are weary and worn and breathe new life into us.  This is as much true for us as individuals as it is for us as a people, a Church, a community of faith and a nation.  Pentecost is our day.  Pentecost is the day when the Spirit is given to us to lift us up, enliven us, renew our hope, and remove the doubts that we are on our own.

St Paul talks about the same reality in different words.  He tells us, “From the beginning till now the entire creation, as we know, has been groaning in one great act of giving birth; and not only creation, but all of us who possess the first-fruits of the Spirit, we too groan inwardly as we wait for our bodies to be set free (Romans 8:22-27).  Pentecost in this sense is also the day of creation.  It is the day when the work of creation is brought one step further to completion.  We celebrate the Spirit, given to us to ‘lead us to the complete truth’, as John tells us (John 15:26-27; 16:12-15).  And the complete truth is that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead and that he will die no more.  Having raised Christ from the dead he sends the Spirit to Christ’s followers that they will be the first fruits, the first ones to share in the resurrected life of Christ.  Those followers, to whom we are heirs, are to be witnesses to the world, that the God who breathed life into us, as we came into being, will not abandon us but will continue to breathe life into the world and lift it up again and again.

This has been the journey from Ash Wednesday to Easter to Pentecost: almost one hundred days of renewal.  Pentecost is a day for us to call on the Spirit to visit us again.  It is the day of creation, just as is Easter Sunday.  Fifty days later the Lord continues to renew and raise us up.  May he do so until the day of eternity.

Rev. Dr. B. Reed

17 May, 2024