Fire and wind will forever define that first Pentecost. A violent wind that filled the entire house where they were sitting. Fifty days after Jesus had appeared to them by walking through a door, showing them his grisly wounds, and breathing on them his peace, they were still bound by four walls and a locked door. And after the rush of wind, fire. Flames of fire, tongues of fire, which came to rest on each of those gathered. You think God had their attention, now? The wind and fire wasn’t just for dramatic effect—Luke in the book of Acts tells us that these natural elements accompanied the presence of God’s Holy Spirit into that space, and “all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as God gave them ability.” The creative, transforming power of God’s Spirit had their attention.
In the gospel reading we meet Jesus on the final day of the Jewish Festival of Booths—a festival that included a ritual in which the temple priests would lead a procession out of the city to a sacred fountain, gather water, return to the city and pour water down the temple steps. Jesus had already made his presence known at that temple on an earlier day of the festival—teaching to the crowd and re-hashing his controversial healing on the sabbath. Before the Pharisees and temple priests are able to arrest him, Jesus cries out on the last and most holy day of the festival, “let anyone who is thirsty come to me…as the scripture says, ‘out of a believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” John adds an important explanation, “he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive.”
Water, wind, fire. Now, we can’t talk about these elements without bringing to mind their potential for destruction. In an era of climate change, we know the havoc that floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and wildfires can unleash on communities.
But we also know water, wind and fire to be renewing and re-generative. And looking back through the stories of salvation, we know that Moses encountered God in a burning bush, God led the Israelites out of Egypt with a pillar of fire, and a great wind announced God’s presence on the top of Mount Sinai. We know that it was after the flood that God suspended a multi-colored bow in the sky to signal a promise of the earth’s salvation, it was through a sea that the Israelites escaped Pharaoh, and it was water that healed Naaman’s leprosy. And later we hear Jesus talking about water—living water—the kind that brings salvation to a Samaritan woman with a checkered history, heals a man born blind, gushes up to eternal life, quenches our every thirst, and flows back out again into the world.
It’s been longer than 50 days that we’ve been locked in our homes like the disciples had been on that first Pentecost. And, although Jesus has breathed his COVID-free peace into our lives, we’re still barricaded in by uncertainty and anxiety that this deadly disruption has caused. We’re thirsting for some hope, some reason to believe that things will get better, that the chaos will end, that even an ounce of normalcy will return to our lives. As we sit in our homes, stressed, lacking motivation and burned out, we could use a spark. We could use our own Pentecost event. Give us that violent wind, refining fire, and living water to renew us and transform us.
Transform us, God does. We are those disciples cooped up, unmotivated, anxious, terrified. The promise has been made in baptism and affirmed whenever we encounter that living water but especially today: we, too, are filled with the dynamic Pentecost power of God—the power that refreshes, and re-creates, comforts and heals.
Fifty-one days ago, Jesus stood among the disciples, saying, “receive the Holy Spirit.” Today, God brings upon them that same Spirit transforming them to go forth and proclaim God’s message of love and salvation, revealed in the resurrected Christ—to all who thirst—and doesn’t everyone thirst from time to time. And we, thirsty pilgrims, now follow in the steps of those disciples, “given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good,” claims the author of First Corinthians. The Day of Pentecost marks a pivot point for our mission the rest of the year. Our mission begins again to go out and proclaim the Easter good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
As businesses and churches around the country consider “re-opening,” it’s important for us to remember that regardless of what decisions our congregation makes in the coming weeks, our church, God’s church, has never been closed. We’ve continued to fulfill that Pentecost mission. We’ve continued to pray, work for justice, respond to the needs of our neighbors, and share God’s good news. As those disciples can attest, the church was never just what happened behind closed doors. God’s Spirit at Pentecost thrust the church out into the world, for good.
We don’t know what will happen tomorrow, we don’t know what the next month or next year will hold, but we do know and trust the one who holds the future. We do know and trust that today the Spirit of fire burns within us. Today, God’s ruach, God’s breath, the same breath that hovered over the waters at creation, stirs within us. Today the Spirit becomes rivers of living water flowing in us, through our hearts, and back out into the world. God has our attention. God’s creative, transforming Pentecost Spirit shines for us now, equips and sends us forth, to tell of God’s deeds of power, God’s name emblazoned on our hearts forever.