Pentecost--Acts 2:1-13

Pentecost

Pentecost has gotten relatively little notice among United Methodists until the last couple of decades. It still seems far too little celebrated to me. In the current United Methodist calendar, it is the only day of the year in which the liturgical color is RED. This is because United Methodists do not observe Saints' Days. In Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, and Episcopal calendars there are many "red letter days" throughout the year. 

When I was growing up, there were far more RED Sundays in Methodist churches than there are now. Methodists had a whole extra season in their calendar that no one else had. It was called Kingdomtide. It began in August and went until Advent. It's color was WHITE. The season of Pentecost went from the day of Pentecost until the beginning of Kingdomtide. The color for all the Sundays of Pentecost was RED. Having Kingdomtide created a split in the liturgical calendar into thirds. Kingdomtide was the season of God the Father. The seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent and Easter were the seasons of God the Son, Jesus Christ. The season of Pentecost was the season of God the Holy Spirit. It was a beautiful Trinitarian balance, and a third of the Sundays of the year were my favorite liturgical color, RED. Furthermore, Kingdomtide was a Methodist invention. 

That turned out to be the problem. Kingdomtide was a Methodist invention that never caught on with anybody else. By the 1970's United Methodists had abandoned Kingdomtide. That also meant that we abandoned the color RED except for one day a year. I don't want to go back to Kingdomtide, but I do want more RED. Instead we now have for more than half the year our dullest color, a pale light GREEN. 

I have a solution. United Methodists should begin to celebrate saints days. Some saints days are WHITE; some are RED. All of the martyr saints days are RED. I will talk a lot more about this next Wednesday, when we discuss the phrase "communion of saints" in the Apostles' Creed. 

The story of Pentecost is in Acts 2:1-13. You probably know it, but if not, read it now. I want to take what might be a slightly different look at the story. My thinking here is informed by two scholars one ancient, one modern. Irenaeus of Lyons (130-202 A.D.) was the first Celtic bishop and the first Celtic Christian writer. N.T Wright, an Anglican,  is former Bishop of Durham (England) and a now a Professor at Oxford. For both a key theological concept was/is "Recapitulation" (Irenaeus)/"Restoration" (Wright). The concept is complex. Here is the shortest possible explanation. God will bring about the Restoration of all things to the original splendor of their creation, humanity included. The New Testament is the beginning of that process, the beginning of the Kingdom of God.

The story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11) represents the sin of humanity and the disunity of humankind. The chief sin of humanity is wanting to be God (check out Genesis 3). The building of the Tower of Babel was a human effort to reach heaven, to enter the realm of God without any assistance from God. The attempt was thwarted by God's invention of the confusion of languages. 

The story of Pentecost is the reversal of the story of the Tower of Babel. The Holy Spirit gives us a foretaste of the human unity that will come with the Kingdom, the restoration of the creation, including the restoration of the unity of humanity.

That restoration is an important theme for us this very day. Our nation and our world are terribly divided. Coronavirus, Minneapolis, racism, environmental destruction. Our restoration is not to some imaginary Golden Age of America, whenever that was. Rather, our restoration is to the original unity of humankind and of our natural world. I pray that all things may be restored. 

Faithfully,

Christian