The lectionary readings for this week are Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:24-34, 35b; Romans 8:22-27; and John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15. I will focus on the reading from Acts. It serves as the foundation for Pentecost, which occurs on the seventh Sunday after Easter and is one of the main events of the Christian liturgical year. I am writing this entry from the perspective of describing Pentecost for someone having only a passing familiarity with it.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Pentecost celebrated in a Christian context dates from the 1st century, and with accounts of it appearing in the writings of Irenaeus and Tertullian. For churches that use vestments, the color of Pentecost is red, symbolizing the love of the Holy Spirit or the tongues of fire. In Italy, there is a custom of scattering rose petals from the ceilings of churches to commemorate the tongues called Pascha rosatum.
The book of Acts is credited as being written by the same author of the Gospel of Luke. The setting of the passage is the Jewish spring barley harvest, described in Lev. 23 and Exodus 34:22, which fell fifty days after Passover.
The writer describes a gathering of Diasphora Jews who have come to Jerusalem to celebrate. There are both Greek and Arab Jews, and their places of origin include Egypt, Libya, and Rome. As the Episcopal priest Jim Callahan writes, it was a great day for multicultural, and a bad day for future lay readers faced with this passage: “Parthians, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Cappadocians, Phrygians, Pamphyilians,” etc.
The beginning of the passage describes the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the disciples. The author uses the metaphor of a “violent wind,” then states, “Divided tongues (γλώσσα), as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability” (2-4).
Shockingly, the author does not show the Jews expressing surprise at the extraordinary image of “tongues of fire” resting on each of the disciples. One can either assume the author uses them as a metaphor, or that his implication is that the tongues were only visible to disciples—or that the assembled company possesses exceptional savoir faire.
The author does, however, show the company expressing shock that each group hears its native language. Thus what the disciples display is not glossolalia, but coherent speech. Some are perplexed, and others wonder if the disciples are drunk: “filled with new wine” (13). Peter’s (to me hilarious) response is that they are not drunk, as “it is only nine o’clock in the morning” (15).
Curiously Luke does not purport to transcribe what the disciples were actually saying. Peter is thus left with the key speech. He continues, “No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
In those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s
great and glorious day.
Peter is citing Joel 2:28-32. Readers might respond to the lines about slaves in different ways. Some might see this passage as an indication of the egalitarian quality of prophetic utterance that the Spirit enables, while others might reject what they see as an implied divinely ordained social hierarchy: as portrayed in these passages, God quickens slaves with prophesy, but does not seem to indicate that they will lose their title of "slaves."
Both the language of Joel and the language of the description of the Holy Spirit are in keeping with other passages from Hebrew Scripture describing theophanies, or appearances of God on earth. In Exodus 19:16-18, Yahweh descends to Mount Sinai in fire, wrapping the mountaintop in smoke. The “rush of a violent wind” signalling the outpouring of the Spirit recalls Genesis 1.2: “. . . while a might wind swept over the face of the waters”. In Luke the Theologian, Francois Bovon cites J Potin’s work on parallels between the gift of the Holy Spirit in Acts and the gift of the Law in Exodus. Potin writes that the exegesis of the Sinai passages in the Jewish community would have influenced the eschatological reflections of the Acts audience: “. . . in a theophany, God is associated with God’s regenerate people. As Acts 2 unfolds with and ideal portrayal of the community of the new covenant, this exegetical influence is confirmed” (Bovon, 259).
Following the German scholar E. Lohse, Bovon describes how, through this narrative, the author of Acts has two main goals: 1) “to signal the beginning of a new stage of redemptive history,” and 2) to establish the universality of the community, indicated by the broad swathe of people (Bovon, 252).
Callahan on the significance of Pentecost for congregations today writes,
“We are not told what they said . . . We are told, however, of the greatest of all miracles: everyone in the house understood each other.” Callahan credits the foundation of modern Christianity, not with Pentecost, but with Good Friday: Christ crucified “asked the Father to forgive us, and a few bewildered, broken-hearted women and men wandered off wondering how they were going to live with that. Pentecost was the day they got their answer: with great joy, and with wind and fire and Spirit, making them look like a bunch of happy drunks in the midst of a numbingly sober and sour world.
They learned that in belonging to God they belonged also to each other. The joy derived from their trusting contained power, power not only to gladden but also to heal and redeem.”
--Elizabeth Fels
Sources:
Bovon, Francois. Luke the Theologian (2nd ed). Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2006.
Coogan, Michael, Ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible (3rd ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. 188-198 NT.
Catholic Encyclopedia quoted by New Advent here:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15614b.htm
“Windblown (Acts 2:1-11)” by Jim Callahan, published by The Christian Century:
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1963
No comments:
Post a Comment