What Is Pentecost & Why Do We Celebrate It?
Christians across the world today and throughout history have set aside this coming Sunday to celebrate “Pentecost.”
On Pentecost, the Church remembers the events of Acts chapter 2, when, after days of waiting in the Upper Room in Jerusalem, God was faithful to His promise and sent the Holy Spirit to fall on Jesus’s disciples, empowering them all to speak in all the many languages of the Jews gathered in Jerusalem from all nations for the Feast of Weeks. The Holy Spirit also gave the Apostle Peter boldness to stand and preach a sermon that caused 3,000 people to give their lives to Christ in one day.
Thus, Pentecost focuses on God, the Holy Spirit, the 3rd member of the Trinity who effects and actualizes the promises of Jesus to “be with [us] always to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20), to cause us to “receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on [us]” (Acts 1:8), and to be the promised Advocate whom “the Father will send in [Jesus’s] name, [and who] will teach you all things and will remind you of everything [Jesus]” (John 14:26).
On Pentecost, we remember the God who has sent the Holy Spirit for the first time to the disciples in history, 50 days after Jesus’s resurrection on Easter. We also rejoice in the God who continues to send His Holy Spirit to all who believe in Jesus as Savior and follow Him as Lord. God’s Holy Spirit indwells the hearts of believers, baring sure and steady witness within us of the truth of our salvation in Christ. The Spirit empowers followers of Jesus with gifts for ministry. The Spirit allows us to say yes to the things of God, even as we say no to the things of our flesh. In this way, the Spirit enables to us to grow to become more like Jesus. This is why on Pentecost, and throughout our faith journey, we pray for God to send His Holy Spirit upon us as His people: that we might be those who are regularly being filled with the fullness of Christ’s presence, power, and love ministered to us through the Holy Spirit.
Pentecost reminds us that our faith is relational and participatory, and that these practices of relating to God and participating in His Kingdom will for the world are enabled and empowered by God’s own Spirit that He generously and freely gives to us as His people. We need the Holy Spirit to fill us daily to do the things God has called us to do, to be like Jesus, and to reveal Christ’s Kingdom in our world. The Spirit reminds us that God loves us, that God wants to be with us, and that one day God’s Kingdom and our world will be one, Jesus will come back, and all things will be made new. In the meantime, God has given us the Holy Spirit to empower us to be Christ’s Kingdom agents revealing what God’s Kingdom will be like in the period between the resurrection and Christ’s second coming.
May you be filled afresh with the Holy Spirit this Pentecost. And may your mind and heart receive fresh and enlarged vision for how great God’s promises are to us in Christ, and how amazing it is that through faith and by the Holy Spirit, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in me and lives in you!