PASTOR’S NOTES
What does Pentecost mean to you? I suspect it means one of a number of possibilities. First, it is a reminder of some magical story from long ago where strange things happened that we cannot possibly understand. Second, it might be understood by you as the birthday of the Church. It was on the Pentecost after the Resurrection that the Spirit came and the Church was born. This is true, but it places Pentecost in the ancient past.
Another understanding of Pentecost is a call for the Church to be born again, or anew. John Wesley understood this in the beginning of Methodism. The Church was there, but it was locked in old forms ministering to those who were comfortable in the established Church of the time. Their idea was….if all those “other” people out there want a Church….here we are. Wesley took the Church to the people. He preached where they were and he and his brother Charles adapted many well-known tunes of their time into hymns. They used existing tunes and wrote new words. In other words, they Christianized the secular.
Pentecost is a time to remember the “continuing creation of God.” The Holy Spirit is a very NOW thing. It cannot be put into a box. As we remember how the Church faced resistance from the established religion at the time, we need to also realize that we are prone to put our faith in the past rather than in a present moving to a greater future. Traditions can be useful and helpful, but they can be limiting. Sometimes we need new wine skins.
As we celebrate Pentecost this year understand it as a call to be open to the Spirit. In spite of our desire to have religion comfortable and familiar, the Spirit moves us and calls us to step out in challenging new directions. This is the same Spirit that called Abraham, who was an old man, to go to a place he had never been. There is a difference between a whim and the Spirit, of course. We need to be grounded in the basics of the faith to handle the new thing. But make no mistake; the new thing does come. We are called to move forward, no matter how old or comfortable we are in the faith. Pentecost is a reminder that faith calls us forward to the new challenge God has for us.
This year Pentecost is May 11. That date, however, is only a reminder of our being given a fresh day every day. Faith on.
Jerry M. James
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