Keeping Time by Ramshaw Gail

Author:Ramshaw, Gail [Ramshaw, Gail and Mons Teig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL006160, REL055020
ISBN: 978-1-4514-7822-8
Publisher: Fortress Press
Published: 2009-01-05T16:00:00+00:00

Pentecost

The day. The celebration of Easter concludes with the Eighth Sunday of Easter, the Day of Pentecost. Just as Sunday is the eighth day, the new day for the Christian life, so Pentecost is the eighth Easter, Christ’s giving over of his Spirit to the church. Once again, the lectionary superimposes the theology of John onto the narrative of Luke.

The celebration is set on the fiftieth day, in observance of the chro­nology from Luke. The Jewish festival of Pentecost is the observance of the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. By fixing the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, Luke layers the assembly of the believers onto the people of Israel, the tongues of fire on their heads onto the fire on Mount Sinai, the Holy Spirit onto God’s giving of the law. For Jews encountering this narrative, the Christian message would be clear: God is doing a new thing with the pattern of the old sacred story.

Christians since the second century have kept this fiftieth day as a celebration. Over the centuries, the day took on the unique emphasis of the descent of the Holy Spirit, and the day became disjointed from Easter as a festival, and even a season, of its own. The three-year lec­tionary reconnects Pentecost with Easter and appoints gospel readings from John. According to John’s gospel, the resurrection of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit are not separated events: the meaning of one is the meaning of the other. Pentecost proclaims the death and resurrection of Christ by celebrating the outpouring of the Spirit of the risen Lord on the community of believers.

The readings. The lectionary provides the option of reading Acts 2 as either the first or the second reading. The narrative includes many biblical images of the coming of God: wind from heaven, flames of fire, miraculous speech, the last days, prophecies, visions, and cosmo­logical catastrophes. Luke means to indicate that the entire populated world responds to the coming of the Spirit. The gospel readings come from John: Jesus breathing his Spirit into the disciples on the evening of Easter Day; or Jesus calling all to come to drink of his Spirit; or Jesus preaching about the coming of the Spirit of truth; or Jesus telling Philip and us that the Spirit of truth abides with and in us. According to John, the mystery of the death of Christ is realized in his resurrec­tion, his continuing presence in the assembly of believers, and the gift of his Spirit within us.

The lectionary suggests for each year a narrative from the Old Tes­tament that complements the story of Pentecost: in year A, the nearly comic tale of those Israelites who complained that the spirit of Moses was alighting on several outsiders; in year B, Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the dry bones; and in year C, the tale of the Tower of Babel. Each story provides some of the background to the New Testament’s presentation of the gift of the Holy Spirit enlivening the earth and fill­ing us with the language of faith.

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