A Pentecost Meditation on Acts 2

But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel;

 And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God,

I will pour out of 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:

 And on my servants and on my handmaidens

I will pour out in those days of my Spirit;

and they shall prophesy:

 And I will shew wonders in heaven above,

and signs in the earth beneath;

blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke:

 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood,

before the great and notable day of the Lord come:

 And it shall come to pass,

that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

In the modern contemplation of Pentecost, it is easy to sanitize it from its ancient Hebrew roots.  We are a society with different politics and laws, different public sentiments and technologies.  We do still have those who make their living by the sweat of their brow in the trades of their professions, laboring in fields of agriculture and construction and transportation, but the development of technological tools and industrial processes have shifted the balance of our population into other endeavors.  We are of the information age, where our correspondence travels at the speed of light across an electronic web of interconnected systems, or broadcasts at the speed of radio frequencies bouncing off global satellites to every corner of the globe.

And yet, we live on the same earth and under the same sky as our ancient ancestors did.  We can see phenomena in the heavens above and the earth beneath, such as moons turned to blood and the sun turned to darkness, explaining them as the simple orchestrations of physics upon celestial bodies in motion.  Our bias in the information age is to see everything in nature, including ourselves, as merely material elements working under the forces of energy and mass which govern the way we see things operate by the naked eye, the microscope, or the telescope.  And to be sure, our observation, hypotheses, theories, and laws, our testing and replication of processes in the natural world, have brought forth wonderful discoveries which have aided human endeavors from exploration, to industry, politics, and war.  We, in our age, have taken the same earth and the same sky as our ancestors lived in, and used them differently, learning through observation and test how to predict the weather, the markets, and even populations.  Our age describes what we see in ways intended to manipulate the heavens and the earth to our advantage, and much manipulation we have achieved.

Of course, achieving advantage from the heavens and the earth bring forth questions about who is to receive such advantages, and who will not.  For the entire season of Easter behind us, the western world and our nation in particular, stood in fear of the observed natural process of viral contagion, and used the tools available to give advantage to some deemed “essential” and took advantage away from those deemed “non-essential.”  Lock down orders affected some more than  others, while somehow politicians were able to get their hair styled even as they put community hair stylists out of work.  Various retailers and industries were allowed to function, while others where shut down, and as might have been expected in our materialist age, the Church was almost universally deemed not only “non-essential,” but a danger to public health worthy of extra penalty and restriction (all Constitutional protections to the contrary forgotten).  Over the last several days, violent riots of racial tenor have burned and looted various cities, where their participants have claimed to receive less advantage than they deserve, whether from law enforcement, politics, or industry.  The materialism of our information age is coming to full flower in our land, where various individuals and groups vie against each other in their will to power, seeking advantage taken from others by cleverness or force.  We are watching before our eyes the emergence of a Nietzschean landscape propped up on voluminous knowledge of the natural world, devoid of the wisdom necessary to use it well.

And yet, we live and move and breath upon the same earth and under the same heavens of the ancient Prophets and Apostles to whom the Word of the Lord came before us.  To them, the God of Heaven and Earth spoke wisdom and meaning into their lives, so that they might not just know the world around them by experience and observation, but understand why both it and they exist in the first place.  Knowing the why and the who behind heaven and earth infuse our knowledge with wisdom, allow us to see meaning in the course of history, our own times, and in times yet to come.  Our Lord taught us that we would see signs in the heaven above and on the earth beneath, before the great and terrible Day of the Lord—signs which actually did come in the days of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and which will come again at His final return.  On the day of Pentecost, the heavens blew forth upon the earth the Spirit of the Living God, a gift of power, wisdom, and life to all those who would repent of their wickedness and believe in Jesus.  Signs of fire and wonders of language poured forth, so that the Gospel of Jesus Christ might be heard and believed in every tongue under heaven.  In the days which followed, miracles of conversion happened by the thousands, as did healings, exorcisms, and resurrections.  These signs and wonders accompanied the Gospel of Jesus as His disciples carried His Word everywhere they went, knowing that everyone who believed on His Name would be saved from their wicked and adulterous generation.

So, too, in our day.  In our wicked and adulterous generation, where there is blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke, where people are deluded into prisons of knowledge without wisdom, fanned into mobs for the pursuit of advantage one over the other, manipulated by corrupt and Machiavellian politicians into perpetual slavery and abuse, the Gospel of Jesus Christ comes with the power of the Holy Spirit, that every soul which turns and believes in Him shall be saved.  Those who carry this Gospel of Jesus through their faith and baptism, are indwelt by the Spirit of the Living God to accomplish all things necessary to bear witness to that Gospel.  Still today, signs and wonders accompany the preaching of Jesus, where the miracle of conversion, faith, and repentance, is at times also accompanied by other miracles oriented to the same end.  Such preaching shows each and every soul that their meaning, their source and their fulfillment, is in the same God who made the heavens and the earth in which they now live, that the Cross of Jesus Christ has reconciled them to their Creator, and that they have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit that their new lives in Jesus would be marked by His power, wisdom, and truth.  For us today, as for our ancestors long ago, and for generations yet to be born upon this good earth and under this good heaven, the Gospel of Jesus comes with power to give life and meaning to those lost and enslaved to ways of death.

May the faithful arise today in faith and repentance, carrying forth the Gospel of Salvation in Jesus Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit of the God of Heaven and Earth, to work the miraculous conversion of souls in our time, to flip this materialist information age on its head, and put all the powers of darkness to flight.  Amen.