In the Parish: Why is Pentecost undervalued?

PENTECOST as a festival made little or no impact on me as a baby. I might be found crouched between the pews in the back of the small country church, my Sunday-school workbook resting on a humid hassock as I lazily colored barely enough to realize my attendance stamp (remember those?), which, even in that exact rural backwater, was recognised as old-fashioned.

Fast-forwarding to young parenthood, I used to be startled one Sunday by the looks of jumpers and scarves of vivid scarlet, making a wierd contrast to the duns and heathers of the remainder of the church-going outfits. “It’s Pentecost!” crowed an over- enthusiastic curate. “We have fun by wearing red!” This was my first introduction — a congregation-wide wardrobe malfunction — to certainly one of the key feast days of the Christian Church.

TO BE fair, Pentecost was at all times going to be a struggle, because it has not been assigned any exchange of consumer goods, not even curiously-moulded chocolate shapes which once were eggs but have now morphed into all the pieces from toolkits to spaniels. Added to that is the curiously incorporeal nature of the Pentecost event: births and deaths are comprehensible, even miracle births, and deaths followed by resurrections. The coming of the Holy Spirit, its appearance as tongues of fireplace, rushing wind, a multiplicity of various languages — these are hard to understand, and even harder to clarify and make relevant.

Where, then, to begin? Perhaps with the Tower of Babel, the Old Testament story that’s linked with Pentecost. The Jenga-like activity of attempting to construct a tower higher than anything ever built before resonates with everyone who has seen the increasingly tall buildings dominating our cityscapes, witnesses to the drive of human beings towards the larger, taller, and ever more imposing.

With Babel, our obsession with dominating our landscape and our communities — which began so way back and continues today — received its nemesis not within the collapse of the tower, but within the disintegration of the community that had engaged upon its construction. This left the edifice half-built — a monument to self-aggrandisement and pride. The monoglot builders were scattered and “confused” with multiple languages amongst them, their ambition to “make a reputation for themselves” temporarily crushed. Thus, the message apparently goes, God deals with those that seek superiority over humanity and God.

FAST-FORWARD again to those heady days after Jesus’s resurrection: days full of the strange and unexpected appearances of Christ; periods of pleasure and drama followed by times of waiting in hope, gathered together in a single place, not so as to out-achieve God, but to await the fulfilment of his promise.

The disciples were in Jerusalem because Jesus had told them to remain there and await the Holy Spirit. Everyone else was in Jerusalem since it was the Festival of Weeks when the Jewish people celebrated God’s gift of the Law and thus their identity as His people. There all of them were, witnesses to the incredible event that was the gift of the Holy Spirit to the disciples, accompanied by the “sound of rushing wind” and “divided tongues as of fireplace” resting upon everyone’s head — evidence of the indwelling of the Spirit in every individual. Ontological change, in truth, which is the largest thing that may occur to a human being. Renewal, rebirth, all the pieces is similar and yet utterly changes.

THE Tower of Babel stays a warning of our inclination to overreach ourselves, however the scattering of those that gathered to compete with God has been redeemed. Instead of being flung to the 4 corners of the earth in disarray and confusion, we see, through the lens of Pentecost, a world where diversity will not be a punishment but a joy — where buildings are not any longer the places where God may be found, but where every place is holy ground, and every one is potentially a receptacle for the Holy Spirit.

AlamyPentecost fresco by Mikhail Vrubel in St Cyril’s church, Kyiv

Speaking many languages isn’t any longer a tool to cause “confusion”, but a present enabling the transmission of reports so vital that its meaning can’t be mangled. The scattering of God’s people like a lot confetti enables the spread of the news of his love for every created thing, communicated in ways tailored to each community; and, identical to confetti, it gets all over the place.

The “tongues of fireplace” are an echo of the burning bush that called Moses to his ministry and that calls each of us to ours: the sign of God’s presence within the Temple and his Spirit inside us, calling us to a living, loving relationship, in harmony with God and neighbour. Just because the Word became flesh, so, too, has the Church.

SO, HOW to big up this undervalued feast day? Traditionally, those wanting to expand beyond “Colour Me Pentecost” have focused on the festival because the “birthday of the church”, with cake, birthday banners and balloons. The danger with this, in fact, is that it encourages us to look round affectionately on the (normally) barely shabby constructing — a little bit bit cold, definitely in need of something being fixed somewhere — through which we gather for worship, when in truth Pentecost signalled the demolition of the Church as buildings and its relocation from bricks and mortar to flesh and blood.

I’m not even sure about tongues-of-fire headbands, although making straw and paper flame-launchers will endear you to over-active children (search this on the web). These give attention to the symbol quite than the event itself, which, like many of the really good things, is a mystery and subsequently beyond description. Rather, fill the church with the flowers and greenery that a major celebration merits, and encourage people to take seriously their latest, modified selves by genuinely loving God and loving their neighbour.

PENTECOST is greater than just wearing jolly red jumpers, waving red and yellow streamers, and shouting out “pleased birthday” in as many various languages as your church community can lay claim to. This will not be to disregard these activities completely, nonetheless. It is as much as every certainly one of us to speak the glory of the gospel in ways adapted to those we are attempting to succeed in. Our remit is the entire earth, and our methods of communication ought to be as diverse because the 7000-plus different languages spoken on it.

But allow us to not limit ourselves, or God, reducing a mystery to a sound-bite. Like baptism and ordination, Pentecost celebrates the entire recalibration of ourselves from flesh-and-blood mortals to adopted children of the living God: residents of the New Jerusalem, living in hope and infused with the Spirit.

Perhaps, in spite of everything, it doesn’t need gaudily wrapped gifts or peculiarly shaped chocolate: it’s amazing just because it is.  

• Pentecost redeems the Tower of Babel. The people now not seek to succeed in as much as heaven to search out God, but have fun the inbreathing of the Holy Spirit. From God-Out-There, to God-Everywhere.

• A multiplicity of languages isn’t any longer designed to confuse, but to spread the news. Diversity is to be celebrated: everyone seems to be invited to the party.

• Celebrate Pentecost in ways in which have meaning for your individual particular community, whether that is wearing red, waving banners or a quiet recognition that the church will not be a constructing, however the individuals who gather in it.

• Don’t run away from the mystery. Acknowledge it, embrace it, and let it change our lives.

The Revd Dr Sally Welch is Vicar of the Kington Group within the diocese of Hereford.