The Very First Birthday And Today's Pentecost Celebration

This is a sign of God's second great act of creation.

In the majestic "hymn of creation" found in Genesis 1, God's Spirit hovers over the primal waters and calls out new life on the planet we call home. Six parallel stanzas describe God fashioning a bountiful earth with an amazing array of beloved creatures, culminating in Adam and Eve being formed in "God's image."

God blesses the pair and charges them with the responsibility to take care of all that has been created, and to manage it well on the Creator's behalf.

Genesis 2 gives some additional details, stating that God formed the first human (adamah, Hebrew for dust) from organic material from the earth, shaped it into human form, then breathed into it the breath of God's Spirit (ruach, Hebrew for wind or breath). Human life begins.

Fast forward to Acts 2, in the New Testament. Here God's Spirit is again at work, this time as a roaring "wind" (spirit) bringing a newly formed body of people to life. So we celebrate Pentecost today as a second mighty work of creation in which God's heaven comes down to earth to enflame and energize the followers of Jesus, a group of twelve young, novice disciples that had grown to a community of 120.

This small body is commissioned by Jesus to faithfully carry on the mission he began, which was, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, to "announce good news to the poor, proclaim freedom for prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, liberation for those who are oppressed, and to announce the year of Jubilee."  Jesus had told them to prayerfully wait in Jerusalem until the promised "breath" of God's Spirit would come and a transformed new humanity would come into being.

This is the beginning of what was to become a worldwide movement, millions of people who are still in need of much transformation even today, but this was the dramatic beginning of the Kingdom of God movement on earth we call the church.

It is not insignificant that the Festival of Pentecost, or Feast of Weeks, is a Jewish celebration of both the giving of the Law and a harvest celebration. The first fruits of God's harvest on this day included a diverse group of people from many languages and nations from all over the then known world.

May this same Spirit of Pentecost breathe on us with gale force today.