There is a scene in the Lord of the Rings stories, just near the end. The two hobbits, Frodo and Sam, have carried the ring of evil all the way to Mount Doom, where it was created. They have thrown it back into the fires where it is destroyed. They just get out before the mountain erupts - and we see them marooned on a huge rock - lava flowing all around them, the mountain blowing rocks and flames. They weep about what might have been, and Frodo says to Sam “I’m glad you’re here with me, Samwise Gamgee, here at the end of all things.”
The city of Jerusalem was a busy place during the celebration of the first harvest, the Feast of Weeks known as Pentecost. Pentecost was part of the Hebrew celebrations in the religious year, and for the disciples it was a natural thing to go to Jerusalem for their religious observances. Many people would be there, to be part of this celebration to commemorate God's bounty to them in the first harvest of the year. Others would be there on a pilgrimage, or to study there, or just soak up the richness of their Jewish heritage. It was in this time - around 30 AD - that the unexplainable happened.
Jesus had already promised the coming of the Spirit. On a much earlier occasion, Jesus had stood, at the later harvest celebration, the Feast of Booths, and offered an invitation:
"If any one is thirsty, they can come to me for drink. The Scripture says that whoever believes, from their “innermost being rivers of living water shall flow.'" John tells us that the disciples had not yet received the Sprit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”
Well, why Pentecost now? Didn’t we just have Pentecost in the spring? Yes, we did. But Pentecost is not just one Sunday, nor even really one season. Pentecost - the coming of the Spirit - should be all year every year. In our church year, today is the last Sunday in the season of Pentecost. Next Sunday is the last one in the Christian church year - known as Reign of Christ. The Sunday after that is the beginning of a new church year - the first Sunday of Advent. We also have a study group beginning, called “The Church We Are Becoming”, based on the Book of Acts. The very first part of the book of Acts is about the coming of the Spirit, and the time of Pentecost.
There is something extremely important here, which is crucial to our life as a community. If you minimise, or remove, the work of the Spirit, you have taken the very core out of Christianity. Without the Spirit, Christian discipleship would be impossible. There is no life without the power which gives life, no community without the Spirit.
The disciples were all together on the day of Pentecost, and they really had no idea what was going to happen. They only knew that Jesus had told them to wait in Jerusalem. The sudden-ness of the arrival of the Spirit took them all by surprise, and they were taken aback - and likely frightened. It was a noise like a mighty rushing wind, "a violent, rushing wind," and all the people were totally "immersed" in the Spirit.
Together with this mighty wind, appeared "tongues as of fire," offers us a marvelous picture of what the Spirit was doing. But we need to be careful that we do understand what the passages here mean. The kind of tongues mentioned were known languages - much as Danish, Swiss and Austrian are related to German, or so the languages heard were similar, and yet different. Far from being simply noises or sounds, they were able to communicate in the known languages or dialects, and be understood. Nor was it a forced or artificial experience, but the Spirit making it possible, opening them to understanding in a new way.
In the same way, today, the Holy Spirit is working in us. We want to be sure that we don’t do anything to inhibit the work of the Spirit. The great German theologian, Jurgen Moltmann, talked about the church in the “power of the Spirit”. For Moltmann, the church is the open community of the Spirit, and the active ministry of the church community. It cannot happen without the action of the Spirit. This means, of course, that the church is always “becoming” something else. It means that the church always has to be in the process of reinventing itself - or perhaps I should say being reinvented by the Spirit.
I come back to the two small hobbits, Frodo and Sam, there at what appears to be the end of all things. They both believe that their lives are over. They weep for what might have been. But the cataclysmic changes, far from being the end of all things - turn out to be a new beginning in which the worst side of the human condition is overcome, and replaced by true peace, true shalom.
It seems to me that is the meaning of Pentecost and the coming of the Spirit, A fresh wind blew through Jerusalem, and with it came dramatic changes - but for a reason. What may appear to us to be the end of things, or the end of something as we know it, has all the potential to be a beginning for something fresh and energetic, something which calls on the discipleship of all of us, to do whatever it is we can with optimism and energy. May it be so.
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