The end-times Spirit comes at Pentecost in Acts 2
This Sunday is the feast of Pentecost, fifty days from Passover (hence the name), in the Jewish calendar the festival of Shavuot (‘weeks’), one of the three great pilgrim festivals (with Passover and Sukkot, ‘Tabernacles’). It was the beginning of the wheat harvest, but also celebrated the giving of the Torah on Sinai, and so had new significance in the light of Jesus. Where the Torah was our guide for living faithfully to God, now the Spirit not only shows us what obedience is, but empowers us to live in obedience. And those who receive the Spirit are now the first harvest (the ‘firstfruits’, 2 Thess 2.13, James 1.18, Rev 14.4), as the Spirit is the first harvest (Romans 8.23) of the wonderful things to come when Jesus returns, and shapes us in the life of Jesus, himself the first harvest of the resurrection from the dead (1 Cor 15.20).
The passages set in the lectionary are Acts 2.1–21, John 7 or 20, and 1 Corinthians 12. You can find written commentary on 1 Corinthians 12 here, and video discussion of it here.
The reading from Acts 2 is a long passage, and there is much to say about it. Against some popular readings, we need to note that the wind and fire were not literal but similes for Luke. There is powerful symbolic resonance with the ‘tongues as of fire’ being one thing which is divided amongst them, and these ‘tongues’ give them ‘tongues’, that is, languages, to speak. Fire in Scripture is a symbol of purification, and this denotes the presence of the Holy Spirit. The language of ‘as the Spirit gave…’ resonates with Paul’s language of the Spirit giving gifts in 1 Cor 12.
