Jesus’ disciples would have recognized the sound of a mighty wind as a sign of God’s Spirit. We need to be attentive to the intervention of the Spirit in our lives.
Here’s a transcript:
This coming Sunday is Pentecost Sunday, so of course I’m thinking about the second chapter of Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:1-21).
As Luke tells the story, Jesus’ followers remained in Jerusalem following his resurrection. Fifty days after Passover, the Jewish calendar celebrated another holiday known as Sukkot (correction: Shavuot) in Hebrew but known by the name Pentecost or “fifty days” in Greek to show its relationship to Passover fifty days before.
We now celebrate it forty-nine days after Easter Sunday. We don’t carry it into the Monday.
While they were there, gathered together in some room (a large enough for a fair group of them), they heard the “sound like the rush of a mighty wind and it filled the room where they were meeting.” Wind has long been associated with the movement of God. In fact, go back to the very first couple verses of Genesis and you will find that the spirit of God, the “Ruach Adonai,” the breath of God, the wind of God (“ruach” means all of those), moved over the waters.
So this sound of a mighty wind, well, those gathered followers of Jesus would have associated that with the presence of God’s Spirit.
That sound, and whatever was happening within them, drove them out of the room, out of the building, out into the streets where lots of people had gathered in order to celebrate the Pentecost holiday, and there they began to speak. And now the Ruach Adonai, the Spirit of God, had a new effect. They spoke in languages that they did not understand, but the people visiting from elsewhere did. “Are not these all Galileans? How is it that we hear them, in our own languages, speaking of God’s deeds of power?”
In our day, we are sometimes reluctant to acknowledge the presence of the Holy Spirit. There are theologies that say that the Spirit no longer intervenes in human life. there are theologies that say that God, having given us instruction and given us guidance and given us Christ, has let us go on to follow the directions we’ve been given and to accept the forgiveness that we’ve been offered. I don’t think those are right.
I think that the Spirit of God, that mighty wind, continues to be with us today. Not everybody directly experiences it. Those first disciples heard it in the room in which they were meeting. They didn’t bring the wind out into the streets with them. What they brought was the word about the wind. They brought the testimony about the Spirit. They brought their witness about the mighty acts of God.
It is upon us to be attentive to the movement of the Spirit in our live — because it may not always be as grand and unmistakable as the sound of a mighty wind — to be attentive to the movement of the Spirit in our lives, and then to bring that experience to others — out into the streets, if you will — so that they too may know about the mighty acts of a gracious God.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
