When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout people from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in their own language.
And they were amazed and wondered, saying, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each of us in our own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphyiia, Egypt and parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God."
And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others, mocking, said, "They are filled with new wine."
But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: "People of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. For these people are not drunk as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day ...
"Hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst as you yourselves know—this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. But God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it ..."
Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "What shall we do?" And Peter said to them, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins: and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children and to all that are far off, every one whom the Lord our God calls."
And he testified with many other words and exhorted them, saying, "Save yourselves from this crooked generation." So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
And fear came upon every soul; and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need.
And day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people.—Acts 2:1-15, 22-24, 37-47
William Stringfellow once remarked that Pentecost is the most political feast of the church year. The trouble was, he could be heard to say much the same for the events of Holy Week, Easter, or even Epiphany, in their own seasons. He wasn't being imprecise. The festival was at hand, the text was open, and he was simply alive to the Spirit's militant implication in common history.
Stringfellow was right. With the possible qualification of the Passion week events in Jerusalem, Pentecost marks the most open, direct, and public encounter with the powers that is celebrated in the liturgical year.
Pentecost, of course, is not a season as such, but a feast that culminates the Great Fifty Days of Eastertide. It was, and is, connected inseparably to the previous events of the Passion and resurrection, by way of completion.
The discovery of Pentecost, in recent years, as suitable for public, political witness is not, as some believers and nonbelievers alike must think, curious or weird. It is liturgically fitting and theologically to the point. Pentecost signifies freedom: freedom now, public freedom, freedom from fear.
It's no coincidence that several of the resurrection occurrences transpire behind closed doors. This has less to do with the teleportive properties of the resurrection body than with the locked-door mentality of the disciples. If I read properly the story immediately preceding Pentecost, there are 120 disciples packed into one dark room. They have been re-gathered in the Easter event, but they're still laying low, skulking about, looking over their shoulders, and whispering the glad news.
They have good reason to be afraid. The authorities want them exactly so. Remember that when Peter denies Jesus and slinks off, he's playing out the political script that the authorities have written. The Gospels make their logic very clear. Caiaphas says that it would be better for one man to die than for this thing to get out of hand and bring the Roman heel down upon them all. There is a fragile framework, a tenuous political arrangement that can't afford to be upset. They do away with Jesus in order to crush a budding movement. Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will run for cover.
The question is this: Will the movement be ruled by fear? Will the followers be contained and confined? Rendered timid and silent? Pentecost comes with a bold answer: No.
The story in Acts 2 begins presumably in the upper room and ends in the streets of Jerusalem. For the life of me I can't figure out how they got there—carried by the big wind? It's as if the walls dissolve. Or in a reversal of the resurrected Christ's passage into their midst, they pass through the walls and out. The disciples take the resurrection to the streets; they go public.
To the authorities it must appear as political madness, an acute and, they hope, isolated case of sanctified anarchism. Some people say they have had too much to drink. Granted this refers in part to the inspired and ecstatic utterances, but even more so to their reckless courage. After what's been done to Jesus, you'd have to be either crazy or drunk to be shouting his name in the streets and pointing accusing fingers at the guilty executioners.
Heretofore the disciples have beheld Christ; now they experience the concrete and practical freedom of the resurrection. No political authority any place or any time can shut that down.
PENTECOST MEANS SPEAKING without confusion. I don't pretend to understand precisely what happened in the speeches that day. The marvelous utterance is a mystery guarded much like the Gospels veil the particulars of resurrection. (There is only an empty tomb.) What's clear, however, is that they spoke clearly and that they were understood.
These were just plain Galileans. There wasn't a seminary degree among them, no studied rhetoricians. They couldn't call a hermeneutic by name to save their souls. They spoke rough, down-to-earth, fisherman's-wharf Aramaic. But on Pentecost they speak the truth with eloquent simplicity. In 1948 Albert Camus addressed a group of Christians at a Dominican monastery. He had a complaint and a yearning. It seemed to him that as the preparations for World War II were undertaken, as the bloody toll of victims grew, as fear spread, the church remained unconscionably silent, or spoke only in an abstract and obtuse style. He, by turn, is candid and blunt:
For a long time during those frightful years I waited for a great voice to speak up in [the Church]. I, an unbeliever? Precisely. For I knew that the spirit would be lost if it did not utter a cry of condemnation when faced with force ... What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could arise in the heart of the simplest person. That they should get away from abstraction and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today. The grouping we need is a grouping of people resolved to speak out clearly and to pay up personally.
That is the sort of clarity which the Spirit compels and grants when the day of Pentecost is fully come. The disciples spoke with a voice so loud and clear that never a doubt could arise in the heart of the simplest person. They were understood. Moreover, they spoke under the aforementioned pressure, with the authorities watching and listening hard from the window. They, too, understood.
The chief priests, let it be said, keep their cool. They exercise, at first, a prudent and calculated restraint. It is argued among them that perhaps the big wind of a movement will blow itself out (Acts 5:38). The boldness of the disciples is relentless, however. They are back day after day in the temple proclaiming the resurrection. In the end, as the book of Acts attests, the consequence of Pentecost is arrest and imprisonment.
The promise of the Holy Spirit in the gospels is almost invariably associated with conflict, controversy, and persecution—and notably with the ability to speak coherently in court or before the thrones of power. "And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious how or what you are to answer or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say" (Luke 12:11-12; see also Matthew 10:17-20 and Mark 13:9-10).
Parrhesia
It may seem a small thing, but in the course of that first sermon on Pentecost, Peter employs a telling phrase. He says, "Let me speak freely unto you ..." (Acts 2:29 KJV). The decisive Greek word in the text, says my concordance, is parrhesia. It is a word that appears only once in Luke and the other synoptic Gospels, but then suddenly flourishes in Acts from the day of Pentecost on. Most often translated as "boldness," or "speaking openly," it seems a mini-Pentecost is packed into the word. Here is another term cunningly lifted from the political vocabulary of the Greek city-states. Originally it signified the right of the full citizen to speak fully and freely in the public assembly. It means literally "the freedom to say all."
However, when exercised by the disciples, that freedom has categorically nothing to do with constitutional guarantees, official sanction, or the good graces of the state. It is the evangelical freedom of speech granted to them by the experience of the resurrection. It is the freedom of another kingdom; it is endowed by the Holy Spirit.
Perhaps it is not too far afield to mention that when the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures) renders the line "Wisdom cries aloud in the street; in the market she raises her voice" (Proverbs 1:20), parrhesia is employed. Boldness is an attribute of the wisdom of God. Further, in the Johannine letters, parrhesia repeatedly signals "the confidence we have before God" (1 John 3:21), as though it were another name for justification itself: the freedom to stand before God in prayer and in judgment.
Suffice it to say that in Acts nearly every instance of this boldness is attended by risk and threat. As often as not, the exercise of parrhesia creates the situation of danger. Consider Peter and John before the Sanhedrin (4:13, 29, 31) or Paul in Damascus (9:27) where they plotted to kill him, as they did again in Jerusalem (9:29). Paul and Barnabas speak boldly in Antioch (13:50), where some "stirred up persecution against [ them ] and drove them out of their district."
Likewise in Iconium (14:3) and Ephesus (19:8). Before King Agrippa, after a two-year prison bit, and under cross-examination by Festus, Paul speaks freely. In the concluding verse of Acts (28:31), while under house arrest in Rome, Paul is still going on about the gospel, talking away unhindered. Nothing, it seems, can shut him up.
It is no surprise that when Paul himself writes from jail, he invokes parrhesia as courage and boldness to speak even in chains (Ephesians 6:19-20, Philippians 1:12-26, Philemon 8-9).
The word and the gift it names may be exercised up close, in community, as frankness, plain speaking, and candid openness. But, for the moment, we are concerned with "boldness" as a public and political term. It is in this connection that Paul, when writing of how God "disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them" (Colossians 2:15), uses en parrhesia to underline the spectacle of that conspicuous exposure and publicity.
Notice that in Pentecost the nations are gathered and openly judged. When the second chapter of Acts is read liturgically, the list of nations represented that day in Jerusalem is often omitted, perforce to spare the lector any tongue-tangled embarrassment. The omission is unfortunate, for the table is something of a political geography lesson. It reads like a contents page from an Empire Atlas. Common representatives from "every nation under heaven" hear the Word, are convicted and gathered—against all babel—into community.
The Holy Spirit is a very political bird. And it doesn't stop for border guards. The authoritative lines are crossed. Indeed, in Pentecost those lines are blown right off the spiritual map.
ADMITTEDLY, THERE WERE still details to be worked out. The "gentile question," which occupies much of the remainder of Acts, revolves around this same very concrete and hotly contested issue. Plainly put from one angle: Would the community keep a kosher table? Or another way: Would the lines of nation, race, and culture set the limits of the movement? Would they render the fellowship divided? In sum, would they rule even at the table of the Lord? Not if the Pentecostal tongues could be heard.
There is much to be said about the table fellowship of the early community. It was, of course, a direct, concrete, immediate, and explicit consequence of the Pentecost event (Acts 2:46). The common life in the Spirit that forms that day is characterized by economic sharing, worship, and breaking bread together—the latter being sign and seal of the other two.
Not that this comes exactly out of the blue. The table fellowship that Jesus kept was not simply with the mendicant inner circle of the disciples. Their mealtime circle never seemed complete until it crossed conventional boundaries to take in a diverse collection of Samaritans, women, tax collectors, lepers, assorted uncleans, outcasts, and, of course, the poor. Only when these took their honored places at the banquet was the kingdom in session.
In the wake of Pentecost, the first "ordinations" confer on Stephen and six other deacons authority to "wait on tables," as most translations put it. The picture is one of serving at a potluck agape meal or ladling out soup at the common meal, though certain commentators stress that the service was broader, involving the day-to-day economic distribution to poorer church members from the communal pot. The distinction is small, however, because for the Pentecostal fellowship, common table and common purse are spiritual correlatives of one another.
In any event, the ordinations are prompted by an in-house controversy: the Greeks are up in arms with the Hebrews because their widows (which is to say the poor) are being neglected in the daily distribution. The apostles move quickly to settle the matter, to re-establish equity, and to restore the unity of table and economic fellowship.
Paul attends to a similar crisis by apostolic correspondence with the church in Corinth (1 Corinthians 11:17-33). The place is factionalized to death. For one thing, the people are organized into parties, including some that take a divisive position on the "gentile question." The letter is addressed on all sorts of issues to the unity of the body.
However, the news that most scandalizes and outrages Paul is word that the Lord's table is itself violated. "When you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. For, in the first place, when you assemble as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you ... When you meet together, it is not the Lord's supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with their own meal, and one is hungry and another is drunk."
The supper of the Lord is, plain and simple, not the supper of the Lord if the bread is not fully and freely shared. Only when there is "one loaf" do those who are many become one body. If the table is divided, the meal becomes a pretense and a lie. If the poor go hungry among the fellowship, then the body is not discerned. Whosoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in such an unworthy manner, says Paul, is not just missing the point, they are eating and drinking judgment upon themselves. That should make us all swallow hard.
PASTORAL MINISTRATIONS SUCH as these mainly point up the normative unity of the fellowship against all incursion of the standard worldly divisions. Nation, race, class, and sex hold no sway at the Lord's table. Neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female—a community in the Spirit of Christ is a new creation. The old order is passing away. Behold, the new is come.
Put it this way: the interior life of the new community is every bit an affront to the powers as the public freedom evinced in the streets. The one nourishes the other, flowing in and out. In the chapters following the outpouring of Pentecost, Luke portrays their life as a rhythm of street presence, jail, preaching in court to the authorities, home for prayer and breaking of the bread, back to the streets.
And the movement grows. Fellowship and risk draw folks in, against all reasonable expectation. Under the shadow of crucifixion, in the face of unspoken threat, people are attracted to the intoxicating, crazy truth that the disciples proclaim and the invitation they lay out. Three thousand people, it is reported, sign up that very day, jumping ship from this crooked age going under.
The Holy Spirit has neglected proper church growth sociology. The formula is altogether wrong. It breaks the rules of homogeneity and comfortable security.
Any liturgical celebration that comprehends Pentecost will likely break those rules as well. It would be a duly public affair. The streets are the proper geography for Pentecost prayer and preaching. We honor the Holy Spirit when we do not shrink from risk, but exercise the gifts of freedom. Bold imagination, bold speaking, and bold action are all appropriate to the day.
Pentecost liturgy ought to be expressly communal, speaking to and through the pernicious divisions between us that only serve the powers and schemes of this world. Peoples and communities and diverse gifts will be celebrated in their connection to one another. They might all listen attentively and speak and act and, needless to say, break bread together.
The Spirit moves when and where it will. No one can crank up the rush of the wind. But we can certainly all gather together in one place. And for such a movement we can always pray.
Bill Wylie-Kellermann was a United Methodist pastor in Detroit, Michigan, and a Sojourners contributing editor, when this article appeared.
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