Pastor's Corner: Pentecost, the church's birthday

     On Pentecost Sunday, May 15, the church celebrates its birthday. Pentecost is the day the Christian church entered the public domain, and it’s on Pentecost that we can also say to the church, “Happy birthday to you!” It is the day we received the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2).

Until Jesus’ little band of disciples experienced the descending dove, the tongues of fire and the babble of ecstatic voices, they weren’t ready for prime time. Their faith was proprietary and private. After those remarkable events, though, their old song suddenly became new.

     Pentecost is the third biggest celebration of the Christian year, but it runs far behind Christmas and Easter in popularity. In the case of the other two holidays, secular culture has embraced the religious feast, manufacturing its own cheap knock-offs. There’s secular Christmas, with its blatant consumerism and vague ethic of doing something nice for someone you already love. As for secular Easter, it’s nothing more than a rite of spring. No one has trouble finding decorations and greeting cards for secular Christmas or secular Easter. Many of them feature the familiar mascots of the holidays, Santa and the Easter Bunny. Those symbolic figures have high name-recognition, even among people who’ve never darkened a church door.

     Certain things you never, ever see in relation to Pentecost. Have you ever seen a rack of Pentecost cards in a drugstore? Have you ever savored a special chocolate candy that commemorates the holiday? Have you ever baked Pentecost cookies?

The Pentecost miracle could easily not have happened at all! After Jesus’ crucifixion, the disciples scattered like roaches scurrying to the four corners of a room when the lights go on. They didn’t go far, though, and the good news of Easter gathered them once again, to enjoy a few brief weeks of wonder in the presence of their risen Lord.

     After the ascension of our Lord, what next? That experience made a mighty satisfying bookend for their years of wandering the countryside. Who would have blamed them if they’d simply turned around and returned home after all that? Were it not for the miracle of Pentecost, the church might never have come to be.

The disciples would have returned home, as Bilbo Baggins returns to Bag End at the conclusion of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” to smoke their pipes, to savor commodious second breakfasts in good hobbit fashion and to spin their remarkable adventure yarn until their neighbors grew tired of hearing it. Had that occurred, the gospel message would have remained under copyright: a quirky tale that meant a great deal to them, but would have had little impact on anyone else.

     The Pentecost story is not our own. After the roaring wind and the tongues of fire, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, everything’s different. The disciples have become apostles. Their story belongs to the world. It has entered the public domain. And we all know what happens next.

What about us? We have our own faith stories, based on our own spiritual experiences. For many of us, the subject of our relationship with God seems intensely private.

We may continue to imagine it is, but after Pentecost, it can never be that way. The work of the Holy Spirit is to loose God’s people on the world to witness to the good news. We aren’t meant to hum our hymns under our breath. The resounding strains of Christian praise are meant to echo off the walls of cities and towns large and small, on six continents. “The church exists for mission,” as a fire exists for burning.

The Rev. Michael O’Hearn serves Kremlin Lutheran Church, Goldstone Lutheran Church and St. Mark’s Episcopal Church.

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