Head and Heart: Looking at Pentecost

photo by Pom / flikr

We cotton-mill Baptists had not heard of Pentecost. We did know that two blocks away was the Pentecostal church. Which of course was a little too rowdy and uncultured for us Baptists. They spoke in tongues and waved their arms in the air during the service. The Methodist Church flour blocks away was a step above us Baptists but they had not gotten the word about Pentecost. But three miles downtown was the tiny Episcopal Church all ready observing Pentecost. And down that street, on the corner was the Catholic church with its tall white building with this day on their liturgical calendar. But we stayed away from them because they not only worshipped idols like the Virgin Mary but they kept guns in the basement of their church and would one day take over America.

For so many of us in the forties and fifties, the month of May meant Mother’s Day when we gave corsages to the oldest mother present and the woman who had the youngest baby. We also observed Memorial Day when we decorated the graves of our loved ones who had died and others too. We spread a cloth under a shady tree and had a delicious Southern lunch. But this was about all the celebrations we could take for May.

It was only years later that me, and so many other Protestants began to unpack the real meaning of Pentecost. My discovery reminded me of that little boy that stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon and looking at the vista whispered, “Something happened here.”

After Calvary and all its horrors, finally Easter came and there was gladness everywhere among his believers, But Ascension followed saying Jesus left the earth and they stood there just looking up more than a little afraid and feeling abandoned. And then Pentecost came. Something happened there to those bereft-grief-stricken disciples. They marched out and began to change the world. Some power was unleashed that day and tradition says eleven of the twelve were martyred because of their faith. Nothing could stop them. Not even the power of Rome or the bickering of tiny churches or all those that just went away shaking their heads.

Something really did happen there. And although Jesus was not with them, his spirit came comforting, bearing truth, and standing by them always. And Jesus had promised: “You will know peace very different than what the world gives, and their hearts would not be troubled most days, and they would find even in their darkest hours they were not afraid.

No wonder the Church has finally discovered the wonder and vista of this day. And like the Grand Canyon—Pentecost is still here after all these years. I can now understand how those Pentecostals—then and now—speak in tongues and wildly waved their hands with hope.

So let’s look back at the Pentecost miracle after all these years. Nothing has diminished the joy that filled their hearts. And we can crawl out from under the craziness and hatred that seems to be all around us. But the wrongness of it all cannot stop the Pentecostal power. Remember Nazi Germany. Remember segregation. Remember the Viet Nam Memorial. Remember the hatred that still fills our streets. Remember this cursed virus that has killed almost 600,000 in our country alone. Remember the grief that all their loved ones still carry.

I gets downhearted when I look around me at all the cruelty, the evil that still rears its ugly head. But on my better days I remember Pentecost.

“Grand Canyon” was an old movie and I still remember its power. Danny Glover plays a man who lives in a terrible section of the city. He is divorced and is estranged from his children. He drives a tow-truck and he lives with very little money. And a white man, played by Kevin Cline asked him how in the world he can you stand it. It seems impossible. And Danny Glover’s character replies: “When it gets too much I get in my car and drive thousands of miles to the Grand Canyon. And I get out of my car and sit on the ledge of the Grand Canyon and just get out and look and look Then I get back in my car and head back to my neighborhood with all its problems and I can make it.”

This is Pentecost. Let us not miss its power.