Acts 2:1-21, Genesis 10-11, Exodus 24:17, Leviticus 23:15-17, Joel 2:28-32, 3 Kingdoms/1 Kings 8:27-30; 41-43, Hebrews 12:18
The story of Pentecost is one of the most dramatic scenes in the entire Bible. It takes place during a holy time of fulfillment, after a time of prayer and watchfulness in the Upper Room. Evidently those outside the building hear the rushing wind, and then the secluded disciples spill out into the busy Jerusalem streets, filled with pilgrims. Signs of the power of God are evident. All the believers in Jesus are together, speaking in surprising ways to the devout Jews who have gathered to Jerusalem from everywhere for the celebration of the giving of the Law. This meeting brings out amazement, bewilderment and, sadly, mockery from some. All of this excitement is capped by a powerful speech from Peter, speaking on behalf of the *eleven, who links what is happening both to the prophecies of the Old Testament, and to the final judgment to come. The time has finally arrived, he announces, when “everyone who calls upon the name of the LORD may be saved.”
Besides Peter’s explicit quotation of Joel, the story, as it is told, assumes a knowledge of a whole host of Old Testament passages, going back even to Genesis, as the Church fathers make clear in their commentaries on this passage. But let’s hear Acts 2:1-21 first:
When the day of Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested 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 men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the 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 bewildered, 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: “Men 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. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel:
‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams;
even on my male servants and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.And I will show wonders in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke;
the sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
This is not an individual experience. The presence of the little words “together” and “with” signal that we are reading about an event that has a corporate importance. All the believers, with the Twelve, are gathered together in the Upper Room. Many pious Jews, from every civilized (and uncivilized) nation, have gathered together for the feast of Pentecost, when they commemorated the giving of the Law to Moses. Peter makes that clear in his final statement that what has happened now means that “everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” The more private events of the resurrection, where Jesus appeared only to a select few, now make their mark on the world as a whole. Here is the beginning of the divine acts of the Apostles. As Jesus had said to them before His Ascension, “you shall be my witnesses in Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The radiating circles of God’s truth begin here, in Jerusalem, the center of Judea.
Let’s take the three-part event in sequence: the believers in the Upper Room, their encounter with the pious Jews, and Peter’s prophetic explanation. In all of these parts, we see the impact of the Old Testament. First, we hear that the time was “fulfilled”—the festival of Pentecost, which required the offering of the first-fruits of the first harvest, and which celebrated God’s giving of the Law on Sinai, had pointed forward to this great event. Leviticus 23:15-17 instructs the people to bring their first tender shoots of wheat, from fields everywhere in the Holy Land, to the tabernacle (and later the Temple) as an offering to God: “You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath. Then you shall present a grain offering of new grain to the LORD from all your dwelling places.” But here, as we are reminded by our father St. John Chrysostom, there will be 3,000 Jewish believers from around the world converted to Jesus as the first-fruits of the Church’s harvest. The disciples do the speaking, but, says the Golden-Mouthed, “the Spirit, keen-edged, came down in place of the sickle” (Hom Acts 4).
The word Pentecost, of course, includes in it the number “fifty,” reminding us of how the Jewish people computed the feast. Pope Leo the Great said,
To the Hebrew people, now freed from Egypt, the law was given on Mount Sinai fifty days after the immolation of the paschal lamb. Similarly, after the passion of Christ in which the true Lamb of God was killed, just fifty days after his resurrection, the Holy Spirit fell upon the apostles and the whole group of believers. Thus the earnest Christian may easily perceive that the beginnings of the Old Covenant were at the service of the beginnings of the gospel and that the same Spirit who instituted the first established the Second Covenant (Sermon 75, SC 74.144-145).
How interesting that we in the Church count not from the crucifixion, but from the resurrection, as the blessed Augustine also clarifies: “[Jewish Pentecost] was computed from [the time of] the killing of the [paschal] lamb. In our case, however, it is not from the Lord’s passion but from his resurrection (Letter 55.1.2).” More than that, the Jewish people celebrated the giving of the Law, perceived by the people as something mysterious and dreadful, and experienced even by Moses as fire, cloud and darkness on the top of Mt. Sinai: “And on the seventh day the LORD called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud. Now the appearance of the glory of the LORD was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel” (Ex. 24:17).
What the disciples of Jesus experience on their fiftieth day, though, is more than just the giving of the Law. As the book of Hebrews says, “You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm” (Heb 12:18). Instead, the very Spirit of God is present with them, the sign of fire is seen on their heads, and they themselves speak rather than simply listening to ten commandments. St. John Chrysostom helps us to imagine this, as he compares Moses, the one leader who received power to speak, with all the believers in the Upper Room:
Each one received a spring of Spirit, just as he himself said, that those who believe in him shall have “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” And it was justly so. For they were not going forth to argue with the pharaoh but to wrestle with the devil. The wonderful thing is this: they made no objections when they were sent; they did not say they were “weak in voice and slow of speech.” (Hom Acts 4)
Only Moses saw and heard the entire thing at Sinai, though his people knew something was going on from where they stood at the bottom of the mountain, and 70 of their leaders had a mystical experience part way up. This new Pentecost, however, is not meant to stay put in the Upper Room. The Jewish people know that something is up, and soon the signs of it are among them, even understandable in their own languages. Moses had to go UP by himself to receive the Law. The Spirit comes down into and among the believers, and they go down into the streets to bring in the first harvest of converts. Everyone witnesses the event, though some only scoff.
We come to our second scene, where the good news is proclaimed in many languages. As the Venerable Bede reminds us, this has all begun in humble prayer, and great good comes out of this: “The church’s humility recovers the unity of languages that the pride of Babylon had shattered.” (Comm Acts 2.4. CS 117.29) Acts 2:6 tells us that the gathered people are “confused,” or “bewildered” at the miracle of the languages, using the very same word that the Greek Septuagint translation uses to describe the judgment of the seventy families that conspired at Babel (Genesis 11), when God “confused” the human languages. But what happened at Babel is being undone. There, all the peoples of the world, the descendants of Noah (Genesis 10) were divided by languages for the first time (Genesis 11); here, those who have come to the Temple to worship are bewildered by what they hear, but they are united by the tongues of the disciples. All of them here are Jews, but they come from north, south, east, west, and remote islands and deserts. Some are cradle Jews, and others “proselytes,” or converts to Judaism. They have come to the Temple to worship, but something greater than the Temple is here. We might be reminded of King Solomon’s humble prayer at the dedication of the Temple, when he hoped that the Temple might be the unification of the peoples of the world.
But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built! Yet have regard to the prayer of your servant and to his plea, O LORD my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you this day, that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house, the place of which you have said, ‘My name shall be there,’ that you may listen to the prayer that your servant offers toward this place. And listen to the plea of your servant and of your people Israel, when they pray toward this place. And listen in heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive….. As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of your name— for they will hear of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm—when they come and pray toward this temple, then hear from heaven, your dwelling place. Do whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears your Name. (3 Kingdoms/1 Kings 8: 8:27-30; 41-43)
The people have come to worship at the Temple. But instead of an annual Pentecost feast at a building, they meet the Spirit of God through the living Temple of the LORD, through the believers who have received God’s power. Everything begins to be restored. It is bewildering, but many of them will indeed hear and see and understand! As St. Cyril of Jerusalem puts it: “The multitude of those listening was confounded; it was a second confusion, in contrast to the first evil confusion at Babylon.… Here there was a restoration and union of minds, since the object of their zeal was righteous”(Catechetical Lecture 17.16–17. NPNF 2.7.129).
St. Peter speaks up, interpreting what it is that they have seen and heard. He begins by explaining that the excitement has not been caused by sweet and potent new wine, as some have scoffed. Rather, the time of refreshment, promised by the prophet Amos, has finally come to God’s people, if they will only look and listen the right way. Peter’s words are not complex or “high-falutin.” He calls on them to listen, warns them not to misinterpret, and gives the words of Amos, applying the prophet’s words about the sun darkening to what was seen on Mount Golgotha when Jesus was crucified. Our father St. John Chrysostom explains, “the apostle strikes fear into them by reminding them of the darkness that had lately occurred and leading them to expect things to come” (Hom Acts 5).
After all, the mighty acts of God are conjoined, and what happened at the Crucifixion and Resurrection is a strong sign of what will come, just as the Ascension, said the angels, was a sign of Jesus’ certain return. Pentecost brings with it the gift of the Holy Spirit, to explain these events and to convict those who have not believed so that they now can turn and repent. It does not take subtle words, but holy boldness and clarity, which Peter now exemplifies to the crowd. He is just a fisherman but has been made bold and wise so that the Church can draw into its nets the first catch. The Golden-mouthed says, in celebration, “But where is the arrogance of Greece now? Where the name of Athens? Where the ravings of the philosophers? He of Galilee, he of Bethsaida, he, the uncouth rustic, has overcome them all” (Hom Acts 4). Yes, and God has done this through His promised Holy Spirit, the fountain of life, the wind that moves and fills all things, the fire that burns with truth over the heads and in the hearts of the first Christians. This isn’t something limited to Peter alone, nor even to the Twelve, for all the believers have been speaking about the mighty acts of God, and so have fulfilled the words of Amos: “in those days I will pour out my Spirit [on all flesh, young and old, male and female], and they shall prophesy.” Yes, the Twelve remain; yes, there is a bishop who sums up what they are all saying; but every member of the Church has received the Spirit, and He will come to dwell in the new converts who will “turn” at the end of this event.
Here is the beginning of the great reversal. No longer division but unity; no longer enmity with God, but infilling; no longer Jews of different nationalities, but now believers who put their faith in the Messiah God; no longer cradle and convert but now all one body; and before long, not even Jew and Gentile, for God will teach them what Amos meant when he said, “whoever calls on the name of the LORD.”
Edith M. Humphrey 