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Today is Pentecost Sunday, the first Sunday in the long season of Ordinary Time.
Acts 2:1-21
When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, 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 Arabs — in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
`In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon 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 upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.' "
Today is Pentecost Sunday, the fiftieth day after Easter, which commemorates the giving of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church. The traditional reading is the dramatic story from Acts 2.
In liturgical churches, the same thing happens nearly every year. A church member goes to the lectern, opens the Bible, and begins to read the passage. After the first paragraph, they arrive at the string of nationalities present at the festival:
Parthians, Medes, 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 Arabs.
This week, I googled some of these groups. I laughed at the pop-up results:
Rarely does a reader get through the list without stumbling; I think I’ve heard every possible mispronunciation of the names. Frankly, I can’t get through it without a struggle. Congregants often giggle with sympathetic pity. Lectors skip the week as not to be embarrassed. Only the bravest church member actually wants to read Acts 2 in public. Evidently, this year, some eager readers were doing their homework in advance!
Sure, the nationalities represented in the diverse crowd are hard to pronounce. And this text has caused endless anxiety for lay readers. But there are questions that typically go unanswered on Pentecost Sunday: Who were they? Why were they there?
Why is the easier question. All of these people were, as the text says, devout Jews gathered in Jerusalem for a major pilgrimage festival: Shavuot, or the Festival of Weeks. Shavout is one of three Jewish pilgrimage festivals prescribed in the Hebrew Bible. It occurs fifty days after Passover, and it celebrates both the wheat harvest and the giving of the Torah to Moses. In Jesus’ day, pilgrims went to the Temple to offer the first fruits of the new crop and a sacrifice of bread made from the newly harvested wheat.
Who were they? Devout Jews, yes. They came to the festival from many different places. I confess: I don’t have a mental map of the ancient Mediterranean world in my head. And I don’t think I’ve ever heard a sermon mention these places, no matter how much mirth their hard-to-pronounce names elicits from a congregation. Pentecost sermons usually emphasize the miracles — the tongues of fire, hearing the word in multiple languages, the ecstatic response, and the prophecy of the end times. But a history lesson on Parthians and Medes? That sounds dull, especially with such a dramatic text.
The “crowd” is more interesting than it immediately appears, and they came from all over the Middle Eastern world. Parthians, Medes, and Elamites were from kingdoms and empires located in present day Iran. Mesopotamia is roughly modern Iraq. Judea now includes parts of Israel and the West Bank. Cappadocia, Pontus, Phrygia, and Pamphylia now make up Turkey. Cyrene was a Greek colony in north Africa. Some of the names are more familiar to us: Egypt, Libya, Crete, and Arabia.
Iran, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Turkey, Egypt, Libya, Crete, and Saudi Arabia — for the most part, these are nations that make up the world’s most conflicted geographical tinderbox.
And it has been that way for a couple thousand years.
When the Acts 2 Pentecost occurred, most of those kingdoms had been conquered by Rome. Parthia was in a tenuous peace with Rome (after a brutal history of wars between the two), only the far northwestern part of Arabia was a Roman province and the rest beyond its control, and the Mesopotamians had mostly been incorporated into Rome, retaining only a rump empire much-diminished from its peak.
Many of the groups were under direct Roman authority; before that, they had been conquered by Alexander the Great and absorbed into the Hellenistic world. Long before Alexander, most of them had been significant powers in their own right, empires to themselves and often at war with each other.
Parthia, Medea, Elam, Pontus, Phrygia…all of them. It is like a Who’s Who of imperial losers from the ancient world. It is a list of double — or triple — colonized states that had formerly been colonizers. And within their boundaries, there were numerous foreigners, mostly people they’d conquered in the former imperial days, including Jews, who had become an outcast diaspora, at the bottom of colonized hierarchies wherever they lived.
That’s who gathered in Jerusalem for the Festival of Weeks.
Acts 2 is an anti-imperial story. It is a story of subjugated people.
It is far more than a miracle, a conversion sermon, and a mass baptism (the baptism occurs at the end of the chapter — not part of today’s reading). It is a political dagger aimed at the Roman Empire, a threat of a new provincial rebellion, an uprising empowered by the risen Jesus, fueled with spiritual fire. The sermon ends (in vv. 34-36, again not in today’s reading) with Peter recalling King David, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”
Hardly a conventional birthday speech.
Acts 2 is an anti-imperial story. It is a story of subjugated people.
It is far more than a miracle,
a conversion sermon, and a mass baptism.
It is a political dagger aimed at the Roman Empire,
the threat of a new provincial rebellion, an uprising empowered by the risen Jesus, fueled with spiritual fire.
Because, of course, this isn’t just the birthday of the church, a nice day to be celebrated with balloons and cake in the parish hall. It is a clarion call for empires to repent, the colonized to rise up, and for both to forge a new community in the fire and wind of the Spirit. The empire might have killed Jesus, but the struggle continued — and, on this day, three thousand rose up in his place. Where Rome had one rebellious Jew, they now had thousands.
This is political. And it must have threatened any Roman occupiers who witnessed it. They were watching. There’s no way they weren’t on that particular day.
Their target of this uprising wasn’t other Jews. They didn’t intend to create a new religion or an institution called the church. Their goal wasn’t eternal life in heaven.
Peter said that this was an uprising of their dreams, an uprising of power — the portent of a new world.
The target was Rome, the oppressor that even oppressed oppressors. “Save yourselves,” Peter urged, “from this corrupt generation!” Together, these provincial pilgrims formed a community that stood in direct opposition to Roman identity (the apostles teaching), Roman social practices (the breaking of bread), and Roman economics (they shared all things in common). Rome had built a world of war and woe for the vast majority of people under its thrall. Pentecost birthed a community of God’s peace, constituted on an ancient day of gratitude for both wheat and the word. There couldn’t be a greater contrast.
Rome had built a world of war and woe for the vast majority of people under its thrall. Pentecost birthed a community of God’s peace, made up of the conquered, constituted on an ancient day of gratitude for both wheat and the word.
There couldn’t be a greater contrast.
The people who gathered in Jerusalem that morning were not free. They were not there with protections of religious liberty. They made this journey in the shadow of crucifixion, where one of their own people, a popular yet controversial rabbi, had been executed by the overlords. And the rumors swirled — of a missing body, of strange appearances. They’d made a difficult journey from long distances in dangerous times to be at this festival.
If we understand who was there and why, the real miracle of Pentecost comes into focus. All these victims, those demeaned, enslaved, and brutalized by Rome, stopped being afraid. Those diverse peoples, who had been at war for centuries, whose ancestors had tried to destroy one another, suddenly realized they weren’t enemies at all.
They finally heard one another — the spirit broke through — and they rediscovered their own story of a world destined to be shaken by the justice of God.
However, there was an enemy: Caesar, the imperial force that had, for generations, inflicted trauma upon them and their historic homelands through their military might, political manipulation, ethnic superiority, and economic control.
And there was an Advocate for them: the Holy Spirit. The spirit was unleashed — “poured out on all flesh.” Even — maybe especially — their colonized flesh, their owned bodies. Men and women alike, and despite enslavement: these were God’s dreamers and prophets of “the great and glorious day.”
If you insist on celebrating Pentecost as the birthday of the church, please remember the uprising of Parthians, Medes, 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 Arabs. They remind us that the thing we Christians call “church” was born in the fire of anti-imperialism and the burning faith of the colonized to be a community of resistance against militarism, ethnic superiority, and economic injustice. This is the new body of Jesus, the embodiment of solidarity, freedom, and equality in this world.
Peter’s cry echoes through the ages since: Save yourselves from this corrupt generation!
Happy Pentecost. Whatever else you do today, please don’t forget the Parthians.
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If you don’t know our Ruining Dinner podcast, it is kinda like the Bulwark (tell me you know the Bulwark…!) meets theology class. It is a friendly political-religious free-for-all, unpredictable at best.
Links will be sent out THAT DAY to all paid subscribers and the video will be available for viewing immediately following the live broadcast.
INSPIRATION
Proxies — pertinent, prominent, proximate —
impose war, sustain it.
The Empire ever absent and seemingly elsewhere —
evasive, persuasive, pervasive. Things are
this complicated.
— Raza Ali Hasan, “On Imperialism”
In your ears my song
is motor car misfiring
stopping with a choking cough;
and you laughed and laughed and laughed.
In your eyes my ante-
natal walk was inhuman, passing
your ‘omnivorous understanding’
and you laughed and laughed and laughed
You laughed at my song,
you laughed at my walk.
Then I danced my magic dance
to the rhythm of talking drums pleading, but you shut your eyes
and laughed and laughed and laughed
And then I opened my mystic
inside wide like the sky,
instead you entered your
car and laughed and laughed and laughed
You laughed at my dance,
you laughed at my inside.
You laughed and laughed and laughed.
But your laughter was ice-block
laughter and it froze your inside froze
your voice froze your ears
froze your eyes and froze your tongue.
And now it’s my turn to laugh;
but my laughter is not
ice-block laughter. For I
know not cars, know not ice-blocks.
My laughter is the fire
of the eye of the sky, the fire
of the earth, the fire of the air,
the fire of the seas and the
rivers fishes animals trees
and it thawed your inside,
thawed your voice, thawed your
ears, thawed your eyes and
thawed your tongue.
So a meek wonder held
your shadow and you whispered;
‘Why so?’
And I answered:
‘Because my fathers and I
are owned by the living
warmth of the earth
through our naked feet.’
— Gabriel Okara (1921-2021), a Nigerian poet, “You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed”
And then there was no more Empire all of a sudden.
Its victories were air, its dominions dirt:
Burma, Canada, Egypt, Africa, India, the Sudan.
The map that had seeped its stain on a schoolboy’s shirt
like red ink on a blotter, battles, long sieges.
Dhows and feluccas, hill stations, outposts, flags
fluttering down in the dusk, their golden aegis
went out with the sun, the last gleam on a great crag,
with tiger-eyed turbaned Sikhs, pennons of the Raj
to a sobbing bugle. I see it all come about
again, the tasselled cortege, the clop of the tossing team
with funeral pom-poms, the sergeant major’s shout,
the stamp of boots, then the volley; there is no greater theme
than this chasm-deep surrendering of power
the whited eyes and robes of surrendering hordes,
red tunics, and the great names Sind, Turkistan, Cawnpore,
dust-dervishes and the Saharan silence afterwards.
— Derek Walcott, from “Lost Empire,” read the entire poem HERE
If you’re anything like me, you probably want to bury your head in the sand until next November and not spend a moment thinking about politics.
But too much is on the line to ignore what’s going on — that’s a luxury and privilege we can ill afford.
My friend Tripp Fuller and I want to HELP with the problems of overload, denial, and depression regarding the upcoming election. So, we joined forces with another buddy, Tim Whitaker, and SIX amazing scholars of religion to create a “summer school” course on faith and politics that isn’t just about how bad Donald Trump is, complaining about the endless election, or shutting down talk about religion and politics. We’re going to help you think about politics and encourage people to discuss this fraught topic THEOLOGICALLY, not just with fear or talking points.
Check out FAITH & POLITICS FOR THE REST OF US
This event is produced by Homebrewed Christianity, not The Cottage. All registration and technical questions should be directed to Homebrewed.
When anyone is deprived of breath, the God who gives breath is violated.
Now we can see the work that arises for the faithful community in such a breath-denying society. The people of God are a people of the “second wind,” the recovery of breath after the loss of breath. The God who gave the first breath in Genesis is the God who gives a second wind to those who are willing and able to inhale the goodness of God that yields courage, stamina, and steadfastness.
— Walter Brueggemann
ITHIS IS THE FRESHIST SERMON I'VE EXPERIENCED IN A VEERY LONG TIME. IT CREATED IMAGES OF THE VARIETIES OF PEOPLE WHO WERE THERE. I THINK OF GAZA RIGHT NOW. HOW IMPERIALIST ISRAEL IS SMASHING AND VIOLENT REGARDLESS OF CARING FOR THE PEOPLE. THE SPIRIT CERETAINLY STIRRED THEM UP AND BROUGHT PEACE TO THEM. THE ROMANS DIDNT BACK OFF AND IN 70 DESTROYED THE TEMPLE RTC. IT IS A GREAT DAY FOR THE TROBLING SPIRIT TO BE PRESENT THEN AND IS TROUBLING NOW.
Best interpretation of Pentecost Ive seen. Thanks