Pentecost missionaries

20 May 2010


Zumba was launched at our local gym last night and yours truly stayed on to join my wife, daughter, 51 other women – and one other extraordinarily brave gent to jiggle and wiggle for an hour. I was outstanding for my dismal ability and general reluctance. Definitely, definitely not my scene.

I love a great party – getting friends together to enjoy good food, good wine, good company. I enjoy the preparations – the ‘right’ music, lighting, drinks, the whole works. The full effect of those preparations becomes evident when the guests are happy, when conversations are animated, when there are no pretensions, no one to impress.

Getting out of our comfort zones isn’t easy. The disciples in the upper room had become anxious. Jesus had ascended. They had no idea what would happen next, what to expect. They hear the sound of a great wind and above their heads appears – something that looks like a flame – and the anxiety, the puzzlement, the loss they have suffered dissipates as a new confidence, a power, a strength at first seeps through, emerging into the bustling, energetic gift of tongues. This gift drives them to the streets to proclaim the kerygma – the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The people of Jerusalem who come from every corner of the known world are shocked and surprised, for from the mouths of these uneducated, uncouth Galileans, they can hear them preach the Good News in their own languages.

So disarming is this event that some believe that they are drunk. Peter reminds them it is still too early in the morning!

The gift they have been given is the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Paraclete. The disciples have never experienced anything like this before. They too are taken aback by what has now overcome them. Many of those who hear them come to believe and are baptised.

This event which we call Pentecost might appear to be ‘organised chaos’, and yet this is the event for which the disciples have been thoroughly prepared for by Jesus himself. For if there is a purpose of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, Pentecost is merely the first moment of revelation - the uncertainty, the lack of confidence are dismissed. In Jerusalem that day, the momentum built up by Jesus over three years bursts into life.

This Pentecost experience is rolled out every day and today’s disciples continue to uncover the mission that they have been given. You and I may not be called to speak in many tongues, but the gift we each have to unravel lies within us, begun in baptism, nurtured through reconciliation, confirmation and Eucharist. We might not be asked to proclaim the Gospel on street corners, but we are undoubtedly invited to share and be good news to one another.

Happy birthday, Church!