.......... but the greatest gift is love

By Shelton de Silva

We have two grand children who give us a great deal of joy in coming to lunch on most Sundays and feast days. As we sit to lunch we sing "grace". On Christmas Day it seemed good to us that we should sing "Happy birthday to you, dear Jesus!" The children were delighted that Jesus, too, had a birthday, and that we should celebrate and make merry on such a day. If at Christmas we celebrate the birthday of Jesus, on Pentecost or Whit Sunday we celebrate the birthday of the Church.

"Pente" means fifty in Greek, and Pentecost means the fiftieth day after the Passover. There were three great Jewish festivals which every male Jew who lived within twenty miles of Jerusalem was expected to attend. Passover was the first and Pentecost was the second, in importance. Remember that by the first century A.D. the people of Israel had been taken captive during their history by many imperial powers, and forced to settle down in neighbouring lands.

This was called the Dispersion. Some remained where they had settled because they had married foreign wives, others remained behind because of trade and business. All however yearned to go to Jerusalem for one of the major festivals, as Moslems today feel obliged to go to Mecca at least once in a lifetime. These were men from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Libya, Cyprus, Cyrene etc., who knew a little Aramaic - the language in which the Torah was written - and Greek, the language of the Greek and Roman Empires.

The New Testament tells us that Jesus had warned his disciples that when he was gone he would send them a "counselor" to help and guide them. At Pentecost we see the fulfillment of that promise.

The experience of the Holy Spirit was in a sense a shattering one. Nothing like this had ever happened to them before, and it went to their heads like new wine. They felt confident and powerful; able to do things they had never dreamt of doing in a measure that made them behave like people slightly drunk. No wonder the people who saw them said that the disciples were full of new wine. Peter, the acknowledged leader, had to point out that these men were unquestionably sober. What had happened had been prophesied by the prophet Joel. God's promise of a religious experience had just taken place. Peter had to explain the context of the happening.

As they all knew, the disciples were the followers of a rabbi called Jesus of Nazareth. This Jesus had been the victim of a plot hatched by the High Priests of Israel, and was eventually crucified by Rome as a rebel against Caesar. This Jesus had died and rose on the third day, and the disciples were witnesses of his resurrection appearances. He had been with them and had explained to them what his resurrection signified. He would send them the Holy Spirit.

At first the new born church did not know how to handle this new experience of the Holy Spirit in their midst. Ever since the Maccabbear revolt, the Jews had begun to think that there must be some future life for their noble dead, who died in the defense of their loyalty to God. They began to believe in the resurrection of the noble dead at the last day when God terminated history. The resurrection of Jesus made them think of his rising as an anticipation or first fruits of resurrection of the body. When Pentecost took place they began to think that history was being wound up by God and the last day was around the corner. This was part of the reason why they instituted their primitive socialism and pooled all their resources and shared their wealth.

If history was in the process of being wound up, it was pointless to continue in their business activities or do anything except pray, and heal and speak in tongues. This encouraged a great many idlers to think that they were on a permanent "dole" and never had it so good. They need not work or worry about food. St. Paul was a rabbi and every rabbi had a positive attitude to work, and supported themselves financially. In St. Paul's case, he made tents to support himself.

This idleness of the early Christians went against the grain and in 2 Thess. 3:10, Paul says, "already during our stay with you we laid down this rule: anyone who will not work shall not eat.

We mention this because we hear that some of you are idling your time away, minding everybody's business but their own."

With Pentecost came the gift of speaking in tongues, and healing: these new activities took a permanent place in the early Church perhaps because of their dramatic and spectacular qualities. Now when Christian worship invaded the Gentile communities, the usual conventions of Jewish synagogue worship were abandoned.

These conventions were that they prayed, sang a few psalms, and then the elder in charge of synagogue worship asked some distinguished visitor (if present ) to explain the writings in the Pentateuch of the Prophets. In Jewish worship the men sat on one side and the women, soberly dressed with their hair covered, listened on the fringes of the synagogue. Here in the Gentile Christian meetings there was a rebellion against Jewish conventions for had not Christ set them free? As a result there was no sense of order in their worship.

They did whatever they wanted, whenever they felt like it. While one spoke in tongues, another burst forth into loud prayer and a third felt moved to sing a psalm at the top of his/her voice.

The effect was chaotic, and Paul told them that if anyone entered the room or hall where the synagogue met he would think he had walked into a madhouse.

Paul said something like this: "All these things you are doing may be led by the Spirit, but God is a God of order and not disorder. A better way to conduct worship" - he uses the phrase "a more excellent way," was (a) to get somebody to interpret or translate what the speaker spoke in tongues, so that the whole congregation could be edified. (b) to remember that the main Christian ethic was the practice of LOVE. You may be eloquent, courageous enough to suffer torture, (give your body to be burnt); have the gift of healing. You may be able to do many things that most people cannot do, but if all your activity is not shot through with love you are bogus - a miserable failure as a Christian. Pray for those who persecute you; be kind and patient with those who irritate you, and are jealous of you, and judge you from the most petty standpoint. The big thing in Christianity is the capacity to love - or outlove all opposition.

As we celebrate Pentecost - the birth of the Church - which by the way is one of the proofs of the Resurrection - let us recall what happened. They were baptised by the Holy Spirit into a new life. But this does not mean that they were sinless. As we look at the Church and at ourselves, we see that both we ourselves and our fellow Christians may appear to others as very painful people. There have been a few reformers like Tertullion who wanted to found "a pure Church". The truth is that the Church is a community of forgiven sinners, who often lapse back into their sinful ways. We have no means of sorting out the good from the bad, the wheat from the chaff. Whereas we would prefer to uproot the weeds and preserve the wheat (and then to what group would we belong?) Jesus advised us to let both grow together and at the harvest the Lord of the Harvest can separate one from the other. The Church must have discipline as it orders its life in things moral and intellectual.

Apart from this it must be tolerant and loving. She is the mother, not the magistrate. As for ourselves, as far as we are concerned, we must be ruthless in our self-examination and pray for forgiveness when we are found wanting. As far as others are concerned, we must be tolerant: for tolerance and kindness and patience are aspects of Christain love.

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