28.07 | Fire & Wind
Acts 2
‘When the day of Pentecost arrived, 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.’
Acts 2:1-3
When the day of Pentecost arrived.
Pentecost was a familiar festival to the Jews, given to them at Sinai over a millennia before, as part of their annual rhythm of celebration and worship.
The Feast of Pentecost followed the Feast of Firstfruits, where the first sheaf of the harvest was brought and presented before the Lord. Pentecost then came exactly 50 days later.1 It was a feast of gratitude, that the firstfruits is followed by the harvest, celebrating that what had begun in the first sheaf had now grown into an abundance of life.
At the end of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus had told them to wait.
Stay in the city, He had said, until you are clothed with power from on high.2
The word for ‘stay’ here is the Greek word kathizō. It means to sit, stay, or rest. It is a posture of stillness, allowing committed immobility to show your refusal to move forwards until that which you are waiting for has come to be.
And so we find them, 120 disciples, waiting, resting, staying still, for God’s impending moment.
Waiting is a spiritual practice that is largely lost in much Western spirituality, where the rushing impatience of consumerism infects our spirituality. We want quick results and quick answers. But waiting requires patience and stillness. It is a relentless refusal to move before the authentic hand of God is seen. Selina Stone describes how this practice of waiting in prayer, or tarrying, is a practice with deep roots in black spiritualities. “Tarrying” she writes, “is something that we have to choose to practice, rather than something that is forced upon us. We might be forced to wait, but we have to choose to tarry. Tarrying represents a posture of the heart…. It depends on our hearts being turned towards God, while we are in a time of waiting.”3
Waiting tunes the heart. It refuses the rush of godless activity. It commits to nothing less than His authentic presence with us.
And then, the waiting is turned to something. Suddenly, on this day of Pentecost, the room is filled with a sound from heaven—like a mighty rushing wind. Tongues of flames, we read, came and rested upon them.
Rested. Kathizō.
Truly the Spirit of God rests upon those who wait for Him.
The result is wild.
The disciples do not do what we might think—staying in the room, enjoying the moment. Rather, the presence of God upon them compels them out of the room and into the city—declaring the reign of God to the Jews of the nations who have gathered in Jerusalem. And as Peter describes to them the nature and mission of Jesus of Nazareth—crucified, raised, and ascended—some three thousand of those listening come and join this swelling move of God.
One of the descriptions of Jesus in the New Testament is as the firstfruits of God’s harvest.4 He is the beginning of the Age of the Resurrection, presented before God and initiating the season of harvest.
The Day of Pentecost, then, now explodes from this reality—as the harvest of God begins in Jerusalem, with thousands of new believers stepping into the life and reality of what began in Jesus, laying down their lives to follow Him into the death of repentance and surrender and rising into the life of New Creation as infused by the presence of the living Spirit.
The revolution has begun. And in the pages to come, we’re going to catch afresh just how radical the vision of God for this new burgeoning movement of a resurrection people—a people of fire and wind—truly is.
Reflect:
What are you waiting for from God?
Turn this to prayer. And spend some time in stillness and waiting, inviting the continual refilling of the Holy Spirit into your life.
Pray:
Spirit of God,
As you blew like a mighty wind through that room:
Would you breathe life afresh into your Church today.
Would you blow from us the cobwebs of secular ideas
And human ideologies,
And hellish schemes of power.
Fill us instead
With the breath and life of the living God.
Spirit of God,
As you came like tongues of fire to that room,
Would you bring tongues of fire to your people—
That our words be courageous and true,
And that the story of Jesus,
Cut this city to the heart,
And restore them to the newness to which you invite them.
And Spirit of God,
When I have been impatient,
Rushing to get going in my own strength,
When you have wanted me to wait,
I come back now;
Sitting, waiting, resting,
That you may increase your presence and work in my life,
And rest more perfectly upon me.
To the fame of Jesus,
In Whose Name I pray,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Jeremiah 21-22 | Psalm 90:13-17
The name ‘Pentecost’ comes from the Greek word for ‘fifty.’ As this fell 7 weeks and one day after the Firstfruits, it was also known as the ‘Feast of Weeks’, pointing to the 7x7 (a week times a week) that dictated its timing.
Luke 24:49
Selina Stone: Tarry Awhile, p.21
See 1 Corinthians 15:20