What does the word ‘spirit’ mean to you? I clicked on the thesaurus tool on my computer and it came up with a variety of meanings. First there was a collection of words expressing strength and character, spirit as the heart of a person. Connected to this were words related to someone’s inner self, their essence and inner force. It gave me options that reflected someone’s attitude and mood. We are used to talking about people being full of spirit and energy, of using spirit as a way of referring to the type of person that they are. Finally I was taken to ghostly apparitions, the phantoms that make us feel a presence when we can’t see one.

Today we commemorate the gift of the Holy Spirit to the disciples, 50 days from the first resurrection appearances. They were still meeting in secrecy. After what we remember as the Ascension, when the resurrection appearances as such stop and Jesus effectively says ‘over to you now, go make disciples of all nations’, they go back to what they know; to the upper room and continue to meet together and pray, but in secret.

They elect a replacement for Judas, who having betrayed Jesus has committed suicide. They try to recreate what they had known and what had felt so special. They reconstructed the band of close followers, with 12 significant figure heads and all the symbolic resonances that had for them with the 12 tribes of Israel. They were structurally organised for… well they were structurally organised.

A few days later they are celebrating the day of Pentecost. What we call the day of Pentecost, in the Jewish faith is called Shavuot and it commemorates the gift of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. It falls 50 days after the Passover. So the disciples are sitting there thinking about Jesus’ commission to them to make disciples of all nations, they are praying and they are thinking about how God has given them the Law, the foundation of their faith. Something has been distilling in their minds since Easter Day. They have been thinking about how Jesus fits in to this faith of theirs.

To a devout Jew the Law is seen as the manifestation of God’s spirit, of his essence, of the attitude they are to live in order to be faithful to the covenant. To the disciples Jesus has come to embody all that this means and more. The spirit of their faith has been among them in him and has transformed how they see it and relate to it. Rules are no longer the key to being faithful to the covenant of God. They have a relationship with a person, a person whom death could not destroy or silence.

No wonder it took 50 days for this to distil. This Jesus had promised that he would not leave them alone, his Spirit would be with them; it would be in them. There was a close relationship between this promise and how they had learnt to see the Law. So the promise of God’s presence tapped in to how they saw the Law as the expression of that presence and in turn how they saw the Law was given a new light through their experience of Jesus risen and glorified, who was himself seen as God’s presence. These two thoughts and ideas converge in their minds.

So they are praying, mulling over all of this, and something explodes. They start speaking strange languages, so much so that some think they are drunk. The penny drops. This Jesus is the fulfilment of the Law. He is the essence of their faith. God embodied, present and dynamic! All that they understand by the Law has been among them in him. It’s a wow moment of immeasurable significance. It’s a moment for party poppers, balloons and making a lot of noise.

The power of this wow moment is so strong that they can’t keep quiet. It’s a double rollover lottery win moment and they have all hit the jackpot. Their lives will never be the same again.

It’s a moment when they start to see God in a new light. It’s a moment when they start to see life in a new light. This is how it is. Their faith and their life don’t exist in neat separate boxes, they are entwined and both are transformed. This is why some call today the ‘Birthday of the Church’. Today they stopped thinking about recreating structures that made them feel comfortable and secure and instead focussed on the sheer exuberance of a faith that picks them up and sets them alight.

Of course as the Church grew, as the early disciples gathered momentum and gathered more around them, structures had to be thought about. That is what all new churches find too. But if those structures start to become the thing that guides everything, rather than the faith that means we just can’t keep quiet, then we need a new day of Pentecost.

Fortunately that is what we get and the church has known this for centuries. The Reformation of the 16th century is more a way of being Church than it is a single event. The Church constantly needs to be open to this Spirit to refresh it and keep it alive. We as Christians need to be filled with the strength and character of Christ. We need to live the attitude that marks us out as belonging to him.

So, with the gift of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, the day of commemorating the Old Testament Law, the penny drops and they understand what has been going on. But that is not all. This is not just an interesting idea. The disciples also get up and have the confidence they need to shout it from the roof tops. This is the day they turned from merely trying to recreate what they had known, to live in the past, to be people prepared to go anywhere and talk to anyone about the amazing spirit of their faith. May be we need some of that today.

© Ian Black 2005

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