What if My Pentecost Life and my Normal Life is the Same Life?
Blog post written by Matt McCoy
7 minute read
What if my Pentecost Life and my Normal Life is the same life?
Pentecost has often been a peculiar day for me. I love the story of how the third member of the Trinity is sent: I love the fire, and wind, and the Church preaching in a miraculous foreign language. I love reading the book of Acts like a script for a movie, and I love how this story reminds us every year about how the Holy Spirit is still with the Church today.
And that’s what makes Pentecost peculiar. After I read the story of Jesus’ birth at Christmas, I don’t go out to my barn and look for a baby. After I read the story of the Three Magi on Epiphany Sunday, I don’t go outside and look for a bright star in the sky. But after I read the story of Pentecost, I do go looking around for the Fire and the Wind of the Holy Spirit, and I do go looking around for people proclaiming God’s amazing works in a miraculous foreign language.
I’m sometimes disappointed that things still kinda look the same:
I don’t see any Fire,
I don’t feel any Wind, and
the Church is using normal English (or the King’s English, or hipster English, or unusual English), instead of miraculously speaking in a foreign language.
But there’s a fourth miracle at Pentecost that helps revive my imagination and recalibrate my expectations. This blog post is going to explore how the fourth miracle in the story helps me integrate my Pentecost Life with my Normal Life.
What I want on Pentecost is the Fire, the Wind, and the Foreign Language. And I’ve been a part of some pretty incredible Holy Spirit moments: I’ve been a part of miracles, I’ve seen healings, I’ve received visions and I’ve experienced things which are, quite simply, supernatural. That’s my Pentecost Life, and on Pentecost Sunday, I want a whole lot more of THAT, and most Sundays it doesn’t happen. Most Sundays look like my Normal Life, described in detail in the last few blogs (which can be found HERE).
One big problem with separating my Pentecost Life with my Normal Life, that this blog won’t be able to cover in detail, is that the supernatural experiences can sometimes pull me away from Jesus, rather than towards Jesus: I can end up wanting more supernatural experiences rather than wanting more of Jesus. This is somewhat similar to how I can end up wanting more of what Denise does for me, rather than wanting to be closer to Denise herself (which also would be the subject of another blog). Both are a problem.
To be clear, I still pray for the animation of the Holy Spirit in my life, in the life of my family, and the life of the Church. Our spiritual practices can cultivate an imagination for the Spirit to go and do whatever incredible supernatural experiences the Spirit wants to do. For me, well, my journey of integrating my Pentecost Life of these incredible supernatural experiences with my Normal Life of dirty dishes and paying taxes involves attending to the fourth miracle I find in the story. Let’s go there now.
Imagine you and I are in this story, and imagine we’re from the Island of Crete. Since we’re in Jerusalem at Pentecost, let’s imagine we’re converts to Judaism. We are both welcomed and despised at the same time. While there was a decent sized Jewish community in Crete, the Cretans cozied up to the Romans by oppressing the Jews. (1) As a seafaring culture on a small island in the Mediterranean, the Cretans were known to be liars who were focused on preserving self-interests, and their legacy continues today in our own vernacular when we call someone a “Cretan.” [2]
Side note: The Mission of Spring Church is Uncommon Friendship and Common Discipleship, and so I just have to point out how the story of Pentecost involves people from all over the globe, unlikely friends all of them, worshipping the same God together.
Now let’s imagine we’re outside the building where the Church was gathered, and the Holy Spirit is sent into this place, and we come running. We see these tongues of fire dancing around and resting on people. We feel this holy, pregnant wind full of possibility and wonder. We hear people praising God in our own native language, and we’re in a crowd where other people hear God’s praises in their own native language, too!
What are we going to say first? When you’re overwhelmed, perplexed, confused and astonished, what’s the first thing we’re going to say?
I don’t know about you, but the first thing I’m going to say is, “THERE’S FIRE AND WIND EVERYWHERE AND NOBODY IS GETTING BURNED UP!!!” I would be drawn to the incredible supernatural event of the Holy Spirit arriving in Fire and Wind.
Maybe, after I’d gotten somewhat comfortable with Fire and Wind, I would begin to notice how all these people from Galilee were speaking all these different languages (And, hey, I’ve studied five languages, so I’m somewhat enamored with the idea of speaking a foreign language in an instant rather than a decade). It’s like the reversal of the Tower of Babel, right here in front of us! What a miracle! Actually, that’s three incredible miracles in a row: Fire, Wind, and Language!
But the story focuses our attention on a Fourth Miracle. In verse 11, the Greek uses an expression which is similar to what we would say in English when somebody totally gets us. When we feel completely known and understood, we might say, “Now you’re speaking my language!” So if I use this English expression to capture the intimacy and friendship implied in the Greek, verse 11 reads:
“Now they’re speaking my language and praising God’s mighty works!”
The Apostles and the gathered Church are surrounded by Fire and Wind, and they’re preaching the gospel and praising God in languages they couldn’t possibly know, and what captures the attention of the people in the crowd is the miracle of the Holy Spirit carrying the gospel all the way into our inmost being. The Fourth Miracle is Intimacy with God. The miracle of knowing God and being known by God, of hearing God’s Word and having it take root deep within my heart, is the miracle we would talk about first.
This is a Story worth being in, and there’s a place for me in this Story.
Using the analogy we’ve focused on since Easter, if my heart is a compass, then I want Jesus to be my North. [3] And the Holy Spirit is the magnetic force that pulls us towards Jesus. Our Big Idea at Spring Church from Ash Wednesday to Pentecost is “As we walk in the direction Jesus is walking in, we become better friends,” and today we remember that we could not possibly walk in the direction Jesus walks in without the Holy Spirit. [4] The Holy Spirit animates the Christian life. [5]
So if Intimacy with God was the miracle that captured people’s attention, what if that was the Pentecost Miracle I pay attention to as I walk through Pentecost Sunday?
When we come together at a Spring Church Worship Service, I can translate the scriptures into everyday English,
Jessie Bloss can add graphic artistry to help us enter into the story,
and Bruce Larson can provide a pedagogical framework to further our learning.
And this story is a cornerstone of our ecclesiology (our imagination of what makes up the essence of the church): Our worship services are in everyday English, beautifully curated so they’re visually accessible, and structured with the best pedagogical tools available.
But it’s only the Holy Spirit that can carry the scripture into our hearts and open our imaginations to what Jesus is already up to.
When we come together at a Spring Church Heading North Small Group, we all get to pay attention together to what Jesus is doing in our midst as we practice the rituals of prayer, sabbath, and reading scriptures together. But it’s only the Holy Spirit that can bind us together as a local church, and a community of practice, paying attention to the magnetic pull which draws us back to Jesus.
When we live out our daily lives, our Intimacy with God is the miracle which dances and plays in the midst of our Normal Life. Last week, one of the middle schoolers who’s a part of Spring Church came up with an acrostic for the meaning of sabbath using the word “cucumber.”
C-connect
U-update
C-create
U-uplift
M-memorize
B-believe
E-entertain
R-reflect
For a 13-year-old who loves to cook, taking these deep theological truths and connecting them to the elements of his world is a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit, and a miracle worth celebrating.
And this is how my Pentecost Life and my Normal Life can become the same life. On Pentecost Sunday, I still look, watch, and pray for Fire, Wind, and Languages. But now I look, watch and pray for Intimacy with God as well.
1- Anchor Yale Bible Commentary, “Crete”. Vol. 1, p. 1,206
2- Etymonline “Cretan”
3 - James K.A. Smith, You Are What You Love
4 - I’m grateful to Gordon T. Smith, Evangelical, Sacramental and Pentecostal, for his connections between ecclesiology and Pentecostalism.
5 - It would be ridiculous to cite all the sources that have influenced me here, but if you’re looking for more theological reflection on this topic, Craig Keener’s chapter on “The Holy Spirit” in The Oxford Handbook of Evangelical Theology is a great place to start.