One amazing aspect of the Pentecost story is how the apostle Peter interprets it as he is experiencing it. When Jesus’ followers get slam-dunked by the Holy Spirit and go out and start proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ in languages they don’t know, some observers scoff, "They must be drunk on new wine.” But Peter begins to preach to the whole crowd, saying, “We’re not drunk; it’s nine o’clock in the morning, folks! God is up to something – and it’s something God has been promising for a very long time.”
“…this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”
This idea of God’s Spirit poured out on all of humanity is startling. Don’t people need to be holy enough? Don’t they need to be part of the tribe? Don’t they need to correctly understand theology? Don’t they have to want to have God’s Spirit poured out upon them? All flesh? Really? Everybody?
That’s the vision the prophet Joel had spoken of old, and that’s where Peter found the scriptural basis to anchor this bizarre turn of events. It would be some years before he finally understood just how radical God’s welcome to people outside the community of Israel truly was, but even here, at the beginning, he understands that this outpouring of God-Life is not to be reserved to a chosen few. God wants to give his Spirit to everyone God has created.
So, does one have to be a Christian to receive the Holy Spirit? Not according to the story we read in Acts 10, where the Spirit comes in power upon Gentiles listening to Peter preach.I John 4 suggests we need the spirit of Christ to recognize the Spirit of Christ. Yet there are people who don’t claim Jesus as Lord and Savior but revere his spirit, as do Muslims and many Jewish and Baha'i people. I’ve known many non-Christians who seem Spirit-filled, even manifesting gifts of the Spirit like healing. Perhaps God’s Spirit is poured out upon everyone who recognizes the power of sacrificial love. After all, the water in a pool gets everybody in it wet, no distinctions. Is the same is true of our Living Water, by which John said Jesus meant the Holy Spirit?
My prayer is that those of us who do claim Jesus as Lord and worship him might desire the filling of the Holy Spirit, so that we can more actively share that Spirit outside our communities. Six years ago, my congregation in Connecticut held Pentecost worship in a downtown park. This Pentecost Sunday, what will you do to demonstrate the gifts of the Spirit outside the sanctuary? God wants everybody in this pool.
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