The season of Easter is nearing its end and now we move into the longest liturgical season of the church Pentecost (and the time after). In Advent we prepared for the arrival of the Christ among us. During Epiphany we discovered some of the wonders of who Jesus was. Lent was our journey with Jesus in discerning what it means to let ‘your will be done,’ as he went to the cross! And in Easter we celebrate the boundlessness of the God’s love, grace, and embrace for all of us that sin, death, and even Satan could not contain; the tomb is empty and eternal life is for all of us to enjoy. Which of those seasons do you like?

Yet now we enter the 7+ months of Pentecost! In Jewish tradition (both of Jesus’ day and now), Pentecost is one of the three annual festivals to be celebrated, “You shall observe the festival of the harvest of the first fruits of your labor, of what you sow in the fields” (Exodus 23:16a). This festival was to take place 50 days after Passover (another annual festival). It’s also a festival that commemorates the giving of the law to the people from God through Moses upon Sinai! It’s loaded with meaning.

What we as Christians have also come to embrace with it is the giving of the Holy Spirit to the disciples who proclaimed the message of Christ to the pilgrims gathered in Jerusalem for the festival in many languages: “Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native languages? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphilia, Egypt and parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jesus and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs - in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power’” (Acts 2:7-13). This giving of the Spirit is considered the ‘birth’ of the church. But more importantly for us, it is the empowering of us, Jesus’ disciples, to carry on the work that He did; for just as “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16), now God sends us! We are called to be the embodiment of Christ in the world. We are called to ‘give food to the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, take care of the sick, visit the imprisoned (Matthew 25:35-36), “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44), “in everything do to others as you would have them do to you” (Matthew7:12), forgive those who sin against us, be the neighbor to any in need (Luke 10:25-37), and so much more! The season of Pentecost is about participating in God’s continued work in the world until Christ returns in glory! Therefore, let us love as Jesus loved; let us give grace as Jesus extended grace to all; and let us embrace all as Jesus was all embracing!