Pentecost
Numbers 11.24-30; Acts 2
Rev Dora Maple-Valentín Arce
Minister in the Presbyterian-Reformed Church in Cuba, pastor of the congregation in Luyanó, City of Havana, and currently moderator of the synod of her church.
This Sunday is a special day for the whole church. The feast of Pentecost is a little like the celebration of a birth: in this case, tradition sees it as the celebration of the emergence of the church. As you know, Pentecost means the 50th day, that is, 50 days after Easter. Among the Jews it was known as the feast of weeks and was a celebration of thanksgiving for the wheat harvest. At the time of Jesus, it was remembered in a special way as the day on which God gave the law to Moses and the people. Thus, the Scripture for this Sunday want to emphasize its celebratory character and at the same time remind us as Christians that in that group of men and women of whom the book of Acts tells us, there is a new dispensation of the grace of God, renewing and replacing the old covenant. This new law is also given through a marvellous experience, an impressive rush of wind and fire, which is given now, not just for one people in particular, but so that all tongues can speak of the wonders of God. This feast of Pentecost thus reminds us of the emergence of the church as a community of faith called to live out the new covenant, in Jesus Christ, through the power of his Spirit.
I am very happy to have the privilege of being able to share with you some reflections on the word of God on such a significant day, reflections that start from the special context of the church in Cuba. I trust that the same Spirit that filled the first witnesses of the birth of the church with astonishment presides over this celebration today and will blow a breath of new life into each one of us who come together on this feast of Pentecost, so that God may speak to us and his word renew our commitment to his church and his kingdom.
I have chosen a passage from the Old Testament: Numbers11.24-30. Some of you may be wondering whether anything can be found in this book that is not numbers, long lists of censuses or codes of law that try to organize the people's lives down to the last detail, not only in the more general but even in the most intimate aspects of their daily existence.
Nevertheless, I hope, among other things, to help you "break the ice", because this is certainly an astonishing book if we approach it without prejudices. As part of the Pentateuch - the first five books of the Bible, which summarize the law of Moses - it is part of the theological menu that allows us to understand and appreciate the whole of the Old Testament, besides getting to know stories that are part of Jewish tradition and testify to us of all the archetypes in God's relationship with his people, from the creation itself to the conquest of the "promised land" after crossing the Jordan, just as it had been promised to our father Abraham and our mother Sarah.
The first section of this book describes the way in which the people organized themselves for the sake of conquest. It is a well-structured people in good marching order that sets out towards the promised land. Everything is ready for the great adventure that awaits them. Freed from slavery in Egypt, they head towards the promised future, and it seems that even the most minute details have been anticipated.
Nevertheless, as we would say in good Cuban, "One thing is with the guitar, and another is with the violin." What apparently is going to be an undiluted experience of joy and hope soon turns into a sequence of errors and frustrations: the people question, not only the word of Yahweh and his promise, but also the organization displayed by Moses and Aaron, the authority of their leaders. Opposition and revolt reach such a height that they begin to long for the days of their slavery in Egypt.
Only one thing remains unchanged: God does not repent of his promise. In spite of all the people's rebellions and complaints, they can trust in God's faithfulness, confident that they are still the heirs of the promised land.
There is a second strand in this book that stems from the firm commitment of God to this sinful and rebellious people. The call to live in covenant with Yahweh demands a human response: precisely, respect for the law and the commandments declared in the book itself, as well as obedience to God's project with the people, the conquest of Canaan.
Obviously, in the vision of this book, the people's disobedience has a price: the first generation of Hebrews who set out from Egypt will die in the desert without being able to enter the promised land. Only Caleb and Joshua are exempted, precisely because they have demonstrated their faithfulness to God. It is the second generation of Israelites that prepares itself, in the plains of Moab, to enter Canaan, thus inheriting the promise made to their ancestors.
It is moving to imagine the impact that this experience must have had in the history of the Hebrew people - so much so, that the original Hebrew name of this book is not Numbers, but "In the Desert". We can easily imagine the symbolic weight of this title, especially if we think about what it means to journey in the desert of Sinai for about forty years.
We cannot doubt that this book of the Bible testifies to a unique experience in the history of the Hebrew people, above all with regard to its value as a paradigm of the price of turning away from God. It is the historical memory of a people that does not want to forget its adventure "in the desert" and in it discovers lessons of faith that can sustain its faith and its faithfulness to God. It is not for nothing that the phrases, "to walk through the desert" or "to wander in the desert", occur and reoccur in the Bible. It is like an old wound that still itches, a wound that, although healed, constantly reminds us of what it once was.
I ask myself, and I ask you, if the testimony that a book like Numbers offers us can in some way light up our own walking as God's people, today, in this country or in any other; in this topsy-turvy world that leads us, as men and women of faith, to the threshold of that same sin: the sin of feeling powerless and disoriented in the midst of difficulties, in the midst of our own inability to remain faithful to the Lord and to the Lord's commandments, faithful to God's project to lead us, not to conquer a specific land, but to reach the fullness of the kingdom.
What I mean is this: through a book like Numbers, we are privileged to understand the importance of historical memory in the life of any community of faith, to examine our history, its achievements and errors, in order to find and to feed our own identity. It is the ideal prescription to keep us on course, to overcome that feeling of powerlessness that seems at times to paralyse our action and our walking as God's people.
At difficult times, at times that put us to the test, at moments when the world around us seems to take us back to the chaos and disorder described by Genesis in dreadful images: "the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep..." (Gen 1.2), we are tempted to rebuke God, to convict God of permissive sloth. As if our God could take masochistic pleasure in all the injustices in the world, in all the hatreds and conflicts between human beings! As if God had given a blessing to war, to human self-centredness, to the destruction of nature! At such moments, there are even some people capable of pointing their finger in judgment at unbelievers or at people of other faiths, to hold them responsible for every existing evil, presenting God as the one who takes revenge on the world to punish it for its lack of faith and faithfulness.
Pentecost is the right occasion to remind those who make such a caricature of the biblical God that, from the very beginning of the chaos, "the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters". Pentecost is a fitting end to the Passover season, which reminds us not only of the sacrifice of the Son of God on the cross - a sacrifice made, indeed, for our salvation - but also of his resurrection, his definitive victory over death, which is nothing other than evil in its most concentrated expression. Pentecost is the renewal of God's promise to God's people, given in Jesus Christ when he told his friends: "I am with you until the end of time." Pentecost confirms that the Spirit of God never stops moving, from the beginning to the end; it is the Spirit's dynamism that drives the history of this universe, of this world, of my country, of any community of believers anywhere in the world.
The God in whom we believe is love, mercy, unconditional faithfulness. If we do not take that conviction as the foundation of our faith, we run the risk of turning into a handful of complaining and protesting men and women, just like the generation that came out of slavery in Egypt with a vain euphoria, an enthusiasm that crumbled as soon as they began to understand that freedom has a price and that walking in God's way is not an evening stroll or a weekend excursion.
The privilege of belonging to the people of God demands the recognition that our journeying in the freedom that has been granted us in Jesus Christ must also be in part "in the desert". The road of faith is not wide, but narrow. The journey of faith is not easy, but full of difficulties. But this is sure: God's promise will never fail us, in spite of all our infidelity, our rebellions and complaints. And insofar as we are able to respond to the love and the faithfulness of God, our long march will take us nearer to the "promised land", to the fulfilment of the hope that for us is anticipated in Christ, the certainty of the coming of his reign, the full realization of God's project.
§
There is one last idea I want to share with you that has to do directly with that part of the book of Numbers we have read. In the course of a seemingly interminable series of problems, complaints, and revolts, the time comes when even Moses himself has to confess that the burden he bears is impossible. Guiding a nation of grumblers and grouches exceeds his capacity as a leader. He would rather die than continue to carry such a weight. This is the moment when, according to the text, God decided to share the burden of leadership. He asked Moses to choose 70 men (regrettably, only men) in a kind of act of consecration, setting them apart to help him: "and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself."
These men were called to the tent of meeting. When they had assembled, God came down in a cloud and shared the spirit that had been given to Moses among them; "...and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied." It happened that in the camp, there were two more on whom the spirit also rested, and they began to prophesy. Immediately a young man came to Moses with this piece of gossip, and Joshua son of Nun, his assistant, one of his "chosen men", protested, asking Moses to stop them.
The words of Moses still astonish me whenever I read them: "Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them" (11.29). We cannot avoid connecting them with the story of Jesus and his disciples in which John, like the young assistant of Moses, is worried about safeguarding the purity of his teacher's ministry. He tells Jesus that he has seen someone who is not one of his followers casting out demons. Proudly and perhaps even naively, he adds that he tried to stop this stranger, because he was doing something that he assumed was reserved to them as disciples. But, just like Moses, Jesus responds: "Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us." (Mk 9:38-40).
I believe that the day on which we celebrate the feast of the Spirit - the Spirit that is invoked so that it moves not only in a particular congregation or community of believers, but in all the families which constitute the church, and in the world in which we live, so that it constantly reveals its presence among us - a day such as this is a propitious opportunity to receive through the word of God an exhortation that, in my view, is fundamental for any Christian community that wants to be faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ and the biblical God.
First of all, the gift of the spirit is a shared gift, shared, incidentally, not as we desire, but as God thinks fit. What did that young assistant of Moses want but to prevent the spirit from touching someone outside the circle of those selected by human criteria to lead the people? Blessed young man who was able in time to learn that it is not always as we want but as God wants! And I trust that any community that gathers together to celebrate Pentecost will reaffirm this conviction.
But there is something else at least as important as this. The task to which we have been called as the people of God, but above all as a church born in the experience of Pentecost, is the task of men and women: precisely, of a people. It is not a burden that the pastor or the consistory can bear alone. It is not a weight that the board of directors of a presbytery or synod can carry alone. The mission of the church is the task of each and every one of us who constitute it. The Spirit of God does not blow more for some and less for others: in the light of scripture, as we have already recalled, it works freely, as it wants, when it wants and where it wants. Not one of us has property rights in the Spirit, not one of us can claim the monopoly of its power, not one of us has a patent to appropriate or control it. It is perhaps the most perfect expression of divine freedom. Its presence and its power rest on each one of us who make up the church. In it we live and move and have our being.
The times in which God has given us the privilege of testifying to his presence in the world may seem to deny this truth that we are proclaiming. The reality of the world in which we live may tempt us to feel powerless. In our personal lives, we often experience that same feeling of powerlessness. It may be that our pilgrimage is like a long, unsparing walk through the desert, exhausting, at times suffocating, and apparently with no way out. But we have decided to place our whole confidence in a God who, in the words of John's gospel, has tabernacled among us, has pitched his tent in our midst (Jn 1.14), has thrown in his lot with us, with his world, the work of his hands which he loves with an unconditional mercy and to which he has promised, in Christ, the full realization of a kingdom of justice and peace that will never end. May we never be overcome by doubt, never be invaded by depression or despair - because that would be to turn away from God and to stop the spirit of Pentecost from moving freely in this world. Let us act as befits our calling: we are the people of God, and God's spirit has touched each one of us. Let us respond to such a privilege with the same faithfulness to the word as is displayed by God, the very word that has reminded us today of our responsibility in building the kingdom. I am sure that that same Spirit will give us power to transform the world and fill it with its glory.
May the community which is brought together as the church of Jesus Christ, in whatever part of the world, never fail to testify to this certainty. May it always be able to praise the Lord with joy in the manner of the psalmist: "Come, Spirit of God, and renew the face of the earth!" (cf. Ps 104.30).
Amen.
