The Tribune

By Canon S Sebastian Campbell

The veil of ignorance is extremely heavy and blinding during the festive celebrations of Pentecost. It's absolutely astounding to have a nation celebrate a holiday when the majority does not have any idea what it is celebrating? A caller to WINZ talk show once said that Whit Monday is Queen Victoria's Birthday. Leading government officials and some intellectuals once suggested scrapping the holiday because it has no meaning to us. The Bible is right on when it says, "The people suffer for a lack of knowledge."

As a "Christian nation", we ought to know that Pentecost is a Christian festival. It's the third highest ranking feast, right after Easter and Christmas. Thank God greedy merchants have not yet found a way to have it commercialised.

On this day we celebrate the birthday of the Christian Church. Historically the feast had a two-fold purpose. At Passover, the crop's first Omer of barley was offered to God, and at Pentecost two loaves of bread were offered in gratitude for the gathered harvest.

It had one other unique characteristic: The law laid it down that on that day no one was to work (Leviticus 23:21, Numbers 28:26). So from the very beginning Pentecost was observed as a holiday. The law further laid it down that every male Jew living within 20 miles of Jerusalem was legally bound to come to the festival in Jerusalem. It was, in simple terms, the Jewish harvest festival. It was harvest time again.

What happened at Pentecost we really do not know, except that the disciples had an experience of the power of the Spirit flooding their beings such as they never had before. Acts chapter 2 shows a graphic attempt by St Luke to describe what really was indescribable. What happened was that for the first time in their lives this incohesive group of people was hearing the Word of God in a way that struck straight home to their hearts and that they could understand. The power of the Spirit was such that it had given these simple disciples a message that could reach every heart.

To the 120 disciples Pentecost was a birthday; they were baptised into a renewed life and great enthusiasm for the faith that they were to take to the ends of the earth. Before Pentecost, we are presented with a burnt-out, stressed out, scared and worried group of disciples who could make no mark on a heathen world. They are behind locked doors out of fear, denying friendship of Jesus; one even committed suicide. The Christian faith stood no chance of survival within an atmosphere so negative.

Jesus' promise in Acts 1:8 is fulfilled on this Jewish festive day: "You will receive power." Now the Church runs from upstairs, from behind locked doors, and is everywhere, unlocking their locked jaws. It is immediately met with success. Following the first Christian sermon preached by Peter, 3,000 enrolled in the new church through baptism. Indeed, it was the birthday of the Church. The Church over the ages has used so important a feast as a time of new birth through the waters of baptism. It became, next to Easter, a day for baptism.

Pentecost is also known as the "White Sunday", which eventually became "Whit Sunday" or "Whitsun". The whole season is known as Whitsuntide, therefore by extension we have Whit Monday and Whit Tuesday, and so on.

We now enter the season of Pentecost which is the last and largest part of the Christian year. There was no planned development of this time period as a designated "season"; it was the outgrowth of what had gone before. It was the leftover part of the year. It had reached a fairly organised level by the late eighth century, at which point the Church year calendar as we know it was completed substantially, except for the English adoption of the Trinity season, until the revisions of the 1970s (Trinity will be an article for another time).

Now, after Pentecost, although Christ is no longer with us physically, He nonetheless continues His mission of redemption, working through the Holy Spirit, which empowers us to live Christian lives, to spread the gospel of salvation, to be the chosen people of God, to come at last into His kingdom.

Christians can only have a spiritual birthday through the empowering of the Holy Spirit. They are then people of power and conviction, unafraid to meet the demonic force in society. A church only behind walls with no sense of mission has yet to experience a birthday. Shouting, screaming and falling out is not what this power is all about. We receive power to live with a sense of mission.

The Church must give a voice to the sickening wave of homosexual activity and the vexing cases of incest and rape. The cat-o-nine might just be the appropriate measure to frighten an indiscipline, promiscuous society back on to the straight and narrow. The senseless snuffing out of human life ought to be met by an appropriate response. Worthless old men who impregnate 'jail bait' ought to be locked up and the keys thrown away. In this sea of immorality the Church must come to life. We must manifest our Pentecostal power or run the risk of being discarded as irrelevant or sleepers. Indeed, we celebrate, we pray God that it provides time for reflection as to our true mission.

It's the birthday of the Christian Church. Pray we celebrate appropriately with all the trappings of a birthday party so as to instil the message into the minds of all our people, but especially our babies/children. The Church is born: Christians rejoice. The holiday is most appropriate.