Pentecost gets a little more press than Ascension Day around these parts (I put an all-too-brief reflection on the latter holiday in our last email update), but it still plays third fiddle at best to Christmas and Easter, which is a crying shame, because Pentecost commemorates the proverbial rubber hitting the road, the Christian life as we now know it beginning to be lived by those outside the circle of the original disciples.

The events of that first Pentecost are God’s answer to the plea of everyone who believes the Good News: Give me Jesus. That Holy Spirit who came down to the feast that morning at nine o’clock, who takes up residence in every believer, is more than God-given – he is God Given, Christ Given to us.

He gives us Jesus the Great High Priest, sprinkling our hearts clean with the blood of the covenant to make us a holy temple with streams of living water flowing from under the altar; he washes us, consecrating us to the work of a royal priesthood; he robes us in Christ’s own righteousness to stand in God’s presence as living sacrifices, holy and blameless.

He gives us Jesus the Great King, Son of David, Son of God, Son of Man, declaring us beloved sons with whom our Father is well pleased; he drives us into the wilderness to be tempted, putting the word of God into our hearts and mouths to resist the devil; he gives us Christ’s own victory over sin and death, rest from our enemies all around, and builds us as living stones into God’s house; he makes us witnesses to the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation.

He gives us Jesus the Prophet, the one Moses promised, convicting us of sin and calling us to repent and believe God’s good news; he proclaims good news to us poor, binds up our broken hearts, declares liberty to us captives, restores our sight, proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor and its fulfillment in Christ’s coming; he brings us into the throne room of God to be commissioned to go to the world, to inquire of the Lord, to plead with the Lord for our neighbors’ sake.

He gives us all that belongs to Jesus: his obedience, his love, his sufferings, his humiliation, his death, his body and blood, his indestructible life, his place in God’s house, his kingdom not of this world, his mission to the world, the joy set before him.

Thanks be to God for His inexpressible Gift!

-Ben