The 23rd chapter
of Leviticus describes the holidays of the Jewish calendar. There is Passover and the Festival of
Unleavened Bread; and then, seven weeks after the Passover Sabbath, you come to
another Sabbath … and the following day – the fiftieth day – a special offering
is presented to the Lord for the Festival of the Weeks.
In Hebrew, the Festival of
the Weeks is called Shavuot. Shavuot is
the Hebrew word that means weeks.
In Greek, the Festival of the
Weeks is called Pentecost. Pentecost
comes from a Greek word that means fifty.
Whatever you call it – The
Festival of Weeks, Shavuot, or Pentecost – this holiday took place around the
time of the wheat harvest. Thus the
people were reminded of the bountiful gifts of God, and special offerings of
gratitude were presented to God on this day.
In addition to the gift of
wheat, Jews on this day also gave thanks for the gift of the Torah, the
teachings God gave to Moses on Mt. Sinai.
In gratitude for the Torah, the people would stay up all night, reading
and studying the Torah, a practice that continues today in some Jewish
communities; and they would also focus their attention on the story of Ruth.
Why Ruth?
Well, the story of Ruth is a
very peculiar story.
You may remember that it is
about young woman named Ruth, who lived in a place called Moab, which meant she
was a Moabite.
But Ruth became an immigrant
when she went with her mother-in-law to Bethlehem. There, she was an outsider. A foreigner.
Eventually she caught the eye
of a man named Boaz. Boaz was a good
man, and soon Ruth and Boaz were married.
They had children. Their children had their own children, and
then those children had
children. And one of those children was David, who eventually
became the greatest king in Israel’s history.
So the story of Ruth shows
how King David was the great-grandchild of an immigrant from Moab named
Ruth. In fact, the story of Ruth was
written as a challenge to the anti-immigrant, anti-Moabite prejudices of the
time. After all, the greatest king in
Israel’s history had a Moabite great-grandmother.
Eventually, the story of Ruth
came to be celebrated as the story of an outsider who received the gifts of the
Jewish faith – received the Torah – even though she was from a foreign land. It was a lesson to not close off the group to
outsiders, but to welcome even those from different lands, people of all
nationalities and ethnic groups and languages.
And so, during the
celebration of Shavuot, when the people gave thanks to God for the gift of the
Torah, it made sense to read the story of Ruth, an outsider to whom God had
also given the gift of the Torah.
The 2nd chapter of
Acts begins by mentioning that the day of Pentecost had come. Had Acts been written in Hebrew instead of
Greek, it probably would have said that the day of Shavuot had come.
The disciples were all
together in one place. They were very
devout, so perhaps they had been up all night, reading the Torah. Perhaps they had read again the story of
Ruth, committing parts of the story to memory.
Then suddenly, they found
themselves able to speak in other languages.
And then, just as suddenly,
they realized that they were surrounded by a crowd of people from “every nation
under heaven.” And yet each person in
that crowd could hear the one of the disciples speaking in their own native
language.
It’s quite a story. As a child, I would have been tempted to ask,
“Did that really happen?”
Well, maybe it did, and maybe
it didn’t.
At least two of the groups
mentioned – the Medes and the Elamites – no longer existed as distinct ethnic
groups. They had been assimilated into
other groups or wiped out completely centuries before, so there couldn’t
possibly have been any Medes or Elamites present.
But I don’t think that’s
really the point.
Jacob Myers is an ordained
minister and PhD student at Emory University.
He asks: “What if Luke’s
intention [Luke is the author of Acts] is to break apart a theology that is
wrapped up in ethnic identity?”
Every story in scripture has
a purpose. The purpose is not to get all
the facts right about Medes and Elamites.
The purpose is to tell a story of deep, profound truth, full of meaning.
Just like the story of Ruth,
which challenged assumptions about who could and could not receive the Torah
and be a part of the faith.
In fact, maybe the point of
the story of Pentecost in Acts 2 isn’t all that different from the point of the
story of Ruth. After all, there is an
obvious connection between the two stories.
Maybe the story of Pentecost in Acts 2 – like the story of Ruth – is all
about opening up the circle to outsiders.
The story of Ruth, the
Moabite immigrant, shows how this foreigner, this outsider, was welcomed into
the community by receiving the Torah. In
Hebrew, we would say she became a bat-mitzvah.
Now, at Pentecost, the Spirit
is opening up the circle even wider, enabling the story of faith to be shared
in multiple languages with people from all over the known world.
The scripture asks the
question: “What does this mean?”
But Peter, the apostle,
says: “I’ll tell you what this all
means. The prophet Joel described a day
when God’s Spirit will be poured out on all flesh, all people, from all
nations. The love and the power of God
won’t be limited to just the Jews. It
will be for all people. Jews and
Gentiles. Men and women. Slave and free…
“That day has come!”
Then Peter began to describe
for them the events concerning Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was a new type of human, a son of man,
who was sent by God to usher in a new humanity, a new community, a new
kingdom. It would be a kingdom of
shalom, very different from the kingdoms of the world. The world did not like Jesus or his message,
and the world killed him. But God made
him Lord and Messiah.
And the people were amazed
and said, “What should we do?”
And Peter said,
“Repent.”
To repent is to turn from one
way of living, and start living in a whole new way. It is to embrace the new way of living taught
by Jesus, to become a part of the new community, new kingdom.
It is to care about the
common good, not just what’s good for one self.
It’s to achieve greatness by
loving and serving others, instead of seeking to have people serve you.
It’s to realize that joy
doesn’t come from physical beauty or wealth or possessions or having the latest
gadgets and gizmos, but from living in community with your brothers and
sisters, working for peace and goodwill for all people.
This is the work that we as
Christians are called to do. We’re
called to share what we have with others.
We’re called to care as much
about our neighbor and his family as we do about ourselves and our own
family.
We’re called to use what we
have, our money, our talents, to help establish and maintain this new community
of God.
And perhaps most of all,
we’re called to welcome all people into God’s presence. The foreigner. The immigrant. The rich and the poor. Even those who worship God differently than
we do.
Remember the story of Jesus
and the woman at the well. He didn’t
tell her that the way the Jews in Jerusalem worship is the only right way. Instead, he told her that while some worship
God in Samaria, and others in Jerusalem, true worship is not localized like
that. There are many paths to God, but
one Spirit, and one love.
For many Jews, the
celebration of Shavuot can be compared to a renewal of one’s wedding vows. In the same way, Pentecost can be a time for
us to renew our commitment to God. It’s
a day to look forward to the new humanity that God calls us to be part of, and
to take our place in that new humanity, that new community of people who love
and honor God and one another, no matter what race, class, gender, nationality,
religion, or sexual orientation.
It’s the opportunity to be
united in a commitment to peace, justice, and equality, to help make God’s
kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
It’s the opportunity to
re-affirm our identity as a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world, and
to extend once again the invitation to all people to the Lord’s Table,
welcoming them just as God has welcomed us.
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