Sunday, 6/8/14
The account of Pentecost Sunday in
the Acts of the Apostle’s gives us a list of the peoples gathered in Jerusalem.
There were Parthians, Medes, Elamites and groups of strangers from other lands.
The reason for all of them congregating comes from Pentecost’s having been an
important holiday for two quite different reasons.
First, for ordinary farming people throughout
the Middle East, Pentecost was their Thanksgiving.
From 5000 B.C. on, farmers in those
neighboring lands had been planting wheat at the last full moon of Autumn.
Then, on the day of the first full moon in spring, they had gone out, plucking
the first ripe grains, and celebrating that night by eating cakes of unleavened
bread from those first grains. From that night onward, they set themselves the
task of harvesting wheat from dawn to sunset for fifty days. In that way they
got the harvest in before the coming of the spring rains.
By the fiftieth day (Pentecost in
Greek) they had the full harvest in. They ate their full, paid their debts, and
arranged their weddings. The Cretans and Arabs who heard the Apostles that day were
all in the big city celebrating the end of their fifty-day harvest season.
For the Jews, who were farming
people as well, Pentecost marked the
completion of the harvest, but there was more to it for them.
For the Jews, that fiftieth day was
the anniversary of their becoming the Chosen People. Twelve hundred and fifty years
before, on the night of the first full moon in spring, their ancestors, all of
them standing up and dressed for the road; had eaten the first Passover meal of
unleavened bread. Then, the whole throng of them leaving Egypt behind, had
walked speedily down to the base of the Sinai peninsula. There, on that
fiftieth day after their first Passover, they had assembled before Mt. Sinai,
freely entering their covenant with God.
After the Holy Spirit descended on
them exactly fifty days after the Last Supper, the Apostles burst out into the
street, addressing the crowds with such convincing eloquence, that by the end
of the day they had gathered in three thousand followers.
Our Bible’s account of that
Pentecost, tells us that the Apostles spoke to the crowds about “the wonderful
works of God.” The Latin for that phrase has a majestic ring to it. They declared
the Magnalia Dei.
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