Happy Birthday

On Sunday, May 24, 2026, the Church celebrates Pentecost, which in a very real sense was the birthday of the Christian church. The Holy Spirit descended on the disciples, empowering them to begin their public ministry.  And, nearly 2000 years later, here we are.

Pentecost was a Jewish festival, observed 50 days after Passover and celebrating the giving of the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament). Pentecost also celebrated the first fruits of the year’s harvest.  In retrospect, it might seem surprising that God chose Pentecost as the occasion of the birth of the Christian church.  Then again, maybe it's not surprising at all.

The prequel to Pentecost (as we Christians think of Pentecost) actually goes all of the way back to the first book of the Torah.
At one time all the people of the world spoke the same language and used the same words. As the people migrated to the east, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia and settled there.
They began saying to each other, “Let’s make bricks and harden them with fire.” (In this region bricks were used instead of stone, and tar was used for mortar.) Then they said, “Come, let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world.”
But the Lord came down to look at the city and the tower the people were building. “Look!” he said. “The people are united, and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them! Come, let’s go down and confuse the people with different languages. Then they won’t be able to understand each other.”
In that way, the Lord scattered them all over the world, and they stopped building the city. That is why the city was called Babel, because that is where the Lord confused the people with different languages. In this way he scattered them all over the world. – Genesis 11:1-9 (NLT)

Over the next few millennia, lots of things happened.  One thing that didn’t happen:  God never forgot the promise He made to humankind virtually immediately after we listened to the crafty (and, not to mince words, evil) serpent, who’d appealed to humans’ self-interest to goad us to disobey God, that is, to sin (Genesis 3:1-14).    God’s promise came in the next verse (Genesis 3:15):
And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”

That promised “enmity” is a reference to the Messiah, our Savior.  Jesus, “Son of God and Son of Man” was born of a woman, grew up, conducted a world-changing ministry focused on grace and reconciliation, only to be arrested, tortured, and crucified.  He “gave up his spirit” (John 19:30), and was buried, only to rise again on Easter morning!  Jesus then spent the next 40 days, alive, on earth, and then ascended into Heaven (Acts 1:6-11).

But that wasn’t quite the end of the story.  Jesus had made another promise to His frightened and (still) confused disciples.  Actually, He made the promise a couple of times, but right now I’ll quote the last time it was recorded in Luke's Gospel.  This happened when the resurrected Jesus appeared, suddenly, in the midst of his disciples (as well as the two fellows He’d chatted with earlier in the day “on the road to Emmaus”).  The resurrected Messiah announced to His presumably bewildered yet overjoyed audience:
“And now I will send the Holy Spirit, just as my Father promised. But stay here in the city until the Holy Spirit comes and fills you with power from heaven.” – Luke 24:9 (NLT)

Then Jesus’ band of followers… waited.  Fortunately, they didn’t have to wait long. Ten days after Jesus ascended into heaven (Acts 1:6-11), they were gathered for Pentecost. Physician-author Luke describes what happened next better than any synopsis I could construct, so I’ll encourage you to read Luke’s account in Acts 2:1-31.

Here, I’ll draw your attention to just one vignette:
And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.
At that time there were devout Jews from every nation living in Jerusalem. When they heard the loud noise, everyone came running, and they were bewildered to hear their own languages being spoken by the believers.
They were completely amazed. “How can this be?” they exclaimed. “These people are all from Galilee, and yet we hear them speaking in our own native languages! – Acts 2:4-8 (NLT)

Something really amazing just happened there.  Remember what God did as a result of that Tower of Babel caper (see the quote from  Genesis 11 above)?  At the first festival of Pentecost after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Gospel message was suddenly made available to everyone, regardless of the language that they spoke.  The confused babble of languages meant to hinder human endeavor was now circumvented to enable divine endeavor!  

Empowered by the Holy Spirit, Peter preached a stunning, stirring sermon putting the Scriptures, Jesus’ life and ministry, and the events of the day into perspective.
Things were about to get really different.  

The particular Pentecost events described in Acts 2 recount the birth of the church on earth.  The New Testament Epistles subsequently laid out the ground rules for the church as they were revealed by God to Peter, John, Paul, and others.  Now, nearly two millennia later,  the church follows, with the help of God, the precepts inaugurated at its birth on Pentecost.

Happy Birthday!