Most folks send Christmas cards. A few send Easter cards. Somewhere, someone may send out cards to celebrate Pentecost, but I haven't heard about it. And yet, I submit, it may help us think about the importance of this feast if we consider possible reasons—apart from boosting the greeting card industry—for celebrating the occasion by designing and sending Pentecost cards.
Pentecost is more than the afterglow of Easter; it is Easter's culmination. The Jewish feast of Passover (commemorating the release from captivity) finds fulfillment in the feast of Weeks (pentecostes in Greek), commemorating the Sinai covenant. Similarly, Easter, celebrating the divine victory over the shame of death by crucifixion, finds its fuller meaning in the enlivening of the Christian community through the gift of the Holy Spirit. The thrust of Luke’s history of the early Church in Acts is to illustrate how the risen Lord works through the community through its empowerment by the Holy Spirit. Weak Peter becomes a forceful leader. Incredulous disciples move from dejection into mission.
The signs and wonders worked in Jesus’ ministry by the power of the spirit now continue in the ministry of the “People of the Way.” Peter, addressing the Jerusalem authorities in Acts 11, can speak of Pentecost as the time “when we came to believe in the Lord Jesus” (Acts 11:17), because until they had received the gift of the Spirit, they were not able to recognize just how it was that the risen Jesus was their Lord. Finally, empowered for their prophetic mission, they came to full faith in Jesus' lordship over their lives. Doesn't this warrant a card?
We believe in a Church. Just as we rightly single out the wonders of
the incarnation (Christmas) and the redemption (the Easter Triduum)
for special celebration, ought we not to celebrate Pentecost as the
birthday of the Church? For we do boldly assert, in the Nicene Creed,
that we believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. That
includes the remarkable conviction that the Spirit of the risen Lord
directs and energizes a worldwide community of some two billion people
baptized in the name of Jesus—half of us united with a pope and
another half with whom we share an alliance wounded by past errors and
agonies. While Christmas and Easter could leave us meditating in
solitude at the crib scene or lost in wonder at the entrance of the
empty tomb, Pentecost can awaken us to the startling communal
dimension of our faith. We believe that the incarnate and risen Lord
continues to work with this immense, sinful, gifted community to heal
a wounded world. Doesn't this deserve at least a card?
Pentecost is about God-given unity in God-given diversity. When St.
Paul wrote that first letter to the Christians in Corinth, he was
addressing a group turned on to the spiritual gifts but divided by a
variety of factions and rivalries. Some were boasting that the
catechist who brought them into the faith was more authoritative than
the teachers of others. Some were maintaining that their ability to
speak in tongues indicated their superiority over others. Paul took
the occasion of this division to teach clearly that any spiritual
gift—healing, tongues, wisdom, leadership—was given not for the
promotion of self but for the service and building up of the
community.
To illustrate this insight, he developed his famous image of the body
of Christ. Like the organs of a living body, the gifts of individuals
derive their meaning not from their inherent excellence but from their
contribution to the life of the body. What the Corinthians liked to
call pneumatika (“spiritual things”) Paul
preferred to call charismata (“gifts”). If there was ever
a time when the church was suffering from the challenge of working out
our diversity of gifts rooted in the unity of the one Lord it is now.
This is another reason to celebrate Pentecost as the feast that shows
us the source and purpose of our diversity of gifts. In Paul's
language, every Christian is charismatic and Spirit-filled.