This is the week when we have just celebrated Pentecost. Awe and wonder are present in the birth of the Church, because the Holy Spirit had come! That’s what we aim to celebrate and to remember on this day.

What is Pentecost? The word itself means fifty days. Fifty days have passed after Easter, and now, Jesus has, of course, been raised from the dead. He has been with his disciples and talked with them about important things.

But now he has ascended. The disciples are on their own. They are cautiously gathered with the people. Now with Jesus’ disciples, ecclesia takes place.

“What will we do now?” they wondered. Well, they didn’t get together and start drafting church rules, a Constitution or By-Laws.

No, on this day they gathered and were filled with a sense of awe and wonder. That’s where the Church began. A variety of people were there. Parthians and Medes, even, the story tells us. It’s not that everyone spoke all the languages found there.

The violent wind of the Spirit came and the miracle was that they understood. Understanding as in, “You don’t speak the way I do, yet by the Spirit of God I hear you. I’m listening to words alien to my vocabulary, but all of a sudden they are part of what I understand.”

The miracle of Pentecost might be the miracle that people understood each other, understood each other’s needs. Now, you and I know that it was only a brief, shining moment that the church operated like that. But what a shining moment it was.

For a brief, shining moment, the Spirit came. The church said right there, in that moment in time, “This is what we can be. We’re not all the same. But we understand, we care for each other. Someone other than just me matters.”

Shared awe and wonder existed at Pentecost. Worship took place. I look at myself now. In this stage of my life, I hope I never lose wonder, love and praise.

One writer has said that we glorify the beauty of nature. Understandably so. But consider this. When humanity aligns and reads off the same page, when humanity strikes up the same note or when a diverse, imperfect and flawed Creation manages to align and, for however long, puts its collective talent and will to doing one thing like what God has asked us to do? Oh, that is beauty.

That’s beauty, and it’s what Pentecost showed us. It’s what Pentecost made possible if we would but let God lead us to do God’s bidding. Beauty!

Why does any of this matter? Well, it matters for at least a couple of reasons that I hope you’ll find important. First, I think all of this matters because when we forget that Pentecost’s power came to help the church keep its resemblance to Jesus, then we start to call on God alright, but only when we want something.

We start to call on the Spirit’s power but only when our ambition or our want asks for a little extra, just in case.

Second, I think all of this matters because when we forget that Pentecost’s power came to help us maintain a resemblance to Jesus, we can take on a state of un-beauty. When we wrest the controls away from God the Holy Spirit, when we lose our appreciation for Pentecost’s true power, we can start to do things that Jesus never would have.

If we exclude the Spirit’s leadership, we can get our faith in bed with political power, and we see that didn’t help so much in the first-century biblical days nor in any other century since. If we don’t watch out, we can start to rationalize our support of causes because they feed some other element of our lives that seems important and we begin to nurture efforts that Jesus wouldn’t have had anything to do with.

When we forget the Holy Spirit’s power and true intent, we can embrace the unbeauty found when we take seats at tables that Jesus would have turned over and align ourselves with people Jesus would have whipped in the Temple Courtyard.

Pentecost brought the Church the Holy Spirit, alright. By remembering this, we also remember that Pentecost showed us all what we can be. Pentecost showed us beauty because in our awe and wonder, we caught a resemblance of Christ. Hold onto that resemblance. Keep your awe and wonder, and Pentecost’s power will keep on giving.

DR. CHARLES QUALLS is senior pastor at Franklin Baptist Church. Contact him at 757-562-5135.

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