PenteWhat?


This next Sunday we will be celebrating the festival of Pentecost. Pentecost is a very special Sunday in the Church year because it celebrates the bestowal of the Holy Spirit upon the Church. The basic story is found in Acts 2:1-21. However, the feast of Pentecost was not invented by the early Christian community. It was, in fact, an already existing feast celebrated by the Jewish people. “Pentecost” is the Greek name for the Feast of Weeks, Shavuot in Hebrew. The Jewish Encyclopedia has an in-depth article on their website which discusses the various developments of the festival in the Jewish tradition.  

Pentecost is a wonderful example of a festival that probably began as a harvest celebration and attracted additional meanings and observances to it. In the Bible, the Hebrew Scriptures refer to it in several places:
  •  Exodus 23:14-17 says this: "Three times in the year you shall hold a festival for me. You shall observe the festival of unleavened bread; as I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt. No one shall appear before me empty-handed.You shall observe the festival of harvest, of the first fruits of your labour, of what you sow in the field. You shall observe the festival of ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labour. Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God."
  • Deuteronomy 16:9-10 describes how it was to be determined as a period of 7 weeks from the time of the first harvest of barley:  “You shall count seven weeks; begin to count the seven weeks from the time the sickle is first put to the standing grain. Then you shall keep the festival of weeks to the Lord your God, contributing a freewill-offering in proportion to the blessing that you have received from the Lord your God.”
  • Leviticus 23:15-16 states “ And from the day after the Sabbath, from the day on which you bring the sheaf of the elevation-offering, you shall count off seven weeks; they shall be complete. You shall count until the day after the seventh Sabbath, fifty days; then you shall present an offering of new grain to the Lord.”  “Sabbath” in this passage has been interpreted to refer to the festival of Passover, measured either from the beginning of Passover or the seventh day of Passover. 

From these passages, the agricultural roots of the festival can clearly be seen. The festival was designed, as all such rituals are, to remind people of their dependence upon and connection with the Divine Ground of their existence: the Lord (YHWH) their God. Significantly, this basic impulse and purpose undergirding the festival persists as the festival began to accrete additional meanings and significance.

Tomorrow: Celebrating the Torah

 [Images: modern day grain harvest from http://addisababa.mfa.gov.il/mfm/Data/159348.jpg;  ripe grain from http://www.judaica-guide.com/images/Shavuot.jpg; Ruth at the grain harvest from http://derek4messiah.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/ruth1.jpg]

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