Saturday, May 23, 2015

Happy Pentecost, Church?

"Happy Pentecost, Church!"

Regrettably, very few of you are likely to hear anything mentioned about Pentecost tomorrow morning, much less receive a well wished greeting in recognition of the holiday. There will no doubt be services dedicated to Memorial Day, in recognition of America's fallen heros, but scant few churches will even be aware of the other holiday the weekend brings our way. We give a month to Advent, leading up to Christmas, we have special services and celebrations in recognition of Easter, but we do nothing to celebrate Pentecost.

Why is that?

Perhaps, it's because most don't understand what Pentecost is, why it happened, or why it even matters. Well, I want you to know something about it because, if it isn't the most important event that's ever happened in the history of the world, it certainly ranks a close second or third. So, to help you with this, I'm posting a paper that I wrote in seminary that I think will help shed some light upon this most important but unfortunately neglected holiday — oh, don't forget the endnotes!




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