three high, holiest days, but it’s nowhere near as popular as Easter, a holiday which in turn is nowhere near as popular as Christmas. Why has Pentecost been overlooked? Maybe it’s the wind. Many of us grew up in tornado or hurricane country, and the sound of a great, rushing wind isn’t one we find appealing. Or maybe it’s the tongues of fire. Most of us find fire threatening too. Maybe it’s the plotline of the story: those early believ- ers, filled with a force they didn’t understand, speaking languages they couldn’t know. Those of us who are control freaks by nature likely feel deeply uncomfortable at the prospect.


Pentecost is the holiday designed for discomfort, a cel- ebration that should stir us to get off the couch to go out and do great things. We learn about Pentecost in the book of Acts, after all, not the book of Sleeping Late. Perhaps that’s why so many of us approach Pentecost with a bit of apprehension. Throughout church history, we’ve seen what the Spirit’s presence can do, even in the most improbable settings.


If we let the Spirit loose in our home congregations, what might happen? If we trusted in God’s transforming power, what changes might we see, both in our individual lives and in the lives of our church bodies? How might our local society and the larger world be different? The answers to those questions might scare us. Maybe Pentecost leaves us feeling worried that we’ll be found wanting or incapable of doing what must be done. We often forget that the original Christians began life as a cowering group of people who had seen their Savior crucified. Jesus returned to them, and then they lost him again. When we see them in Acts, they’re adrift, perhaps like many of us. Sure, they chose another disciple to replace Judas Iscariot, but their daily lives revolved around waiting.


And then came the day of Pentecost. The early Chris- tians had been hollowed out by grief and loss. The Spirit filled those hollowed spaces, making it possible for them to speak and for everyone to understand. And then the Spirit sent them out to change the world (Acts 2). We live in a time of rapid change, from revolutions abroad to church schism at home. Various scholarly disciplines continue to give us new discoveries that com- pletely reorder the way we see the world. We may not know what our next steps should be. We are people who want a plan: a daily plan, a five-year plan, a 10-year plan. Yet the circumstances of our lives, both on the individual and the global scale, may make planning impossible. Pentecost reassures us with the mystical promise of


the Spirit. We do not have to know what we are doing. We just need to be open to the movement of the Spirit. Pen- tecost promises daring visions. We don’t have to know how we’re going to accomplish them. God will take care of that.


God became incarnate to prepare humans to carry on the work of creating the kingdom. Pentecost reminds us of our job description. Our work is to let the Spirit blow into our hollowed out spaces and fill us with the fire to dream and the resources to bring our God-given visions to life. 


Luther, Lutherans and Pentecost


“ T


hey may be fine Easter preachers, but they are very poor Pentecost preachers, for they do not preach about sanctification and being made alive by the Holy Spirit.” Martin Luther wrote these words in 1539 to respond to the challenge of people who called them- selves Christian, but whose lives did not reflect the gift of God’s grace.


I write these words in Wittenberg, Germany, where I am part of an international seminar sponsored by the Lutheran World Federation. The participants are Lutheran pastors from Colombia, Congo, Estonia, Ger- many, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Romania, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. With the exception of Germany, no two of us come from the same country. Our theme is “Reading the Bible with Luther


Today.” Although our contexts are different, we wrestle with the same challenge Luther faced in 1539: What does it mean not only to call ourselves Christian but to live as Christians in the world today? How do we wit- ness to the gospel not only with our words but also with our actions? Each morning when we gather for devotions here in


Wittenberg, we pray the Lord’s Prayer—together, but in our own languages. Each morning we experience a little Pentecost. Luther’s words in the Small Catechism continue to come true in our midst: the Spirit “calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth” on Pentecost and every day.


Kathryn Kleinhans Kleinhans is a professor of religion at Wartburg College, Waverly, Iowa. Download a study guide for this article—free to print and Web subscribers—at www.thelutheran.org (click on “study guides”). May 2011 17


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