The Festival of Pentecost

This Sunday we are celebrating Pentecost Day, the birthday of the New Testament church, which is exactly fifty days (Latin: pente-) after Easter.

Pentecost Day is the famous event of the appearance of tongues of fire and the disciples miraculously speaking in many languages they didn’t previously know. Yet the speaking in tongues is not the essence of the day. The festival of Pentecost is misconceived when it is only described as a pouring out of special gifts in high measure to the apostles. To celebrate Pentecost properly we must be convinced that today the miracle of the first Pentecost is repeated.

The true Pentecost gift of the Holy Spirit happens every day. It is to undo our confusion so that we understand the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ.

In the Gospels we notice that the apostles and other disciples were remarkably dull regarding the work of Jesus, though they knew his person well enough. Even up to the day of Ascension ten days prior to Pentecost they had false notions regarding the work of Jesus (Acts 1:6). But all this was changed on Pentecost. In the sermon of Peter on that day we have for the first time clear-cut and definite statements of the forgiveness of sins. On Pentecost the disciples received the Holy Spirit in such a manner that they now fully understood what the work of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins really meant (John 14:26). That is the precious gift which since then is given to all Christians, and it is the gift that makes us Christians.

History of the Festival of Pentecost

Easter is the oldest festival of the Christian church, replacing the Jewish celebration of Passover. Pentecost is the second-oldest festival and replaces the Jewish celebration of the Feast of Weeks (Exodus 34:22 and Deuteronomy 16:9–11), which commemorated the giving of the Law on stone tablets on Mount Sinai, and was therefore the birthday of the Jewish church. It is very fitting that this was the day the Holy Spirit should come, who wrote the new law of liberty on tablets of the human heart (Jeremiah 31:33), giving birth to the New Testament church.

In the earliest period of the Christian church, Pentecost was a double celebration of both the ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit. The Easter day events in St. Luke’s Gospel are immediately followed by the record of Jesus’ ascension; and in St. John’s Gospel they are followed directly by the record of the giving of the Holy Spirit. So the themes of Christ’s resurrection, ascension, and the coming of the Holy Spirit formed one celebration in the church. Sometime after A.D. 375 the ascension came to be celebrated separately on its chronological date 40 days after Easter. Soon after that, the giving of the Holy Spirit likewise came to be celebrated separately on its chronological date, 50 days after Easter.

Up until the 400s the church referred to the entire fifty days between Easter and Pentecost as “the seven weeks of Pentecost,” following the Hebrew concept of naming periods of time by their ending event. Today we follow the Western concept of naming this period of time by its beginning, calling these weeks “the Easter season” and the weeks afterwards “the season of Pentecost.”