WALKING TOWARD A NEW PENTECOST: THE GREAT FIFTY DAYS 2020

Today is four days after Easter Sunday.  All of your pastors and worship leaders have pushed hard for the past three weeks to learn new skills and to make fast, adaptive changes in order to make Holy Week and Easter special for you in spite of the fact that we were not able to gather in our church buildings and worship in the traditional ways. So now Easter Sunday has happened, and the church is still the church and the old song that says, “The Church is Not a Building” carries a depth of meaning that no one could have anticipated. 

We know from scripture that the risen Christ spent forty days with the disciples before ascending back to heaven and commanding them to wait for the fulfillment of the promise. Then for another ten days they waited, so that after a total of fifty days after Easter Sunday, the church was born.

So now we find ourselves in that “in-between time” between Easter and Pentecost, pausing to catch our breath and regain our strength and prepare for whatever comes next. Like the disciples, we need to spend some time just walking with Jesus and let that be enough for now. Then, again like the disciples, we will be told to wait (Acts 1:4).

Pentecost this year will be Sunday, May 31^st, and none of us knows whether or not we will be again worshiping in church buildings by then or if we will be doing what we have been doing. What we do know is that the church will still be the church, and it will probably be different. 

When the risen Christ told Mary at the tomb, “Don’t cling to me,” he was telling her things would not go back to the way they were before. The earthly ministry of Jesus is over; what is about to take place is the ministry of the risen Christ in and through his disciples and those who would come after (you and me).

Like the disciples, we sense that something new is about to be born, and we do not yet know what that will look like. After all, it is Jesus who “makes all things new” (Revelation 21:5; 2 Corinthians 5:17).

Pentecost was full of surprises, and nobody knew what the new church was going to look like.  We might also be in for some surprises, but right now the thing for us to do is pay attention to some radical self-care, walk with Jesus, and wait to see what the Holy Spirit is going to do.