Pentecost Matters

Ah, Pentecost! It’s that time of year that I love. I imagine part of my love of Pentecost derives from my Pentecostal roots, but it’s complicated. I do not remember ever hearing the phrase, “Pentecost Sunday” growing up. Our church did not follow the liturgical calendar, except for Christmas and Easter, so while we had constant attention to the story of the Day of Pentecost in Acts, it was never assigned for celebration on a particular Sunday. When I became part of the Presbyterian Church, we always observed “Pentecost Sunday” as part of the liturgical calendar, but most Presbyterians do not have the kind of expectation of experiencing the wild and fervent gifts that were present on the Day of Pentecost as part of a “decent and in order” worship service. Isn’t that ironic? One church downplays the tradition but focuses on the experience; the other church downplays the experience but focuses on the tradition. Is there a lesson here? 

I try not to be one of those persons who uses words like “bureaucracy, institution, and tradition” as if they are bad words signifying bad things. Any time a movement spreads across cultures or is sustained over time, it takes on some kind of bureaucratic, institutional, or traditional form. The process of asking, “What, exactly, are we handing on here? How much of it is culturally specific, and how much can be accommodated in other ways without losing its soul?” In the face of those kinds of questions, institutionalization happens. It could be something as simple as song, like “Jesus Loves Me.” Many of us learned as children, whether we grew up in California, Virginia, or even outside of the US; whether we grew up Presbyterian, Pentecostal, or Roman Catholic; whether we learned it in Sunday School, Parochial School, or Vacation Bible School. The process that is often maligned as bureaucracy, institutionalism, or tradition is simply this kind of thing – when something of central value – like the love of Jesus – needs to be communicated however it may. Liturgical calendars may be the epitome of this kind of good and necessary tradition-building. 

At the same time, bureaucracy, institutions, and tradition can kill the buzz and does so over and over. I’ve observed persons who could use “Robert’s Rules of Order” (normally a helpful tool), as a passive-aggressive way of silencing ideas that they found uncomfortable. It’s easy to do and the reason bureaucracy, institutions, and tradition have such a bad reputation is because they almost require novel ideas to be deflated in order to preserve themselves. This is precisely the kind of approach to “decent and orderly” worship that my Pentecostal forebears found so problematic. A written order of service seemed to put human planning ahead of God’s own presence as what drives worship and if I were ever asked to pray nobody wanted me to pull out a sheet of paper and read it. Who reads when they’re talking to their parents? Isn’t prayer talking to our heavenly parent? The celebration of Pentecost as an ongoing experience in worship, rather than a date on the liturgical calendar – as weird as it may seem to those who have never been part of it – may be the epitome of resistance to stultifying institutionalism. 

So, as if often the case, neither approach is correct and – to be honest – neither the “holy rollers” or the “traditionalists” are as locked into their ways as we might think. We might think a Pentecostal church looks highly spontaneous and has no “order of worship,” so to speak, but in my experience the song leaders, pastors, and anyone else leading worship had a little piece of paper tucked into their Bibles that prepared them for what was going to happen. And while Presbyterian worship seems to be scripted from top to bottom, just try convincing anyone who leads “Young Church” that there is no spontaneity in the house. My role as the curator of worship at St. Mark is often focused on trying to find the right measure of “order” and “ardor” when we gather. 

So, stepping fully into the liturgical tradition of celebrating this weekend as “Pentecost Weekend,” I invite you to wear red and come prepared to hear this story of the Day of Pentecost. And, keeping with the spirit of Pentecost, I invite you to come and hear it as our story and not just some quirky moment from the past that we like to remember on occasion. 

Mark of St. Mark