Pentecost: An Invitation to Dream

Last updated on: May 24, 2015 at 5:32 pm by Leigh Finnegan

Pentecost: An Invitation to Dream 2015-05-24T17:32:14-05:00 Leigh Finnegan

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In the liturgical calendar of the Christian year, today is Pentecost — a celebration of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the early disciples of Jesus. From a historical perspective, Pentecost is the birthday of the Church, both in terms of marking the inauguration of a Jesus-movement and in celebrating the enlivening, efficacious stirrings of the Spirit in Christian community. And in the tradition of biblical birth narratives, the Pentecost story is an odd one:

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each…

(Acts 2: 1-5 NRSV)

In Acts 2, the Apostle Peter makes sense of the strange events of Pentecost by placing them in light of the Prophet Joel:

All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.  No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
    and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
    and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
    in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
        and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
    and signs on the earth below,
        blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
    and the moon to blood,
        before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

(Acts 2:17-21, NRSV)

On the surface, this passage is a little on the nose; Is Peter saying the church is a literal fulfillment of prophesy? Or, is his allusion to prophesy less about the content and more about the medium? Which begs the question: what do the prophets have to do with the birth of the church?

In his classic work The Prophetic Imagination, Hebrew Bible scholar, Walter Brueggemann, describes the role of a prophet:

The prophet engages in futuring fantasy. The prophet does not ask if the vision can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined. The imagination must come before the implementation. Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and to imagine almost nothing. The same royal consciousness that make it possible to implement anything and everything is the one that shrinks imagination because imagination is a danger. Thus every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist. It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing futures alternative to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one. – Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

Surrounded by a befuddled crowd of onlookers, Peter explains what has happened as the birth of a community with a new prophetic imagination; a community defined by its alternative approach to reality; a community in opposition to empire; a community of visionaries and dreamers who are invited to paint a picture of what the world could be for a humanity in need of some Spirit filled inspiration.

As I read Acts 2 in anticipation of this post, I was reminded of a spoken word poem delivered by Palestinian poet, Suheir Hamad. I offer it to you now as a Pentecost-inspired invitation to rebuke the status quo of an age that is passing away, in anticipation of an age beyond the bounds of realistic expectations. A vision so beautiful and compelling that once we hear it we refuse to accept anything less its full realization.

My prayer is that as we discover the courage to share our visions and dream new dreams, the Church will awaken to its prophetic birthright.

Happy Birthday Church!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUL0OqaUgdI

prophetic imagination

walter brueggemann

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