Thoughts on Ascension, Pentecost and Grief

I think the purpose of Pentecost was to facilitate the saving of thousands of souls from all over the globe who were gathered together with different languages.  The purpose of the Holy Spirit providing tongues to the disciples was to birth their ministry and give them power to be Christ’s witnesses to the end of the earth. It just so happened that the ends of the earth had gathered together in one place when it happened.  This blog started brewing during the church service today.  Since it was Pentecost, the text for the sermon was from Acts 2:1-21.  I tried to imagine if I were one of the early Christians, and especially one of the apostles, the ones who had known Jesus closely but were sad without His presence with them. In the past, I had always imagined that the disciples were hunky dory after the resurrection of Jesus.  After all, He now lived and was not dead as they had thought.  Death wasn’t the end of the story. He is Risen! Yes, this was indeed a joyful reality for them.  However, don’t you think part of them was sad that Jesus was no longer in their midst? Jesus was a cool dude, 40 days without food (I think anyone who could go 40 days without food would be pretty cool in my book – I would look up to his strength), made the golden rule and that’s OK!  OK, sorry for the camp song diversion. I think if I were a disciple, I would’ve thought, “OK that’s great for Jesus. Yay! He is alive! But why can’t he be here with us still? We miss him a lot and we can’t do this whole ministry thing without him. He was kind of our star player.” There would’ve been an element of grief with their joy.

For 40 days after his death and resurrection, Jesus hung around Earth and made different appearances to some folks (Mary Magdalene, the disciples, including Thomas – the doubter, and Simon Peter – the “rock” on whom the church was built).  As a tangent, I just noticed that in John 21, Jesus gave Peter, who had denied Him 3 times during His public trial and death, the equal opportunity of 3 times to express how much he loved Jesus.  Jesus redeemed Peter’s sin and helped facilitate his faithfulness to Christ, just as He does for us.  John says in 21:25 that there were many other things that Jesus did besides these appearances, but “were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

When Pentecost came 40 days after Easter, all the disciples were together in one place. They had been promised the Holy Spirit a few days before it came, and “suddenly there came from Heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting” (Acts 2:2).  They were able to speak in other languages and the multitude of people, who all spoke different languages, too, were able to understand them, thanks to the Holy Spirit.  Some of the crowd was amazed and perplexed with their hearts leaned towards the possibilities of God, asking “What does this mean?” and others in the crowd mocked them and said they were drunk.

Peter began to address the crowd and said that the men were not drunk but were fulfilling a prophecy from Joel that in the last days God would pour out his Spirit on all flesh.  “And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved,” per Acts 2:21 and Joel 2:32.  Peter preached the Gospel to thousands of people gathered from many different cultures, and all were able to hear his message in their own tongue, thanks to the Holy Spirit’s work.  Acts 2:41 says that “those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.”  I have heard before that only the men were counted in the official numbers as heads of the household, so this may have meant even more women and children than the 3,000 were saved.

Before this, at the beginning of Acts, Jesus ascended into Heaven while the disciples watched.  He had just promised them the Holy Spirit would come and that they would be his witnesses to the ends of the earth. Now I know it never says this in the text, but I personally think that the shock I felt as Hannah left my arms and went to heaven was a miniscule comparison to the shock that the disciples experienced when they gazed upon the ascension of Christ.  Surreal.  Dumbfounded. They stood there “gazing into heaven as he went,” unsure what to do next, and two men in white robes came and said to them, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” But he never came back in their lifetimes, and we are still waiting for him to return in ours.

And then the Holy Spirit came shortly after His ascension and facilitated the biggest conversion of that time.  He kickstarted their ministry with the gift of tongues.  That must have been encouraging to them, but maybe they also felt a twinge of sadness that Jesus wasn’t there to see his ministry fulfilled in the flesh.  I don’t know. I could just be way off base with these thoughts (and forgive me if there are any biblical scholars reading this – I certainly am not one), but I do think that the disciples’ emotions were not as gleeful and one-dimensional as I have thought my whole life.  I think they probably had some conflicting emotions about the ascension of Jesus.  And I think it is OK for us to have conflicting emotions about the deaths of our loved ones.  It’s OK to be joyful that they are no longer in pain, but sad beyond measure that they are not here with us. God understands our hearts, just as He understands that I’ve tried to articulate these extra-biblical thoughts in a way that still acknowledges His glory and the truth of Scripture.

Equipped to Comfort

As my two friends began to yell at each other, I sat helplessly watching, not knowing what to do or say.  The argument dissolved into tears and the two leaving the room.  It was apparent they were both hurting and angry at the situation and each other, and each believed that the other had wronged her.  One friend I have known for 30 years, and the other I have known for 3, but I care about both and admire them as strong leaders with good ideas.  I went to the 30-year friend and tried to comfort her while another woman went to comfort the other friend, despite not knowing if she would yell at me to go away. She allowed me to stay.  When the 3-year friend stormed out of the room, I pleaded with her to stay and not leave the group in this manner, because I knew if she left, she would likely never return and that would hurt.  Thankfully the mediator who pursued my 3-year friend was able to calm her and assist her with returning to discuss the situation, and I’m thankful that both friends chose to return to the table.

Even though I wasn’t sure what to say or do, I felt God telling me to go and be with my 30-year friend when she ran from the room with hot angry, hurting tears falling down her face.  Anger scares me and I didn’t want to be the recipient of hers, but I also knew that if I could handle 3 of my babies dying, I could probably handle anything in life.  Thankfully her anger wasn’t directed at me and I (hopefully) didn’t insert my foot too far into my mouth with my attempts to say the right thing.  I apologized for anything wrong that I had done to hurt her in the situation, because I think it’s important that we all own our part in hurting other people when we are made aware of it.  My heart hurt to think that my inaction had hurt my friend.

Although the evening ended with relative calm, I would not say that the situation has been fully resolved.  I asked my friend if I could pray for her, and she agreed. I prayed for peace and calm for her heart, and a spirit of forgiveness and unity from God to envelop our group.  Only Jesus can fully heal any broken relationship, but I know that He can do it, as I have seen it done in my life.  The key is to be willing to be vulnerable and honest in communication with one another.  Another friend who had sat fairly quietly during the encounter emailed me afterwards and thanked me for my role in the evening. She recalled a previous time when she perceived that I had been hurt by some things that each of these two friends had said to me, and she was amazed that I seemed to have forgiven them. In fact, I could barely even recall what had been said to me until she brought it up.  I guess that’s the benefit of all of my short-term memory issues – it’s pretty hard to hold onto unforgiveness when you can’t recall being injured. 😉 But also, I am trying to live my life with more forgiveness and grace toward people these days. I have realized that in most scenarios, at least with the friends in my life, people really are just doing their best to be helpful. It’s just that they don’t always know what to say or do.

My “email friend” also asked why I was more sensitive to my 30-year friend’s pain, as I was the only one among the group who went to comfort her.  “You were the only one who got up to comfort her and give her attention when she most needed it.  Were you more sensitive to her pain because you have experienced so much pain in the last few months? You could have sat like the rest of us, not knowing quite what to do, or not wanting to open yourself to rejection and more pain. You didn’t. You went to the one in need. I want to not only thank you for that, but to say that you were the vessel of God’s love. You listened to the call of the Holy Spirit.  Maybe you are more sensitive to that voice than the rest of us, or speaking for myself, than I was. I thank you for the love you showed and the things you said.” I responded with, “In the end, it’s better to err with good intentions than to omit a blessing because of fear of rejection.  I guess I’ve faced so much hurt and rejection in recent years (and in my life in general) that I felt I could handle her rejection if she did so.”

2 Corinthians 1:3-5 ~ ³Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, ⁴ who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. ⁵ For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.

I think my suffering has indeed made me more sensitive to the suffering of others, almost in an overwhelming way sometimes, so that sometimes I have to turn it off and not feel so deeply for others. When I think about all of the suffering of humanity, or even in my small corner of the world, it is too much, and I have to return to Jesus on the cross because there is no other answer comprehensive enough to redeem our collective pain.

By the way, to the naysayers and judges reading this, I would like to say that I am not sharing this to toot my own horn about this experience, but to illustrate how God is using my heart, even in the midst of its brokenness. As usual, there is a song that comes to mind about this: Broken and Spilled Out by Steve Green.  I hope that we all, despite our weaknesses and fears, will be willing to be spilled out for others in our brokenness.  In what areas of your life are you allowing fear to hold you back from blessing others and yourself?