The time is 4:30 am, still dark on a Sunday morning in June. I am awakened by the sound of singing outside my hotel window. From my window, I see young men singing and dancing in a circle in the street below. I am in Jerusalem and these are students at a Yeshiva (Seminary that prepares Rabbis) celebrating Pentecost, the festival of Shavuot (Hebrew). They are singing and dancing their way to the Western Wall, the holiest place in Judaism, the site of the ancient temple of Solomon and the temple where Jesus drove the moneychangers out and later got arrested for disturbing the peace.

Pentecost means on the fiftieth day, for Jews, when Moses and the people of Israel arrived at Mt. Sinai. Pentecost or Shavuot celebrates God’s great gift of the law, the Ten Commandments and all the laws. First God rescues his people from Egyptian slavery, and fifty days later God gives them the great gift of the law, because being free now they need to learn how to live together as faithful people of God. To this day, people of Jewish faith celebrate Mt. Sinai every year on Pentecost or Shavuot because the Torah, the law, is God’s greatest gift to his saved people. If you’re Jewish, you are free to believe almost anything you want to believe about God, but how you behave, how well you live your life with justice and righteousness is the foremost responsibility everyone has, and you do this by revering and studying the law.

So it is, in Acts 2, the apostles and many other Jews gather together in Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost, fifty days after the death and resurrection of Jesus, fifty days after Passover, and suddenly God sends his most precious gift, this time not the law, but the Holy Spirit: rush of mighty wind, tongues of fire resting upon each apostle, telling of the mighty works of God in new tongues so that strangers from all over the world can suddenly and surprisingly hear and understand these Galileans when they’re not supposed to be able to receive this witness. What does this mean?

Before his ascension, Jesus told his disciples, "Remain in the city until you are clothed with power from on high and you will become my witnesses, from Judea to Samaria and unto the ends of the earth. And now this miracle is real. The miracle of Pentecost is the birthday of the new covenant community of faith, the Christian Church, so that normal geographical, racial, ethnic, language barriers are overcome, by the power of the Holy Spirit; as God creates this new community empowered to witness to all with the truth and the love of God’s saving grace and the blessing of loving communion and fellowship.

Later on that Sunday in Jerusalem I went to worship at a charismatic Anglican Church. Earlier I shared the Jewish singing and dancing to celebrate Pentecost or Shavuot, then I worshiped with excited and stirred up Christians who celebrate the gifts, the charisma, and so they are called Pentecostals or Charismatics. As I sat somewhat more quietly than some in that worship service, some other tourists in the congregation turned to me and asked, "Where are you from and what is your faith?" I answered, "I’m from the USA, West Virginia, almost heaven, and I’m a Presbyterian." One lady replied, "Ohhhh my goodness!" I think I received some extra prayers on my behalf in that service.

Back to the first Christian Pentecost, "What does this mean?" Some make fun of this cacophony of voices and the frenzy of excitement: wind, tongues and fire. Simon Peter starts to explain. These are not drunk, for it is too early in the day to be nipping from the wine bottle. (Obviously, these are not Presbyterians, who never touch strong drink any time of day!) This is God’s fulfillment of the prophet Joel’s words. "In the last, days, says the Lord, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, on young and old, on slaves, on men and women, and through my Spirit everyone will be empowered to prophesy, to tell the truth of the grace and love of God, witness to God’s grace and love given freely in Jesus Christ, so that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord, God will save from sin and evil."

As we celebrate the birthday of the church, let us learn two dimensions of this gift of the Holy Spirit who creates us as God’s church. As a Jew, Jesus knew, loved and obeyed the law. "I have come not to abolish the law and prophets," Jesus says, "but to fulfill them." Here, on Pentecost, in the birthday of the Christian Church, is the fulfillment: God’s gift of his Holy Spirit, poured out and freely given unto all humans who receive and welcome and practice this empowerment to witness and share God’s love and grace. We honor God’s law, but we do not worship this law, because in this Pentecostal gift we know and love and worship Christ directly, personally, intimately, as God’s Holy Spirit comes to live within and among us, creating and building the church whose members, hands, heart, voices and feet we all are. To receive this Spirit in baptism, in our church, is to know and worship not the law but the God who alone gives and fulfills in us all of his laws, and especially Jesus own commandment to love each other as we have been loved.

And notice in John’s Gospel how Jesus’ disciples are sad that Jesus is leaving them. They want to hold on to him, to keep him with them, to depend upon him with them in the flesh. Jesus comforts them and assures them that he must go away so that he can return to them and bless them with his presence within and among them in this Spirit who arrives on Pentecost. How like us humans to want to hold on to Jesus we already know and are comfortable with, the Jesus we think we can control. How like us to insist upon our own "Comfort Zone." And how like God to urge us forward, away from Emmanuel, God with us as we know Jesus in the flesh, and forward to meet Emmanuel as we need God to be with us, God with us in his Holy Spirit who lives not in the flesh confined to the hills of Galilee, but who lives in this Spirit poured our on all flesh, so that this witness can go forth in all times and places, to all the ends of the earth.

As the Apostle Paul puts it, "When I was a child, I thought as a child, but now the Spirit has arrived and blessed me, and I live in the new freedom and blessing of the Christ who is always coming unto me in Spirit to bless me and give me his life abundant and eternal."

Jesus tells his disciples, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you."

Birthday is time for gifts, for throwing a party: time to sing and dance and shout and hug and kiss and share love and family fun. This party starts with God’s gift to us and we party when we share this same gift, God’s love with each other and with the entire world our God loves so very much.

Let’s share a birthday cake, baked especially for this party, with twenty candles, one for each century of the Church’s life. Let us sing happy birthday to the church: