Powerful Promises
This is the sermon I preached on Pentecost, 6/9/19 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The text was Acts 2:1-21. In high school, I had a dear Jewish friend. Desiring her salvation, I happily told her that we Christians also celebrate the Jewish feast of Pentecost. She had never heard of it! It wasn’t until many years later that I learned that what we call Pentecost, which is from the Greek, is the Jewish feast called Shavuot. Had I referred to it in that way, by its Hebrew name, then I suspect she would have had a better understanding. Shavuot began as an agricultural feast, originally celebrated seven weeks after the beginning of the grain harvest (Deut.16:9). Later on, it celebrated the giving of the Law, being celebrated fifty days after Passover. Still, my friend and I would have had very different understandings of what we call Pentecost. For us, it’s about the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit and how that power launched God’s work through the church. In Acts we see the beginn...