Once a month the staff at Hebron gather for 20-30 minutes to celebrate those staff birthdays that occurred that month. Over the years we’ve developed some quirky traditions—we sing “Happy Birthday” with little attention to tune or key, the birthday celebrant wears a child’s crown and sash, we strive to embarrass them as gently as possible, and we ask for memories of birthdays past. Universally “fake-dreaded” by all, our time together is fun, it involves eating cupcakes, and is surprisingly informative.
As similar as we all are, we have vastly varying birthday traditions—from wildly elaborate to excessively minimalistic. For some on staff, birthdays are significant events, for others the day is barely recognized. But, if for no other reason than to give our staff an excuse to gather and celebrate, our birthday tradition continues.
While every believer has a different experience with the church, we all have a common birthday experience—the Church’s birthday. When we recount our own engagement with our local church (Hebron), we are, perhaps unconsciously, linking ourselves to the universal Church which remembers its birthday in the words of Acts 2:1-13, our passage for worship this week.
The Pentecost experience of the disciples recorded in Acts chapter 2 is frequently recognized as the original birthday of the Church—from the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and the rest of the 120 (see Acts 1:15), the Church roared to life. The body of Christ, the Household of the Lord, God’s people, the Bride of Christ, were born through the empowering of the Spirit.
When we celebrate a birthday today, we are reflecting back upon the birth-day, the day of our birth: the celebration of an annual anniversary. While reading Acts chapter 2, we are seeing the birth-day, the day of the Church’s birth, not an anniversary, but the historical occurrence of the Spirit’s creation of the Church.
Like the nine-month time period before a human birth, the birth of the Church did not come out of the blue. Of course, Jesus Himself spoke just days earlier of the need for the disciples to wait in Jerusalem (Acts 1:8) until empowered by the Spirit. Earlier He had foretold of the coming of the Advocate, the Spirit, in His stead. But, these more recent anticipations of the Church’s birth have deep roots in the Old Testament. From the implied desire of Eden for the Lord God to dwell with His people, through the yearning of Moses that the Spirit would fall on all peoples, to the vivid prophecies of Joel, the Old Testament is full of expectations that come to pass in the Pentecost experiences of Acts chapter 2.
Join us in worship this week as we explore some of these anticipations and prophecies, and their fulfillment in the Church’s Birthday. Read what happens on Pentecost to birth the Church in Acts 2:1-13.
- “The day of Pentecost” (verse 1) arrived about 10 days after Jesus’ instruction to remain in Jerusalem. What do you think the disciples were doing during that time? What does it mean to “wait” on the Lord?
- “A mighty wind” (verse 2) and “tongues of fire” (verse 3) are both recognized as manifestations of the Spirit’s presence and coming upon the disciples. What is behind both images? Why would these function well as “pictures” of the Holy Spirit?
- There is a long-standing debate about this text that asks if “the other tongues” that the disciples were able to speak were actual known languages of a private worship language. This text seems to lean in the direction of a known language. How would you support that conclusion? How would you argue against it?
- Verse 5 tells us that there were “many devout men from every nation under heaven” in Jerusalem. Why were they there? Why is it phrased in this way?
- In verse 12, notice that the onlookers asked, “What does this mean?” not what appears to me to be the more expected question: “How is this possible?” What do the different questions imply about the different cultures and the different mind-sets?
By Henry Knapp