Pentecost

Pentecost was a harvest festival, fifty days after Passover, and Jerusalem was packed. Jews from all over the Mediterranean and the East had come for it. Jesus had told his followers to wait in the city for something. The text doesn't say they knew what. So a group of them, around a hundred and twenty according to the chapter before, were together in one place that morning.

Then a sound came from the sky like a violent wind and filled the whole house. Something that looked like fire split up and settled on each person. Luke, who wrote Acts, reaches for 'like' twice in two verses; he's describing something he doesn't have a word for. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and started speaking in other languages, ones they'd never learned.

The noise pulled a crowd. And the crowd was baffled, because these were obviously Galileans, northerners with a recognisable accent, and yet a Parthian heard Parthian, an Egyptian heard Egyptian, visitors from Rome heard their own tongue. Acts lists fifteen regions, from what's now Iran to Libya. Everyone heard about the great things God had done, in the language they'd grown up with. Some asked what it meant. Others said they'd been drinking.

Peter stood up with the eleven. Seven weeks earlier he'd denied knowing Jesus to a servant girl. Now he addressed a crowd of thousands. His first point was practical: it's nine in the morning, nobody's drunk. His second was a prophet. This, he said, is what Joel was talking about: God pouring out his Spirit on everyone, sons and daughters, young and old, servants included, and anyone who calls on the name of the Lord being saved.

Then he got to Jesus. You know who he was, Peter said, you saw what he did. He was handed over according to God's plan, and you had him killed by lawless hands. And God raised him up, because death couldn't hold him. We've seen it. Peter quoted David's psalms and pointed out that David's tomb was still in the city, so David couldn't have been talking about himself. This Jesus, he said, whom you crucified, God has made both Lord and Christ.

Luke says the crowd was cut to the heart. They asked, what do we do? Peter told them: turn round, be baptized in Jesus's name for forgiveness, and you'll get the same Spirit. The promise is for you, for your kids, and for everyone far away. About three thousand people were baptized that day.

The chapter ends with what those people did next, and it's not dramatic. They kept listening to the apostles, ate together, prayed, shared what they had so nobody went without, and met daily. Luke says they had the goodwill of the whole city and that people kept joining. That was the church, before it had buildings or a name. The text doesn't say anything about the fire coming back. It didn't need to.