Please breath-in the word of the Lord from the Old Testament prophet Joel:
You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the LORD, am your God and there is no other. And my people shall never again be put to shame. Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.
I will show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. Then everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the LORD has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the LORD calls. (Joel 2:27-32 NRSV)
Joel looks forward to Pentecost.
Joel anticipates the Pentecost day when the Holy Spirit of God in Jesus Christ will so respirate every member of the church, that everything changes.
Joel catches a strong whiff of what we Christians now sense: the breath of the Holy Spirit is like oxygen. The Holy Spirit is the very air we breathe and the cosmic atmosphere in which we exist. “I will pour out my Spirit in those days,” Joel declares – like the rush of a wind, as it turns out.
Centuries later, on a particularly hazy-breezy Pentecost, the apostle Peter proclaims that Joel’s “those days” have become “these days.” Our days! And these our days – across nearly two millennia of Church history – persist in dawning every morning like a breath of fresh air. Within the hearts of untold millions and millions of believers, without distinction, God’s Holy Spirit of Creation continues to resuscitate the breathless: present and active, “doing her thing,” even when you and I behold no obvious drama.
Though we live immersed in the Lord’s outpoured Spirit, our days typically aren’t filled with the dreams and visions for which Joel yearns. So it’s easy to miss how much we benefit from the indwelling the Spirit. In the words of another, we live – and are so very, very blessed to live – in “these our days,” in the very days that so many people so-long yearned to see and experience in the very core of their being.
Young and old, boys and girls, men and women, the likely and the unlikely: The Spirit descending upon the hearts and minds of them all – to stir visions, and dreams, and ways of understanding God and God’s Kingdom that simply haven’t been widely available until now. Ways of being God’s people that stiff necks and hard hearts have stubbornly and steadfastly refused to accept; until the arrival of these our days, when everybody sees the great wonders of God exploding upon earth, and sky, and sea; when everybody understands the what’s what and who’s who, in God’s great desires and grand plans to break ancient schemes.
To shatter and defeat those powers of hell, God cultivates our nourishment, our sustenance for the fight – the fruit of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – and wills those fruit to flow something like oxygen, an ongoing act of respiration that, like simply breathing, happens without much conscious thought, but that simply breathing-in nonetheless sweeps us up and carries us away.
Getting swept up and carried away cuts both ways, good and bad. Ever been to an exciting sporting event only to find yourself screaming like a banshee for the ol’ home team? Win one for the Gipper, and all that! In many of life’s moment, a certain spirit or power seems in play: an influence that envelopes, so completely sweeping up, so motivating to do things out of the ordinary. So also, on a darker note, those same dynamics that make us jump up, down, and around – as at a thrilling football game – also lead folks to carry on to the extreme at post-game parties, which occasionally spur rowdy vandalism and full-on riots.
Lots of powers influence lots of us – many of which invisible but nonetheless powerful: Forces for serving the common good versus forces for serving personal, ill-gotten gain. Thankfully, for baptized believers in Christ Jesus the Lord, God has poured out the ultimate Spirit upon us all, helping young and old, boys and girls, men and women “get carried away” but in holy, life-affirming ways that open up all of us to all the glory of God!
But we’re still waiting. “Those days” are now “these days,” yes. But we’re still living into the fullness of these our days. And so, we find ourselves in the Pentecost story, eager and anxious for a different kind of fruitful wind to fill our flapping sails.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Pentecost Sunday, June 8, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Meg Jenista, Chelsea Harmon, and Scott Hoezee inform the message.