Happy Pentecost! (Wait, what's Pentecost?)

"There appeared unto them cloven tongues"
public domain art via http://breadsite.org 

And thou shalt keep the feast of weeks [Shavuot, or Pentecost] unto the Lord thy God with a tribute of a freewill offering of thine hand, which thou shalt give unto the Lord thy God, according as the Lord thy God hath blessed thee:  And thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God (Deuteronomy 16:10-11)

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they [the Apostles] were all with one accord in one place. (Acts 2:1)

The Christian celebration of Pentecost is this Saturday, 7 June 2014.  The Jewish Pentecost, or Shavuot, is slightly earlier in 2014:  It began at sunset on 3 June and lasts until sunset 5 June.  Latter-day Saints do not typically celebrate Pentecost, though it is mentioned in our scriptures and Sunday School lessons.  So I wondered, as it approached this year, what is it?

Nuremberg Chronicles, 1493
Hartmann Schedel [Public domain],
 via Wikimedia Commons

Pentecost is the Greek name for the Hebrew holy day Shavuot, called the “feast of weeks” or the “feast of firstfruits” in the King James Version of the Bible (See Exodus 34:22) .  In Israel, the winter wheat is harvested after Passover, and the Law of Moses specifies that the Israelites were to celebrate Shavuot 50 days after Passover as a day of thanksgiving for the harvest.   The Israelites were to bring freewill offerings to the tabernacle, later to the temple.  These offerings included fruit, sheaves of wheat, and bread made from newly harvested wheat (see Deuteronomy16:9-12).  Additionally, according to Jewish tradition, the Children of Israel had walked from Egypt to Mt. Sinai in the 49 days following the first Passover, where they then received the Torah.   Shavuot, then, became a holy day to express thanks for two blessings:  the harvest and the scriptures. 

In the feast of Pentecost described in Acts 2, Jesus’ apostles met to celebrated Pentecost at Jerusalem, presumably so they could donate their freewill offerings to the temple.  According to Acts 2:5, Jerusalem was full of “devout men, out of every nation under Heaven,” likely for the same reason.  While the Apostles met, the Holy Ghost fell upon them, sounding like a rushing wind, appearing like tongues of flame, granting the Apostles the gift of tongues and giving Peter the courage to bear testimony of Christ to over 3,000 people.  The early Christians would soon stop keeping the Law of Moses, but would continue to celebrate Pentecost, changing the purpose of the day from thanksgiving to worshipping the Holy Spirit. 

Modern-day Jews continue to keep the feast of weeks as best as they can without a temple.  The devout do not sleep the first night of the feast, instead spending the entire time reading the Torah.  Many Israeli Jews spend the night attending tikkunim, community celebrations where the attendees spend the night in fellowship, study, and pageants.  In the synagogues the congregations re-read the Book of Ruth, which probably took place during this time of year.  The next day many families celebrate with a thanksgiving meal that includes dairy products, such as cheesecake, because the word of God in the Torah is sweet like milk and honey (reformjudaism.org).

  Torah inside the former Glockengasse Synagogue in Cologne
By Horsch, Willy
 [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)
 or CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

Rabbis teach that the most important lesson of Shavuot is the covenant between the Lord and Israel.  The Torah given at Mt. Sinai is a symbol of that covenant.  Shavuot marks the anniversary of the covenant, the day in which God set Israel apart and made them His people.  They explain that the importance of the Book of Ruth is that a woman who was not an Israelite by birth accepted the covenant and became part of the covenant people.  Jewish teenagers who wish to reaffirm their commitment to the Jewish covenant often will choose to be confirmed at the time of Shavuot. 

The rabbis tell us that the Torah is the ketubah between God and the Jewish people. A ketubah is sometimes called a wedding contract, but it is better called a covenant. It enshrines sacred obligations. Jews are a covenantal people; we are bound to one another and to God by the idea of everlasting, mutual obligation. Sinai was the chuppah, and Shavuot is our anniversary.

Rabbi David Wolpe

In his blog entry5/30/2014

For Christians, Pentecost also marks a time of covenant.  Christians, particularly Catholics, Orthodox, and Anglicans, teach that the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost marked the complete fulfillment of the Old Covenant under the Law of Moses and marked the beginning of the New Covenant, or New Testament.  Many Christian denominations consider Pentecost the birthday of Christianity, just as many Jews consider Pentecost the birthday of Judaism.  In Christianity’s early days, Pentecost Sunday was one of the few days in which new converts could be baptized, symbolizing their entry into the new covenant.  The Church of England, in fact, calls the feast day Whitsunday rather than Pentecost Sunday, meaning “white Sunday,” referring to the color of the clothes the new Christians wore at baptism. 

I am impressed enough with the things I learned while studying Pentecost that my family is going to celebrate it this year (a couple of days late so as to fall on Family Home Evening.)  We will talk about why the scriptures are important.  I will help my daughter with the middle name Ruth tell the story of the woman behind her name.  We will review our baptismal covenants.  And we’re definitely going to eat cheesecake.