April 28, 2009 | Christians who hunger and thirst for change often look for inspiration to the New Testament’s story of Pentecost in chapter two of the book of Acts. The dramatic coming of the Holy Spirit “50 days” after Jesus’ passion and resurrection signifies a break with the old way of doing things and opens the possibility of genuinely new life. Yet the newness of life after Pentecost is inseparable from the traditions that precede it, and the sustainability of such new life depends directly on the development of new traditions. To understand the significance of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, therefore, we must hold innovation and tradition together.

During the Last Supper, Jesus told the disciples that the cup was the new covenant in his blood (Luke 22:20). After his resurrection, he instructed them to wait in Jerusalem until they would receive the Holy Spirit (Luke 24/Acts 1). The gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is the moment at which the new covenant in Jesus Christ goes public.

Throughout the story of Pentecost, Luke draws upon a Jewish tradition that associated the feast of Pentecost (Weeks) with the giving of the Jewish Law at Sinai. Knowing this allows us to see that the event in Jerusalem is narrated as the new Sinai, the new bond of God with his people on the other side of the promises of renewal heralded, for example, in Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 11. At Pentecost God gives “a new heart and a new spirit” (Ezekiel 11:19).

And yet precisely because the story of Pentecost cannot be told other than with the theological grammar of the Old Testament, it would be a deep mistake to see the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as an innovation that breaks fundamentally from that which preceded it. It is rather that the coming of the Holy Spirit is at once a fulfillment of that which was old -- the pentateuchal and prophetic traditions -- and a radical new beginning.