PENTECOST

CULTURAL RESOURCES

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Freeman L. Palmer, Guest Cultural Resource Commentator
Interim Regional Conference Minister, New York Southeastern Region, United Church of Christ. Dewitt, NY

Lection - 1 Corinthians 12:4-11 (New Revised Standard Version)

I. Introduction

This is the day that the Spirit came
That the Spirit came
We will rejoice, we will rejoice and be glad in it
And be glad in it
This is the day that the Spirit came
We will rejoice and be glad in it
This is the day
This is the day
When the Spirit came¹

This is the day when the Spirit came. This day was Pentecost, the day of signs and wonders when the mighty wind of the Spirit gave birth to the Church. The images of Pentecost are abundant: the disciples and women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, huddled in the Upper Room; the violent sound of the wind; tongues of fire; sounds of languages other than those spoken in Galilee; the disbelieving observers; the newfound prophetic eloquence of Peter; and the birth of a community and movement such as the world had never seen.

Yet, the Spirit came that day not only to give life to the Church, the Spirit came bearing gifts with the intention of continuing to give life to this new creation. These gifts are listed in the Apostle Paul’s body of Christ metaphors from 1 Corinthians 12:

Paul emphasizes that God “activates all of these gifts in people” (1 Cor. 12:6b) and that the community of faith thrives when all of these gifts are used for its common good.  Simply put, the more all of these gifts are used, the more vibrant, the more powerful, and the more Spirit-filled the Church.

My family church (St. Stephen Baptist Church in Washington DC, now Temple Hills, MD) did not strictly follow the Lectionary or Church calendar during my childhood. As a result, Pentecost was not observed. My first experience with Pentecost Sunday was in a Church of God in Christ near Florence, South Carolina. All the minister had to do was proclaim that it was Pentecost Sunday. When he did, Holy bedlam ensued. People shouted, ran throughout the sanctuary, and spoke in tongues as the Spirit gave utterance.  There was no mention or emphasis of the gifts of wisdom, knowledge, faith, prophecy, discernment of spirits, or the interpretation of tongues. And I have not heard this emphasis in my other experiences of Pentecost. Thus, this unit will focus on the diversity of gifts not traditionally emphasized relative to Pentecost, as these have been graciously given to our congregations by God to create, sustain, and strengthen the historical and prophetic witness of the Black church, in the past, now and in the future.   

II. The Little Spoken of Gifts of the Spirit

(a) The Gift of Wisdom

Wisdom has an interesting definition in the Hebrew Bible. The root word hokmah meant dexterity and skill applicable in the military context in which the Israelites lived, but principally relating to the ability to live satisfactorily before God. Wisdom is personified in the First Testament as a woman, present with God at the beginning of Creation, to provide order and reason to benefit the course of Creation.²  This personification is present in the Second Testament as the Greek word “Sophia.” However, in contrast to the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, and the wisdom literature based on experience, the apostle Paul speaks of God’s wisdom in 1 Corinthians 2:7 as something “secret and hidden” from the wisdom of the world. According to Paul, “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” (1 Cor. 1:25) In this paradox, Paul presents wisdom as something not restricted to the sages and those considered wise by human standards. Recipients of wisdom are any to whom the Spirit chooses to give the gift. The amount of wisdom given to us by our ancestors and our people today is far too voluminous to explore in this unit, but a sample from the book In Our own Words: A Treasury of Quotations from the African-American Community speaks to the gift of wisdom of our people passed down to us so that we may live as wise people:

(b) The Gift of Knowledge

I suspect knowledge is not the first thing that comes to mind in our pulpits and pews when discussing gifts of the Spirit. Yet, perhaps it should be. Our churches receive gifts of words of knowledge from congregants with advanced degrees and those with “street smarts.” Knowledge, defined in the passage as gnosis in the Greek, speaks to the importance of intelligence and understanding, especially in relation to the course of faithful living and action of our congregations in our historical and current reality of institutional racism. The adage held true for our ancestors and holds true for our congregations today: Knowledge is power. And that power, Paul says, is a gift of the spirit for our churches.

Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) is known to many of us as one who believed in the power of knowledge. As founder of Bethune Cookman College, she blazed a path for education that benefits students to this day. However, fewer may know of the role the Spirit played in Mrs. Bethune’s achievements. She attended a Presbyterian mission school at age eleven, won a scholarship to Scotia Seminary in Concord, North Carolina, and attended Moody Bible Institute.⁸ Mary McLeod Bethune provides an indication of her understanding of the role the fruit of the Holy Spirit played in her work in the following excerpt from her “Last Will and Testament” published by Ebony Magazine in 1955, the year of her death.

Amen to the legacy born of the Spirit of knowledge.

(c) The Gift of Faith

On the day of Pentecost our churches would do well to remember the gift of faith passed on to us by the apostolic traditions of the apostles and the early Church leaders. This gift, defined in Hebrews 11:1 as the “assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” has been bequeathed to our congregations through generations of our ancestors who were saved by faith and who believed in the hope of God through Jesus Christ. Our churches would not exist without the faith of our ancestors in faith: ministers, deacons, trustees, choir members, ushers, committee members, who worked tirelessly for a better day they believed by faith was sure to come.

I did not have to do any research to see the gift of faith in my own life. My faith was passed on to me by my parents, Deacons Freeman and Emma Palmer. That faith was passed on to them by their parents, Deacon and Mrs. Richmond (Fannie) Palmer and James and Elvetia Bridgeforth. I marveled at their faith, which gave them strength to live with dignity, grace, and courage through times of segregation as farmers in rural Virginia. The examples of their faith serve as models and inspiration to me today to live a life with courage and dignity. These excerpts from letters written by my maternal “grandma” Bridgeforth to my mother in 1983 speaks to this legacy of faith which is my gift:

When she passed away in 1989, Mrs. Ozlin Taylor, who was both Grandma Bridgeforth’s neighbor and employer (my grandparents were sharecroppers) said, “Ain’t no question
where she’s gone.” The gift of faith that I was blessed to receive is ours to cherish, ours to exercise, and ours to pass on.

(d) The Gift of Prophecy

Where would the historical and present African American church be without the gift of prophecy? Prophetic utterance has brought our congregations through slavery, disenfranchisement via Jim Crow laws, racial terrorism, and the Civil Rights era to this very day. One cannot easily estimate the value of this gift to our congregations. Contrary to popular secular and perhaps sacred belief, the prophet is not one who is called to foretell a far flung future. The word comes from the Greek “prophetes” and the Hebrew word “nabi,” translated to mean, according to Bernhard Anderson, “one who speaks for another, especially a deity.”¹⁰ Prophets in the First Testament interpreted the events of the present in light of God’s plan, to communicate the message for that time, and to inspire the people to respond faithfully in light of their current situation.  

Given that definition, the roll call of prophetic voices of African Americans is long indeed and they are not necessarily confined to the pulpit. My favorite prophetic voices include preachers such as Julia Foote, Howard Thurman, Gardner Taylor, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cornell West, but they also include persons who are not preachers such as Fannie Lou Hamer, Marian Wright Edelman, and President Barack Obama. These are voices gifted by the Spirit with the ability to interpret the present time in light of God’s plan and reign.

Although not named above, I count myself especially blessed to have had the opportunity to hear preaching by one of my favorite prophets every Sunday. I joined the Riverside church and was ordained to ministry there during the eighteen year tenure of Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes, Jr. He continues to be a prophetic voice in this time through his Healing of the Nations Foundation, which serves to promote the spiritual healing and revitalization of America. Below is an excerpt from a prayer Dr. Forbes delivered when Riverside celebrated the life of preacher and prophet Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1990:

These words, twenty years later, are still prophetic for our times. This reflects the sustaining power of the prophetic word for our churches that is a gift of Pentecost.

(e) The Gift of Discernment

The word “discerning” comes from the Greek word “diakrisis,” which means distinguishing or judging. However, according to Strong’s Concordance, the purpose of the discerning process is not for the purpose of passing judgment on opinions, as to which one is to be preferred or more correct.¹² This is an important distinction for our congregations with respect to this spiritual gift, particularly as it relates to our history.   African Americans used this gift to distinguish the will of God for our people relative to the decisions of humans regarding dehumanization based on race. It was that discernment that called the faith of our people to action concerning the will of God for us. Examples of this abound in our history, with people such as Richard Allen, Harriett Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Charles Mason, Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bishop Desmond Tutu. Discernment is a spiritual gift that has been, and is, a benefit to our individual lives in relation to the will of God. It has been an immense gift to our corporate lives and the church as well.

The importance of discernment as a spiritual gift is provided in the following reflection by Rev. Kenneth Samuels. He is pastor of Victory for the World Church, a United Church of Christ Congregation in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Based on the passage in Mark 7 where Jesus is questioned by the religious authorities about the disciples eating with unwashed hands, Rev. Samuels offers the following excerpts from his reflection:

(f) The Gifts of Tongues and the Interpretation of Tongues

Glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, is a gift both experienced and emphasized in many of our churches as evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is also a one with a long and controversial history. While evident during the time of the apostles, according to Cleon Rogers, writings of the early church fathers such as Polycarp, St. Clement, and St. Ignatius do not speak of the existence and use of this gift during the post apostolic period from 100-400 CE.¹⁴ Rogers concluded that “even if the gift was in existence, in spite of all the testimony to the contrary, it was neither widespread nor the normal Christian experience.” By the medieval periods, church leaders had in fact declared that glossolalia was no longer possible, and speaking in tongues was denounced as either heresy or demon possession. 

An account of the Azusa Revival DVD may also be purchased through www.VisionVideo.com.

The importance and miraculous nature of glossalalia as a spiritual gift, and the interpretation of tongues cannot be minimized. The interpretation of tongues is closely associated with prophecy in that the interpretation, which is not a literal translation, is spoken forth as a word to the whole of the congregation. This is based on the writings of Paul in 1 Corinthians 14, where he emphasizes that it is through the interpretation of tongues that the whole body of Christ is “built up.” After providing an analogy speaking to the engagement of mind and spirit as it relates to interpretation of tongues, Paul advises that “if anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn; and let one interpret. But if there is no one to interpret, let them be silent in church and speak to themselves and to God.” I Cor. 14:27-28) The gift of tongues is bestowed by the Spirit to an individual. The gift of interpretation is one that edifies the church as a whole. The importance and use of this gift, although dependent on the individual gift, is both vital and viable for the building of our churches. 

III. Images of the Spirit

2. In the Hand of the Holy Spirit is the account of the life and work of artist J.B. Murray (1908-1988). A farm worker from Glascock County, Georgia who could neither read nor write, he began to paint at age seventy inspired by the Holy Spirit. By the time of his death, his art had been shown nationally and internationally. 

3. Miracles can come in many forms. Miracle’s Boys is a dramatic series broadcast in 2005 by Nickelodeon. Based on the book by Jacqueline Woodson and directed by Bill Duke and Spike Lee, it tells the story of three orphaned brothers in Harlem and their struggle to keep their family together. Their ability to do so given their circumstances is miraculous.  

IV. The Importance of These Gifts
           
This unit is being prepared as the Christmas holiday approaches and my consciousness is raised about gifts as the time of gift giving draws near. I prefer giving gifts that: 1) people can use; and 2) have a lasting impact. God has given the gifts of the Spirit to our congregations to sustain our faith and our spiritual being during historical and present day institutional racism. The gifts of healing, miracles and tongues are important to our churches. But so are the gifts of wisdom, knowledge, faith, prophecy, discernment, and the interpretation of tongues. Paul makes no differentiation in the importance of these gifts as evidence of the Spirit. Pentecost, present and future, relies of the exercise of all these gifts to make our churches powerful instruments for individual and social spiritual transformation 

V. Cultural Resources for Reading and Further Study

• Matthews, Laura. A Study of the Response to the Biblical Role of the Holy Spirit: in the African American Church. Bloomington, IN: Anchor House 2008.
• Taylor, Clarence. The Black Churches of Brooklyn. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1994.
• Padgelet, Mary G. In the Hand of the Holy Spirit: The Visionary Art of J.B. Murray. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2000.
• Peterson, Willie O. “The Spirit in the Black Church.” Bible.org. Online location: http://bible.org/seriespage/spirit-black-church accessed 12 December 2010
• Hinson, Glenn. Fire in my Bones: Transcendence and the Holy Spirit in African American Gospel. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.
• Bana, George and Jackson, Harry. High Impact African American Churches. Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2004.

Notes

1. “This is the Day.” words and music by Les Garrett, based on Psalm 118. Online location: http://www.gospelmusic.org,uk/s-u/this_is_the_day.htm accessed 12 December 2009
2. Anderson, Bernhard. Understanding the Old Testament. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1986. p. 568.
3. Dinwiddie, Boyd. In Our Own Words: A Treasury of Quotations from the African-American Community. New York, NY: Avon Books, 1996. p. 291.
4. Ibid., p. 32.
5. Ibid., p. 300.
6. Ibid., p. 295.
7. Ibid., p. 292.
8. Mary McLeod Bethune Biography Resource Center, Gale Group 2001. Online location: http://www.africawithin.com/bios/mary_bethune.htm accessed 12 December 2009
9. Bethune, Mary McLeod “Last Will and Testament.” Online location: http://africawithin/bios/will_and_testament.htm accessed 12 December 2009
10. Anderson, Bernhard. Understanding the Old Testament. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1986. p. 248.
11. Washington, James. Conversations with God: Two Centuries of African-American Prayers. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1995. pp. 260-261.
12. Strong, James. The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1990. p. 1253.
13. Samuels, Kenneth. “Majoring in the Minors.” UCC Still Speaking Devotional 2 September 2009. Online location: www.dailydevotional@ucc.org accessed 12 December 2009
14. Rogers, C. L. “The Gift of Tongues in the Post Apostolic Church.” Originally published in Biblio Sacra, Dallas Theological Seminary. Online location: http://www.crownhillchurch.com/The_Gift_of_Tongues_in_the_Post_Apostolic_Church.pdf accessed 12 December 2009
15. “Charles H. Mason Testimony.” Online location:  http://www.azusastreet.org/AzusaStreetMason.htm accessed 12 December 2009
16. Ibid.