Pentecost and Israel’s Annual Festivals:

When the Day of Pentecost had come

(Acts  2:1)

Pentecost is the second of three Torah prescribed annual festivals. It goes like this (Dt 16):

            Spring              -Passover celebrating the budding of the first fruits, and

                                                Commemorates the Passover lamb slain setting Israel free.

                                                Reading of Song of Songs filled with budding fruits.

            Summer           -Pentecost celebrating wheat (grain) harvest, and

                                                Commemorates the giving the Law at Sinai.

                                                Reading of Ruth and how God provides at harvest time.

            Autumn           -Tabernacles celebrating the latter harvest of grapes (fruits), and

                                                Commemorates Israel’s 40 years of tabernacle wanderings

                                                Reading of Ecclesiastes with its “times and seasons”.

Earth (agriculture) and Heaven (God’s gifts) give the festivals their annual rhythm. You can’t celebrate God’s gifts of deliverance without rejoicing in the earth’s goodness. We are estranged from agriculture’s annual rhythms. We just go to the grocery store and buy food. I’ve heard it said that due to big agriculture and big science, only three percent of our population work the fields producing more than we can consume. I suppose that’s a blessing; but, not one we are close to. We don’t experience the anxiety of seed time, rains and harvest. We imagine bread and fruit just popup on the shelves.

It goes back to creation (“let the earth bring forth”), and that rainbow that reminds us of God’s promise (Gn 8-9):

As long as the earth endures,

   seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,

summer and winter, day and night,

   shall not cease.

Our fallen earth remains good (Ac 14:15-17): “The living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, … gives you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and fills you with food and your hearts with joy." Israel’s three anuual festivals provided the occasion for God’s people to give thanks to God for the gifts of “rains from heaven and fruitful seasons.” That’s why, at each and every meal, we pray our prayers of thankfulness for God’s earthly bounty to us.