Were You The Kid Who Asked Annoying Questions?

 😁 That was me.

I was the kid who would raise their hand with the point of insight or distraction that was off-track to the teacher’s lesson plan.  I was like the Sunday School kid Jodie Foster describes herself as in the movie “Contact”.  She asked her Sunday School teachers about who “Mrs. Cain” was (we can talk about that in Wednesday night Bible Study)

Being that kid is great fun when you have a teacher, parent, or other leader who ought to be ‘in the know’.  But for the one having a hand waved at them, knowing the kid at the end of that arm…oi.  Today, I seem to be doubly ‘blessed’, as the kid with a question and the ‘adult’ to provide the answer. 

The question is this, “Why ten days?”  Jesus ascended and ten days later the Holy Spirit was received.  The Ascension is forty days after the Resurrection on Easter Morning, so 50 days all told.  Now, the simple answer is that this is not to align with a calendar so much as with the holidays.  Let me give an example.

Our seasons have start and end dates on the calendar, but they also align to holidays.  For example, summer.  It “starts” on the summer solstice, longest day of the year, this year at 10:41pm on Friday, June 20.  Oddly specific, like to the minute, but okay.  To give the Google AI full credit, this only works in the Northern Hemisphere because we are backward.   Summer solstice down south is in December.  Up here, summer then ‘ends’ on Monday, September 22 of this year, on the Autumnal Equinox (say “Autumnal” ten times fast, it is fun).  This is one of the equal-est days of the year, equatorial dawn to dusk then dusk to dawn.

But the cultural summer is different.  Starts on Memorial Day weekend, last weekend in May.  I know this because I remember this is when they start charging to use the Sandy Hook National Recreational Area.  It then ends on Labor Day weekend, when the kids are marched off to school and parents breathe a sigh of relief.  And they stop charging to drive out onto Sandy Hook, but AFTER Labor Day proper (at least that is how they used to do it).

I am not saying that the solar fixation we have for the seasons is not a good thing.  But it doesn’t fit our cultural lifestyle so neatly.  I have vague notions of old-fashioned ‘celtic-inspired’ rituals taking place on the solar days marking the seasons, but culturally, the holidays mark Summer with cultural rituals  that involve barbeque and grilling.

So, why ten days between the ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit?  It is actually a holiday thing as well.  What we call Pentecost in the church is NOT a New Testament invention.  It is not a ‘church’ holiday.  Then again, neither is Jesus’ death and resurrection.  The arc of his death and return falls upon Passover, when the angel of death passed over the Israelites in ancient Egypt.  Not a stretch to know that Jesus, in bearing punishment for our sins, again has the angel of death, the punishment for our sins, pass over we who accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, we who receive the free gift of salvation in His sacrifice.

Leviticus 23 carries a list of the Holidays for the Israelites in the law of Moses.  We just recapped the Passover and Jesus’ death and resurrection (for us I might add).  What follows is the Festival of Weeks, or the Festival of Harvest. According to Leviticus 23: 15, 16 “And from the day after the sabbath (of Passover)…you shall count off seven weeks; they shall be complete. You shall count until the day after the seventh sabbath, fifty days (the Jesus-time 'modern' title for the holiday being Pentecost); then you shall present an offering of new grain (emphasis added) to the Lord.”   New Grain=Harvest.

So we are back on a Sunday, day after the Sabbath, and we, the church, celebrate the Holy Spirit coming down on the Festival of the Harvest.  

So why ten days?  Without entering into the whole realm of ‘holy’, ‘magical’, and ‘divinely significant numbers’ in the Scripture, its because it takes us out from 40 (a ‘holy’ number) to 50 days, to the Festival of the Harvest.  Why?  Because apparently Jesus not only speaks in Parables but arranges the Calendar in Parables as well.    

I invite you to open your bibles to Matthew 13.  In verses 1-9, Jesus tells the Parable of the Sower.  In verses 18-23, Jesus explains the Parable of the Sower.  So, verse 23, “But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

Pentecost is the Festival of the Harvest.  Jesus' parables have a lot to do with seed-sowing.  Why ten days?  Because the Parables have more to do, ultimately, with the Harvest of those seeds.  So, with the coming of the Holy Spirit, we celebrate the Harvest as foretold in Parables and actually experienced on the calendar.  And the results are listed in Acts, a community of 120 to a community of over 3000 in a day.  Harvest indeed!    

Now, the problem here is that this explains the FIFTY days.  I am still that kid who asks the annoying question, yah, but what about these TEN specifically?  I now understand the teachers who looked at me with the expression of “just be quiet” in their eyes as they sought out someone, anyone else who might have their hand raised.

Pastor Peter