It Would Be Easy To Miss
MAY 25, 2026
Yesterday was Pentecost, a monumental day in the Christian faith which is easy to miss in the chaos and confusion of our conflicted world. A few passages from Surprised by Mary: How the Christ Who Was Born Through Mary Can Be Born Again through You capture the core of why it matters.
“All were united in their devotion to prayer . . . including Mary the mother of Jesus.” (Acts 1:14)
How did I miss her? Why was I surprised to find Mary waiting with Jesus’ followers during the fifty days between Easter and Pentecost? Jerusha Matsen Neal found comfort in Luke’s decision to place Mary in the upper room. “After all she goes through, after all the ways this small community fails the Jesus she loves, she is still there, committed to them, loving them, listening for the Spirit with them.”
Mary was with Jesus’ followers during the forty days following Easter when the Risen Christ instructed his disciples, showed them he was alive, ate with them, spoke about the Kingdom of God, and told them to wait in Jerusalem for the coming of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:2–6). She evidently joined them when Jesus led them to the Mount of Olives where “he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight.” (Acts 1:9) The scene is reminiscent of the way “Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven” (2 Kgs 2:11) when his work was completed.
Like Wind and Fire
Mary was in the upper room when the Holy Spirit came “like the howling of a fierce wind . . . They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:2–4)
Luke drew vivid metaphors from nature and from scripture to describe an experience that was beyond explanation. The best he could do was to say, “It was like . . .”
Wind can be a gentle breeze that rustles through the palm fronds on a hot summer day, and it can sweep in from the Gulf of Mexico with the force of a hurricane. Fire can be the warmth of the cabin fireplace on a cool evening in the mountains, and it can be a California wildfire wiping out a community. They are two of the most powerful metaphors in scripture for the ways people experience the Spirit; from the breath of God that blew over chaos and formed creation or the unquenchable fire in which Moses heard God’s call to liberate the people.
Jesus said, “God’s Spirit blows wherever it wishes. You hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going.” (John 3:8) We do not cause the wind and fire of the Spirit to come among us by our preparation, but we are unlikely to experience the Spirit’s movement if we are not prepared for it. We may not know where the Spirit comes from or be able to predict where the Spirit will go, but we can see the effect in the lives of those who experience it.
Why Does It Matter?
The importance of the Pentecost story is not contained in the details of how the Spirit came, as if the disciples could have recorded the velocity of the wind or the temperature of the fire. Rather, we see the importance of what happened that day in what Jesus’ followers became because of it.
The wind of the Spirit swept them out of the safe, narrow confines of the place where they were hiding into a more expansive world they would never have seen or known.
The fire of the Spirit set their hearts ablaze with the flaming passion Jeremiah said was like a fire in his bones which he could not extinguish (Jer 20:9).
The Spirit who descended on Jesus at his baptism and sent him “to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18–19) was now sending his disciples in the same way.
By the power of the Holy Spirit, ordinary men and women became something they otherwise would never have become—the finite, imperfect, ordinary witnesses of the infinite, perfect, extraordinary love of God revealed in Christ. They became the people through whom Jesus was born again into the world.
By the Spirit’s presence, ordinary people become the extraordinary bearers of hope in a world that sometimes seems hopeless, midwives of love in a world of hate, bringers of joy in a world of pain, and the promise of new life in every place of death.
The invasive wind and soul-warming fire Mary and the other disciples experienced that day describe ongoing reality of the Holy Spirit at work in the lives of Jesus’ followers in every age. The Spirit’s continuing task is to transform us from what we have been to what we can become and to shape our living and thinking in ways that are consistent with the way of Christ.
The fire of the Spirit refines, warms, and energizes our hearts. The wind of the Spirit sends us out into the world to be the agents of God’s transforming love, peace, and justice.
The greatest surprise is that by the power of the Holy Spirit, any of us, all of us, can surprise the world by becoming ordinary people through whom the extraordinary presence of Christ is born again!
Grace and peace,
Jim
Jim Harnish 