Pentecost is the middle child of Christian holy days. If we are doing birth order analysis, I think we’d probably label Christmas the firstborn and Easter the last born.
I mean, Christmas gets all presents, like those big showers friends and families throw for parents expecting their first child. By the time the third (or last born) rolls around, everything is a hand-me-down and we take less photos but… they’re still the real favorite.
Or at least that’s what the middle child believes.
Pentecost is SUCH a middle child. It’s almost forgotten. It’s birthday often falls on a big secular holiday and nobody really knows what kind of energy to put into it after having exhausted all their savings on the firstborn and lavished all their emotions on the last born.
Pentecost is the holy day that is the mediator. Like, literally, the whole function of the Holy Spirit is to be a mediator. Augustine called the Holy Spirit the love that is shared between the Lover (God) and the Beloved (the Son).
Christian theology posits the Holy Spirit as the one who continues the living presence of Christ in the gathered Christian community.
I actually went and looked up the stereotypical characteristics of the middle child and it’s almost all spot on: often forgotten, a natural peacemaker, focused on friendships, independent (the Spirit does what it will—John 3:8), and sometimes acts out to get attention (I’m looking at you, flames of fire in Acts).
But of course, a lot of these stereotypes arise out of the position a middle child has within a family. They are literally in the middle. They are unavoidably in this sense defined by what’s on both sides of them, which is characteristic, as I’ve mentioned, of the Holy Spirit itself, defined as They/She is by the maintaining of the relationship between Father and Son and all that has come into being through them (and crucially breathed into the kind of creation it is by the Spirit—Job 34).
Anyway, all of that was a long invitation to come celebrate Pentecost Sunday this weekend. You can wear red, the liturgical color for the day. Let’s have a party for the middle child. And if you actually want to know why the day is called “Pentecost,” I highly recommend the Wikipedia entry.
Interesting explanation and much appreciated because our middle child fits the description for that concept and much loved, as are/were the first and last.
By what Scriptural authority is the Holy Spirit designated They/she?