SAUCIER — First fruits

In the story of Pentecost in Acts, we are told, “Staying in Jerusalem at the time were devout Jews of every nation under heaven.”

There was a reason for that. Those Jews were celebrating their own “Pentecost,” 50 days after Passover.

Known as Shavuot, this major feast day of Judaism recalls Moses’s reception of the Torah and the beginning of a nation bound by divine law.

Can you imagine if our Pentecost was a national feast?

The day after Easter, we would be flooded with ads for special Pentecost sales — probably featuring firepits and tiki torches.

Clothing stores, with a nod to the 12th-century fashion influencer Pope Innocent III, would offer seasonal attire in ruby, raspberry, chili, cherry and a hundred other shades of red.

Social media would abound with recipes for your Pentecost gathering — light and airy souffles, the symbolic hot wings, fruit salad and Dove cake.

I doubt that many of us want all that. Still, it might be a good idea to give our Pentecost a little more prominence than simply a “red out” and a “Happy Birthday” at church.

While Acts tells the story, it is Paul who explains what the coming of the Spirit means. He writes: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”

Read that again. Who could deny that we would be much better off as a community and as a country if we acted from a spiritual core of love, generosity and gentleness?

Then read the news. The world is a threatening place. 

Political rhetoric is often divisive and at times demeaning and hateful.

We are urged to distrust those who do not look like us or think like us.

We are in desperate need of the fruit of the Spirit.

What if we lived in that fruit? What a difference faithfulness, patience and self-control would make!

Paul insists that the fruit of the Spirit is available to all. It is possible to actually learn joy, kindness and peace.

It takes prayer and disciplined work, but the fruit of the Spirit is the moral character to which all believers are called.

The fruit of the Spirit is not so much about what we do as it is about who we are. It is our posture towards our lives and our world.

Shavuot was a harvest feast, when farmers offered their first fruits to God. 

Our Pentecost offering allows that God to bear fruit in us.