Promise: Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all
together in one place. 2 And suddenly from heaven
there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire
house where they were sitting. 3 Divided tongues,
as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All
of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages,
as the Spirit gave them ability.
5 Now there were devout
Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 And
at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard
them speaking in the native language of each. 7 Amazed
and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking
Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of
us, in our own native language? 9 Parthians, Medes,
Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and
Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts
of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and
proselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabs—in our own
languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” 12 All
were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13 But
others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
14 But Peter, standing
with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who
live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15 Indeed,
these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the
morning. 16 No, this is what was spoken through the
prophet Joel:
17 ‘In the last days it
will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
18 Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
19 And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky
mist.
20 The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s
great and glorious day.
21 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall
be saved.’ (NRSV)
Happy birthday, Church!
That’s what
today is—the celebration of Pentecost, 50 days after Easter, when the small
gatherings of disciples huddled away in upper rooms and clustered on roadways
became a Spirit-infused body pushed out onto the streets to speak of God’s
power. But before it was the Church’s
birthday, it was a harvest festival—hence why there are so many people that
Luke names gathered in Jerusalem. Those
connected to the identity of "Jew”—or, more accurately, Judean, an ethnic
designation as much as a religious one—came to the holy city to celebrate the
blessings and possibilities of the year.[1] It was a party, a party to which the
disciples could bring some measure of hope after a season of seeing the
resurrected Christ, a party into which they could fall with some measure of
familiarity. Passover had been grief and
horror and sorrow and then wild joy and a whole lot of confusion, so surely
Pentecost would be normal.
Never tempt
God with the thought of “surely.”
“Suddenly from
heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind…All of them were
filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages.”
It is so
tempting to look at the many places of division in our world today and say that
if only we could come together, everything would be fine. This past year has been a hundred thousand
discussions on “unity”—that we need unity within The United Methodist Church as
our doctrines tear people asunder in public spaces; that we need unity in the
response to the conflict in occupied Gaza as Hamas and Israel reach an uneasy
ceasefire; that we need unity between the American political parties as one
lies over and over again about the nature of violence and the other speaks of
change but only if it’s not too radical; that we need unity when millions are dead
from a disease whose impacts were to some degree preventable.
When we speak
of the need for unity in the face of division, however, what we often mean is
“uniformity” and Church, this day of Pentecost tells us that the last thing we
are called to is uniformity. Professor
Eric Barreto writes, “The story of Pentecost in Acts 2:1-21 helps us understand
how God sees human diversity: one of God’s greatest gifts to the world. At Pentecost,
God through the Spirit does not erase our differences but embraces the fact
that God has made us all so wonderfully different…God, through the Spirit,
chooses to meet us where we are: in the midst of a multitude of languages and
experiences. The Spirit translates the Gospel instantly into myriad languages...God
does not speak in a divine language beyond our comprehension. At Pentecost, God
speaks in Aramaic and Greek and other ancient languages. Today, God continues
to speak in Spanish, Greek, Hindi and Chinese alike.
“At Pentecost, God makes God’s choice
clear. God joins us in the midst of the messiness and the difficulties of
speaking different languages, eating different foods and living in different
cultures. That is good news indeed.”[2]
When Christ promised the Spirit to
the disciples who had finally come back together after scattering at the
crucifixion, there may well have been an idea that this would be the
unification, the settling piece that established the kingdom Jesus was always
talking about in His ministry. They were
to be given the Paraclete, often translated as the “advocate,” and surely in
the Spirit there would be normalcy, unity, perhaps even uniformity as the new
religion steadied itself against the power of Rome.
But again, do not tempt God with
“surely.” The Spirit came as wind that
disrupts, as fire that does not consume, as language that amazes and
astounds. For anyone who’s ever taken
the time to learn a different language, you will know that it’s an entirely
different way of thinking—the world tilts a bit in a new language, which is why
they’re not easy. Yet this is how the
people hear the news of God’s power—in their own native languages. Learning a different language is hard, but to
be in a place where you hear your own among the cacophony of others that you do
not understand can be such a balm to both the soul and the ear. For the disciples to wrap their Galilean
tongues around the new consonant strings of languages they did not know was
decidedly not easy, but what a difference it made to the people listening. In their own languages was the best way to
deliver such a message as the disciples were given. As David Lose points out, the Spirit “prompted
the disciples to make a very public scene with the troubling good news that the
person the crowds had put to death was alive through the power of God.”
Filled with a hundred languages
placed in the mouths of the bewildered disciples to speak to the astonished
Judeans, the Paraclete is much more than the “advocate” fulfilling Christ’s
promise of presence. Lose continues, “Paraclete
is a compound Greek work that literally means, ‘to come alongside another.’ In this sense, the Paraclete can be an advocate
– to come along side to defend and counsel – or comforter – to come along side
to provide comfort and encouragement. But the one who comes along side might
also do so to strengthen you for work, or to muster your courage, or to prompt
or even provoke you to action.”[3]
As we celebrate this birth-day of the
Church and consider who we are in it thousands of years later, it is ours to
think about who we’re asking the Spirit to be in our own lives—and whether we
really think She’s going to heed our limitations on Her work. Do we look at the languages at hand and wish
there were only one so we could all just get along and understand each
other? Do we accept the tongues of fire
but only if they don’t burn at all? Do
we tell the wind not to be so fierce because it’s messing up our hair? Do we turn to God and think about what we
have planned and begin our prayers with, “Surely…”?
Our service today is structured to
have the Lord’s Prayer in multiple languages—of all the pieces of sacred
liturgy, this is perhaps the one most commonly known. We say it here at St. Luke’s in English
because that’s the dominant language of this congregation. But the Spirit works equally well through
Japanese, or Spanish, or Arabic, or Hawaiian.
The repetition of this familiar prayer in unfamiliar cadences is
deliberate—we, like the disciples, do not get to tell God that surely, this is
the best way to do things. Surely, this
is what unity should look like. Surely,
this is how Christianity should look in 21st century America. Pentecost is a day of recognizing that
Christ’s promise was not about “things will settle down” but “things are about
to get even more intense.” After the
crucifixion and the resurrection, we who celebrate the rhythm of our faith year
after year must re-encounter the God Who is changing the world, is changing us,
and ask how we’re going to engage that.
Over the six months of Ordinary Time
that stretch between this holy day and the beginning of Advent, we’re going to
be taking time on Sundays to look at who the church (little c, as in this
congregation) and the Church (big C, as in the global collection of Christians)
is and who we say we want to be. Sermons
will look at our assumptions of Christian belief, studies will focus on
unpacking the texts we think we know, leadership will be asking not only what
we can do but why we are doing it in the first place. St. Luke’s, this is the time to take stock of
whether we are asking the world for uniformity to our understanding of church
or whether we are letting our mouths be filled with unfamiliar languages so
that others can hear the words of God’s power.
“I will pour our My Spirit upon all
flesh,” quotes Peter in his mini-sermon that echoes the multilingual homilies
coming from his friends. Peter is using
a tweaked version of the words of the prophet Joel, one of the minor prophets
toward the end of the Christian Old Testament.
Joel wrote during a plague of locusts and a severe drought, causing a
national lament as famine threatened Israel.
The idea of Spirit poured out over all flesh was tantalizing when the
question of “why” was so strong on people’s lips. Peter’s resurrection of the text for the
moment of this harvest festival that pushes the followers of Christ into a new
understanding of what the Spirit invites them to do is of such wide scope and
we, listening to this in English, are likewise called to consider. What shall we, the Church, look like with the
wind of the Spirit pushing us into deeper connection with our hurting
world? Will we listen when our sons and
our daughters prophesy, setting aside our ideas about how old someone must
be in order to have something worth saying or that men’s voices are somehow
more important than women’s? Will we
believe the young men who see visions and the old men dreaming dreams that call
for a world that is not yet made, that stretches beyond what we currently
understand? Will we allow that even
the slaves, the ones society tells us are lowest and least, are not only
welcome in the Kingdom but share an equal portion of the poured-out Spirit?
Make no mistake, Church; Pentecost
can indeed be a day celebrating the birth of the church with cake and punch if
we want, but it is also a day that demands we open ourselves beyond the
language we know, beyond the comfort we hold, beyond our craving for
uniformity. The Spirit has new
languages, new categories, new visions, new dreams, new wide-open ways to
ensure that all are welcome, hearing the good news of a loving Christ in
their own language. People of every race
are welcome; people of every gender are welcome; people of every sexual
orientation are welcome; people of every socioeconomic status are welcome;
people of every physical ability are welcome; people of every age are welcome;
people of every background are welcome; people of every language are
welcome. Even when the world sneers at
the idea of throwing wide the doors to our churches and says, “They are simply
drunk,” we who have been called by the Spirit to go out and speak as we are given
the ability know better. In the wonder
of diversity we call to the world and say come and see, see the Spirit that
dances in wind and flame and invites us to change the world into a place where
all are loved, loved beyond measure, loved by the One Who defeated death and
Who beckons us to life abundant.
Are you willing to be that radically
open, Church? Are we willing to let new
languages tumble from our mouths so that others can hear in their own language
that they are loved, that Christ is alive, that the world will never be the
same?
May we open ourselves to the promise
of the Spirit, resting in the presence as we are transformed to transform. Amen.
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