Acts 2:1-21
John 20:19-23
the Spirit ignites the church
"Pentecost is ... about the reversal of Babel. For the author of Luke-Acts, the coming of Jesus and the continuation of his presence in the power of the Spirit inaugurated a new age in which the fragmentation of humanity was overcome." ~ Marcus Borg
excerpt from a Pentecost sermon
"... But something did happen when the Spirit sparked the beginning of the church. Luke tells us “they were all together in one place, and suddenly, from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house …divided tongues, as of fire, like fire, appeared among them and rested on each of them. And they began speaking in foreign languages.”
They had gathered in the upper room, hidden away from the authorities, praying, waiting for something to happen. They’d been waiting ever since the resurrection, Luke says, ever since they caught those first glimpses of New Life, the glimpses of Jesus, the One who’d set them free back in the Galilee and set their hearts on fire even now. They know a fire and a freedom that no tomb could contain. They’ve got Easter in their bones, and they can’t shake it loose.
They are gathered for the festival of Pentecost, the annual Jewish celebration of the first grain harvest, 50 days after Passover. This was also the celebration of the giving of the Law, the 10 Commandments, to Moses on Mt. Sinai, the day that those refugees from Egypt entered into covenant with their God, empowered to go forward to the Promised Land.
So here they are gathered, waiting, and whoosh. Something happens. They can feel it, hear it, see it, fire, wind, hard to pin it down. Even as it’s happening, the questions start:
Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? Where did they learn those foreign tongues (Rural Galilee was not a region known for cosmopolitan erudition.) And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? We can hear them, we can understand them? What does this mean?
Right away, the early church sees new meaning for Pentecost. They begin numbering the 50 days not from Passover, but from Easter, and talk about a new covenant, a new promise. Recalling that earlier covenant at Sinai, the church sees Pentecost as the day that it received not the law of covenant, but the Spirit. The church begins to talk about itself as the people of the new covenant, people empowered by the Holy Spirit to go forward not to the Promised Land but out to the world with the good news of resurrection.
So here we are, inheritors of this festival, inheritors of this new covenant, people empowered by the Holy Spirit to go forward into the world with the good news of resurrection. And we are also inheritors of the questions. The questions of that first Pentecost become our questions: What does this mean? What is it that we still celebrate? What does it mean for us to be people empowered by the Holy Spirit?
Let’s back up a bit in the story. They had been waiting, tucked away in their upper room, Mary and the other disciples, waiting, praying, wondering what to do next. Waiting in fear, we hear from both Luke and John in this morning’s stories: Fear of what the authorities might do to them, fear that they too might end up on a cross, fear, perhaps, of what might come from their waiting, what might come from receiving the power that Jesus had promised them. What did they know about power? Power belonged to God, or to Caesar, certainly not to this bunch of tag-tag fishermen and peasants.
And then power blasts in, breaking the locks of the doors and their hearts. Spirit storms in like the wind, sparking that upper room into dancing flame. Their quiet waiting erupts into chaos, and they can’t contain themselves. They have to speak. And they do, with the most extraordinary power. It’s douwnright Pentecostal! The room is in a Pentecostal ruckus, words tumbling on top of words. But more amazing than the speaking is the listening. Not only can they speak, but they can speak so that others can hear. They can hear and understand.
And just as the rowdy Spirit has rushed into the room, something else has left: fear. There’s no fear. There is no more room for fear. They each receive the ability to hear, they each receive the blessing of being heard. Isn’t that a blessing, when we know we have been heard and we don’t need to explain ourselves?
In John’s telling of it, John’s version of the coming of the Spirit, there’s even more blessing. Jesus comes breathing peace and giving the waiting disciples the power to forgive. That is power, power that we wish weren’t so elusive most of the time. They get the power to set free and to be set free, the power to turn the world upside down, beginning with their own insides, the power to hold, the even greater power to release. Now, this power really blows the locks off all the doors. No fear, no barriers, and the walls come tumbling down.
So what do they do? They do something that our mothers taught us all to do. You see, this Holy Spirit, this wild outburst is really a great big present, a big gift wrapped up in brilliant flaming ribbons. William Countryman, Anglican New Testament scholar, says that the spirit, the Holy Spirit, is gift. It is given, and cannot be gotten otherwise. What happened to those first disciples of Jesus was not of their doing. They were simply waiting and praying: the two are almost interchangeable, waiting and praying, and that’s when Spirit gets in.
And so, back to your mother. What did your mother tell you? What do we do with a gift? Say thank you. We nod our head to the one who gives the gift, we take it in our hands, we make it ours, just like they did in Luke’s story.
The whole book is Acts is about what these people do with their gift, how they turn it into thanks. It starts with Peter, as he takes it upon himself (as he always does) to turn a moment of divinity into concrete action. He loves to preach, and so he stands up and gets them to quiet down for a minute and says “Remember the prophet Joel: The promise that in God’s own time, all people, young and old, men and women, slave and free, would get a good dose of Spirit, and dream dreams, see visions, come together to do God’s work. The time is now, we have work to do.”
And so they go out from that place with their hearts on fire, freed up from fear, they spread all across the Mediterranean world. They know that thanks means responding in kind, in the same spirit of love that the gift was given, the same Love that was the Source of the gift, and so they turn their thanks into love: they pool their belongings, they discover abundance, they share their goods with the ones in need, they greet the stranger, they break old taboos and learn new customs, they have quarrels and disagreements and reach compromise and reconciliation, they preach good news and they heal the sick, all because of their gift, their rock-bottom sense that they are God’s people, filled up with God’s spirit, living in the new life of Jesus.
Some of them travel all the way to Rome, risking the terror of the Empire, some take the spirit back to their own village, their own family; there are many ways to carry Spirit into the place of need. And through it all, they keep coming back together, to be in one place just like that first time, to tell the old stories, to say the prayers, to break bread and pass the cup so that they can go out again, remembering the passion of Jesus, equipped with the fire of the spirit.
That’s why we celebrate this festival of Pentecost: To remember the gift, the freedom, the power, to remember the source and give thanks, to get equipped for whatever God is calling us, each one of us, to do in our lives. To figure out how we might make of our lives a concrete flesh and blood thank you. ...
Later this month, our national church will gather, as it does every three years, for convention in Columbus, Ohio. We’ve been reading about this in our bulletin inserts for the past several weeks. Our delegates will be gathering in one place, just like that first Pentecost, praying and telling stories and breaking bread together, figuring out how to hear the Holy Spirit, and how to listen to one another. We know the news headlines will be all about what Episcopalians have to say about full inclusion of gays and lesbians at the table. We will as a gathered and waiting church be electing a new presiding bishop and we will be talking about marriage and ordination and, at bottom, underlying it all of cours, how we read and hear the bible. We will be talking, as we always do as a church, about a whole host of spiritual and social issues, about immigration and war and poverty, about how communities work and don’t work. We will be talking about how to do the work of Jesus in the church and in the world, in our hearts and in the public arena. We will be trying to incarnate the Spirit of Jesus, the radical compassion of Jesus. There will be locks, there will be doors, some will slam shut, some will swing open. Imagine the Holy Spirit blowing through, cracking the locks, busting down barriers.
Imagine if everyone could speak and be heard, if everyone could listen and understand? Imagine no fear? Imagine if we could go out from there, empowered to go forward into our world, known for grace and reconciliation, known for our generous love for our world, known for our radical compassion, known for our freedom, our trust in one another and in God’s wild spirit? Imagine if each of us let God be God in our lives, in our church? Imagine if each of us felt Easter in our bones? Imagine if we looked, say, Pentecostal?
That would be Good Church. AMEN.
Strengthening the progressive Christian network for justice, compassion, & peace
LOGIN | PRIVACY | SITE CREDITS | CONTACT
© Copyright 2006. Some Rights reserved.
