2024-05-20
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
5/19/24 Pentecost Sermon Rev. Betsy Wooster
A reading from the book of Acts. Chapter 2, verses 1-21
When the day of Pentecost had come, 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 where they were sitting. Divided tongues as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and begin to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed, and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Meopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs – in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said “They are filled with new wine.”
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “People of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, they are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. 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.”
May God’s Spirit add to our hearing and understanding of these words.
Let us pray:
Come, Holy Spirit, Come.
Bring The Spirit who moves like a rush of violent wind…
Who appears like fire…
That all may be one in Christ.
Amen.
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. ”This is the description of a presence that is powerful, though it is not a presence that can be fixed to hold still, because it is “like the rush of a violent wind” and it is “as of fire.” It is a presence that is powerful, active, on the move.
The Christian Pentecost remembers what happened to those very first followers of Jesus, their rabbi, the son of God, the risen Christ, when the Spirit of God came to them and moved them to new and bold actions. And I know that it can be hard to believe: the rush of wind and all the dancing tongues of fire. It’s the best they can do to describe an experience that is beyond normal words. Was there actually a rushing wind? Were there actually tongues of fire? Or are these metaphors for the movement of God that you can feel but cannot see, like wind, that enlightens and warms your spirit but cannot be made to hold still, like fire.
Maybe these were the best metaphors they could find. Or maybe they had this incredible, indescribable experience of God and they pulled from the images most familiar to them. In the book of Genesis, in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the wind of God swept over the deep. And when Ezekiel had his vision of the valley of dry bones being brought to new life – signifying the new life of Israel, he described the wind of God blowing new life into God’s people. And when God appeared to Moses, it was from the burning bush. And when the presence of God led Moses and the Hebrews away from Egypt and through the wilderness, they described God as a pillar of burning fire.
So perhaps these people who were there on Pentecost had this experience of God beyond words, they chose the images that others would recognize as symbols of the divine presence doing something new in the world. Because spiritual experiences, mystical experiences, glimpses of the holy and sacred in the midst of the normal everyday are almost always difficult to describe and end up sounding like we’re nuts, which is why I bet many of us who have had such feelings and experiences which go beyond normal explanations keep rather quiet about them. Just to get our bearings, Pentecost is a Jewish festival that commemorates the gift of the Torah from God to the Israelites on Mount Sinai; it takes place seven weeks after Passover. That’s why the Christian celebration of Pentecost is 50 days after Easter Sunday, ten days after Jesus ascended into heaven. This Pentecost festival, Shavuot in Hebrew, is why Jerusalem was once again filled with pilgrims, including Jews from all those regions and countries in that long list in today’s passage in Acts.
But not everyone was impressed. While so many of them were experiencing the presence of God’s Spirit on that Pentecost day, an experience that gave a vision to their lives, and led them to communicate with all of these foreigners in a way that they could all understand, speaking in their own languages. While many people were amazed, other people sneered and said “they are filled with new wine.” This argument to explain away their experience and dismiss the idea of God’s Spirit was apparently so prevalent that when Peter begins his speech the very first thing he does is to refute that dismissal. “They are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only 9 o’clock in the morning. No, this is the Spirit of God you are witnessing.”
Awareness of God as a Spiritual Presence cannot be proved by normal scientific or observational methods. William James, in his study of people’s religious experiences, wrote that spiritual experiences are ineffable states of knowledge. They are real, but real in a different way that’s not easy to describe in an evidentiary way. How do you prove that a painting is beautiful, or that a piece of music is moving, or that a pre-game pep talk was inspirational?
So, it is with the experience of God. It is knowledge that is not the result of a proof. It is knowledge by way of faith. It is not a modern skepticism that comes up with other explanations. Doubt is old, and it’s right there in the Bible, right there in the middle of the profound experience that set these people in motion to become the Christian church: An experience of holy fire. Now if I imagine that as a literal truth I don’t get very far: Tongues of fire on each of their heads?
But as a metaphoric truth, I can see that they experienced something so powerful, something that emboldened them and motivated them so much that the only way to describe it is like flames were bursting out everywhere.
It’s like what we might say of someone really impassioned and courageous – we’d say, “someone lit a fire under them.” Not literal – just amazing. We might say –like about an athlete or a performer who is just hitting every move, every note, every shot just right, with energy and passion, we’d say “they are on fire!”
But a burning fire… I think that an image with energy and power, and even some discomfort, is a healthy complement to other images, because we talk a lot about the church proclaiming safety, acceptance, healing for wounds and comfort for grief. That is all true. But if those were our only images…if the church is only for comfort…then where is the power of God to make new a troubled world? The comfort of God’s love is profound, but there must be more, right? What God’s spirit is doing and doing to the church – adds a dimension to the way we often think of the church as a place of love and comfort and solace, and certainly the church is all of those things, in the way that a cozy fire on a winter night is comforting, but the church is also called to be powerful, on fire with love and justice for the world.
Think of the civil rights movement, a brave, sacrificial, faithful people acting with conviction and not just to bring comfort, but to change the situation, change the nation, change the course of history. And look at the Xtians in this passage, starting from the edge of the roman empire, emerging from the barely tolerated as followers of Christ – nobodies at the edge of the empire, and then year by year and decade by decade they transformed history. This group that should not have survived actually grew and survived. So where is the power today? We live in a time, in the western developed world where participation in churches has been diminishing. Some of us can remember when the church had a more prominent and influential role in society.
Pentecost reminds us that the power of God has done important work from the margins or even starting with very little. And God’s Spirit is known by the fruit that it produces: God’s Spirit brings people together. God’s Spirit brings people together by overcoming differences and allowing them to understand each other and be understood. God’s Spirit gives people faith that God is in the world, and that God has blessed our human lives by the incarnation of Jesus, and that God brings justice that is stronger than any challenger, stronger than racism, stronger than violence, stronger than disease, even stronger than death itself.
That was the good news they shared on Pentecost so that everyone could understand. So that WE can understand. Jesus, the son of God, was still with them. Jesus, the son of God, is with us these many centuries later.
The church is called to be on fire. Like fire, the church can be a presence that is powerful, active, on the move. That’s what Pentecost shows us: To be the presence of God in the world, like the burning bush that Moses saw. Like the pillar of fire that led the Hebrews out of Egypt, dismantling oppression in the name of freedom, like the fire that swept through Jesus’ followers, the very energy that brought the church into being. That’s the kind of work that fire does.
It is the good news that we have received from our ancestors in faith. It is the same Spirit who inspires every act of love even when the love is costly, and every act of love that offers relief to those who are suffering, every act of love that is a witness for justice, every act of love that sets us on fire for the work of God in the world. Today is Pentecost. Time to light up. Thanks be to God. Amen.