Sermon 5/30/04 Pentecost Sunday
Great Expectations - Acts 2:1-21, John 14:8-17, (25-27)
(view lectionary notes for this text)
Today, we finally transition from the Fifty Great Days of Easter to the season of Pentecost. As Christians, we celebrate Pentecost as the birthday of the Christian Church because it is the day, as Jesus promised, that the disciples received an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and so began to share the good news with others. But before Pentecost was celebrated by Christians, it was already an important day in the Jewish faith, which is why all the people were gathered together in the text we read today in Acts. The word Pentecost means 50 days, and was celebrated 50 days after the Passover meal. For Jews, it was a harvest celebration, but it was also celebrated at the day of commemoration of Moses receiving the laws, the commandments, from God. Today, Judaism names this day Shavuot (shuh-voo-aught). (1) So, gathered for a traditional, annual celebration day, faithful Jews and the disciples, struggling for direction after Jesus' ascension into heaven, surely did not expect the events that soon unfolded.
We read that suddenly a sound like the rush of a violent wind came into the place they were gathered, and that 'divided tongues' like fire, appeared among them, and a 'tongue' rested on each of them. The disciples began to speak in many languages, as the Holy Spirit filled them up and gave them ability. These sights and sounds caused many to form a crowd and to wonder at the events, noting that these speakers were Galileans, and causing more than one to question if these disciples weren't just drunk with new wine from the celebration. Peter insists otherwise, telling them that as Joel the prophet had declared in beautiful eloquence, God has poured out the Holy Spirit - not just on some, but on all - young and old, men and women, slave and free."
Perhaps it is not so hard for us to relate to the accusations by the crowd that these disciples must certainly be drunk. After all, what can we make of what is happening here? We hear about the rushing, violent wind, which perhaps evokes images of the massive storms that have swept our area in the past week. But stranger yet, there are these images of 'divided flames' that are like 'tongues' resting on the heads of the disciples. It seems almost too cartoonish to visualize, so strange are these pictures. And they somehow, almost magically, miraculously, and suddenly, can speak in several foreign languages? The biblical gift of speaking in tongues I'll admit has always been difficult for me to fit in with the rest of the gifts the Bible talks about. I've seen people exhibit the gifts of teaching and preaching and leading, but I can't say I've ever witnessed speaking in tongues. The video-taped accounts I've seen of speaking in tongues don't do much for my understanding either, the way watching a video about another country doesn't actually make you feel you've been there.
So I racked my brains for a way to make this event of speaking in tongues, this outpouring of the Holy Spirit, meaningful for me. After all, if Pentecost is the birthday of the Christian faith, the day ought to be one I hold as meaningful. And then it hit me - I only had to look to another Pentecost celebration I had witnessed. Last year, at Rome First, while I was leading services between pastoral appointments, a young girl of about 8 or 9 had volunteered to read scripture in church on Pentecost Sunday. I hadn't really paid attention to what text she was supposed to read until a few minutes before she was supposed to read, when all of a sudden, when it was too late to make any changes, I realized she was set to read this passage from Acts, complete with Parthians, Medes, Cappadocians, Phrygians, and residents of Pamphylia! I held my breath with anxiety for her as she began the challenging passage. She did not stumble over one single word, and read through the text as if it were a Dick-and-Jane learn-to-read book. Everyone was floored by her unfazed reading of the text, and she seemed not to realize that she had done anything particularly impressive.
And it struck me: this, this feat by this child, this clear conveyance of the word of God by one so young - this is what the Pentecost experience was, is, all about. After all - what more is speaking in tongues than this: an unexpected message, coming from an unexpected vessel, communicated by unexpected means. When the crowds gather on Pentecost, they didn't expect to hear any message about this Jesus person - they expected to celebrate the usual Jewish holiday. They didn't expect to hear a message coming from these strange, uneducated Galileans, who were not even scribes of Pharisees or synagogue leaders. And they certainly didn't expect to here these Galileans in their own languages, especially since there were people of so many nationalities and backgrounds gathered at this Pentecost celebration. They definitely didn't expect this rushing, roaring wind, these flames of the spirit resting on the heads of these Galileans. An unexpected message, from unexpected vessels, by unexpected means.
For Jesus' contemporaries, the good news was the unexpected message that Jesus kept trying to share - a message about God's grace and the fact that God's kingdom was available right here and right now. Jesus himself was certainly the unexpected vessel, the son of a carpenter, a man from Galilee, one who refused every kind of honor and power that others tried to lay on him. And his method, his means of communicating were strange and new too - he told parables about seeds and sheep to teach the crowds, and when that failed, he taught through fish and wine and bread. Unexpected from every angle.
But today in our reading from the gospel of John, Jesus is showing them more unexpected twists and turns. Jesus is trying to prepare the disciples for the time when he will no longer physically be with them, and he tells them: I am going to be with God - but you are going to be left to do even greater works than I have done, empowered by your belief in me. And not only that, you'll be sent an Advocate, the Holy Spirit, and this spirit will teach you, remind you, abide in you, be with you. Can you imagine being told that you would do works that were greater than the works Jesus did - greater than his healings, greater than his miracles? But in sharing these words with the disciples, Jesus also share them with us: "the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, and, in fact, will do greater works than these."
Jesus reminds us here that things won't go as expected. Instead of students always striving to imitate the master, but never able to match up in comparison, Jesus tells us that we actually are equipped with all the gifts we need to do beyond what Jesus himself has done, based on our belief, and filled and supported by the Holy Spirit. That's the unexpected message he shares with us on this Pentecost day. The unexpected means? Jesus gets his point across by getting out of the picture, at least in an immediate sense. The best way for Jesus to make sure he's not the only one sharing the good news, working for peace and justice, and loving the unlovable is to help remind us that we need to share in this work too - we, as believers, have responsibilities to support our faith.
But the unexpected vessels: that's us. The surprise is that God has entrusted the spreading of the good news to very faulty and flawed human beings like you, and like me. Do we want others to know of God's grace? Then we better tell about it. Do we want others to know the teachings of Jesus? Then we better be ready to share and teach them ourselves. Do we want to see peace? We better work to usher it in. Do we wish the poor and oppressed could sense God's special concern for them? We must communicate by our actions. Do we want people to experience God's amazing love? We only have to show it ourselves.
Perhaps we do not have the gift of speaking in tongues - I can barely scrape up enough of my high-school French to enable you to identify what language I'm trying and failing to speak! But if I will, I can open myself to being a vessel for God. If I allow it, believe it can be true, I can be filled with a Holy Spirit that will enable God to speak right through me. And if I do this, I can rest assured that others will come to know this blessed unexpected message that God loves us more than we ever thought it was possible to be loved.
God calls us to have great expectations: we can expect unlimited grace from God, and we'd better expect a lot of ourselves as well. Because the Holy Spirit has been poured out on all of us: young and old, men and women, you, and me. Amen.
(1) Ironically, check out http://atheism.about.com/library/glossary/western/bldef_pentecost.htm for this information.