Acts 2:1-21
Something
is wrong with this picture. People don’t
start spouting off languages that they have never learned. What languages? This stuff is nonsense. These people must be drunk. So runs the first anti-Spirit argument in
the Church’s history. Or at least the
first argument that we know of.
The Day of
Pentecost. Not one of those twelve
disciples of Jesus got up that morning thinking that anything very amazing was
going to happen. It was the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Weeks
so-called, that took place seven weeks after Passover. It commemorated the
Giving of the Law at Mount Sinai.
Whatever else Pentecost was about, it certainly was never on anyone’s
mind that the festival of Jewish national and religious identity was going to
be a time when the doors were blown open, the breath of God palpably breathing
life into a community, and the outbreak of Divine Fire of the kind not much
seen since Moses’ famous burning bush.
The very experience of Pentecost turned out to be international, multi-cultural,
and pan-ethnic, not a national holiday celebrating that chief of all Jewish
sacredness, the Torah. Jesus had
promised that the Comforter, the Advocate would come. He had promised that
power from on high would clothe his community.
But no one expected anything of this sort to happen.
It is
ironic that this mind-blowing experience would take place in the middle of a
festival celebrating the Law. Religion
specializes in law, in regulating human conduct, in policing morality. People frequently suppose that religion, of
whatever sort, is actually about making people good, with some believing that
if we get to be good enough we will qualify for everlasting life. It is quite a shock to find out that God is
not tamable, quantifiable, willing to be sequestered under the confines of
human categories and schedules. No, by
God! If God wants to rush in like a
mighty wind, unleashing dreams and sparking visions, then God does just like
that. God is not only lamb, but tiger;
not only dove, but eagle; not only fragrant incense smoldering in a smallish
pot, but a great big bonfire so hot it will roast your skin if you stand too
close to it for very long.
Isn’t it
rich? No one believes prophecies very
much until something happens and people run scurrying to the books and charts
of antiquity to find out whether there was ever anything like it, or any
prediction of it. So that is what they
did, I think, on the morning of Pentecost sometime around the year 29 CE, best
we can calculate. They said, “Aha! Here
is it in the Book of Joel, which of course we read every day. ‘The days are coming, says the Lord, when I
will pour out my spirit on all flesh.
(All flesh!) And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your young men shall see visions and your old
men shall dream dreams.” If you keep
reading you will find yourself in the thick of language describing events that
signal the end of one world and the beginning of another, things that clearly
fall outside history or even future history.
What Joel says and what happens on Pentecost is that God can never again
be said to be apart from people. God has
filled them with good things, and they will never be the same.
Now it
happens that the Holy Spirit did not just appear out of nowhere, but in fact had
been around forever. The Holy Spirit had
brooded over the darkness of the primeval waters of creation. The Holy Spirit had been that Wisdom that
emanated from the Creator as stars were bursting into flame and planets spun
out of the cosmic breath. The Holy
Spirit had spoken by the prophets. Jesus
himself had been driven by the Spirit into the wilderness after his
baptism. He had returned, filled with
that same Spirit. His whole life had
been a spirit-filled life par excellence. And all of those things are bits and pieces
of the story that we tell about how God is not only the Source of all things,
but God is somehow present in everything, in everyone, and everywhere. The Holy Spirit is the code word for talking
about God being in the here-and-now.
There was never a time that God was not, just as there is no place where
God is not. The Eternal is now.
Pentecost
is not only a day and event that happened once upon a time. Nor is it an annual chance for the church to
act wacky as if somehow that is what the Spirit of God is up to. Pentecost is the experience of being filled
if you are empty, of being brought back to life if you are a huge pile of dry
bones, of finding yourself if you are wandering about aimlessly, of being
empowered to live a life of service if you are in the hole of selfishness, of
finding your flesh tingling with exquisite sensations if you have been dead to
bodily joy, of being electrified and vivified if you have been hopeless. And it is more.
What better
day to celebrate New Birth than the day when this whole community called Church
was born, wailing its birth-cry in myriad languages, dripping with joy, its
timidity melting in the flames that settled on every head? What is going to happen when, in a moment,
David and Theodore are plunged into the waters of baptism (would that we had a
font big enough to bathe them both in water deep enough to resemble the burial
of Christ in the tomb, which is what it is supposed to look like!)? What is going to happen to you when you arrange
yourselves around the font and ultimately feel drops of water falling on you
like showers of grace and blessing? Will
you shudder with excitement that the Spirit of God comes upon you, freeing you,
strengthening you, leading you to the Truth of who you are in your deepest
Self? Will you miss the connection
between the Spirit and the Water and the Power and Source of your life? Will it be just another day, when you say the
same things in the same tone of voice that you have said as long as you can
remember? Or will it be as if you
suddenly find your voice, and a language that comes from somewhere deeper than
your brain, stranger than your dreams, in which you simply cut loose and say,
“Yes!”?
I am not trying
to talk you into pretending to be impressed on Pentecost in a way that is not
real for you. But I do believe that the
Spirit of the Lord God is running through this place right now, as powerful as
if it were high voltage, and stealthy as if it were a silent ghost. And it is not because today is somehow
special and singular. It is on the loose
every day. You have only to let yourself
be open: open to the power that is already
yours. And in due time, that Spirit will
make out of you and out of us all a people that will do amazing things. Be open.
And just you wait and see.
© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2014
