Sermon 12th June 2011
Pentecost John 20:19-23
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’
Acts 2:1-21
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 began 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 Mesopotamia, 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: ‘Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these 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:
“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.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
It is difficult to describe God. We are at the limits of our language as we seek to put into words the experience of God in our lives. In the book of Acts, there is an account of the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Pentecost means fifty, because it is the feast that comes fifty days after the second day of the Jewish Passover. The Pentecost Feast was the beginning of the harvest when the first of the crops were brought to the Lord. And it was, of course, also the time when the Holy Spirit first came upon the disciples. It is also known in church tradition as Whitsunday. This term goes back to the Old English “white Sunday”, named as such because in the early church the new converts were all dressed in white and baptised on this day. It is important to realise that in John’s gospel the coming of the Holy Spirit occurred in the Easter timeframe. Here in Acts it occurs at Pentecost.
The coming of the Holy Spirit is described in figures of speech. Acts 2:2-3
And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.
These are figures of speech saying that the experience was like this, or as of that. Wind and fire are strong forces, and can be very ferocious once they get going. Both are sources of energy. We had a little example of the energy of the wind a few weeks ago. It toppled trees, and anyone who has been through the forest plantations around craters of the moon, or alongside the Huka Falls will have seen large trees lying on their side with their roots in the air. The force of the wind is not to be underestimated. So it is not surprising that the early church uses this image of the wind to speak of the energy of the spirit in the lives of the disciples.
The experience was such that those who gathered began to speak in other languages. The crowd consisted of people who came from all around the Mediterranean, yet these Galileans were heard in the listeners’ native tongue.
The story then goes on to have Peter translate what is happening, and Peter understands the experience in the words from the prophet Joel, as the pouring out of God’s Spirit.
There is an old story in the book of Genesis about the tower of Babel. The people at that time had one language, and decided to build a tower into the heavens. God saw what was happening and decided to confuse their language, and the people were scattered over the face of all the earth.
Here now on the day of Pentecost, we have a reversal. The scattered people come together and hear in their own language, what the Galileans are saying.
The account of the coming of the Holy Spirit in the second chapter of Acts consists of three parts. The first is the experience of the twelve who are gathered together, and begin to speak in other languages. The second part is the experience of the crowd who have come from a wide source of localities and who can understand, in their native language, what the disciples are saying. They ask what does this mean? The third part is Peter’s speech, which is a citation from the prophet Joel. Peter takes the happenings of Pentecost to be a sign of the last days.
At Pentecost they ask a question of this phenomenon. The question is: What does this mean? Peter replies: “Listen to what I say”. Speaking and listening go hand in hand. But if we do not listen, we will not find the meaning. It is no use speaking if we do not listen as well. There will be no understanding if there is both speaking and listening. Language occurs in a relationship.
Pentecost is not about speaking one language. Pentecost affirms the diversity of language. What is new is that with the gift of the Holy Spirit, we can listen to each other, and understand. That listening and understanding is not a monoculture. It is not saying: speak only one language. It is not saying: Do it one-way. It is the language of the spirit to hear in different tongues and with different voices.
Words convey feelings and emotions. Words convey spirit. Spirit comes not just from words. Music and art have spirit. The roar of the crowd watching a sport’s game hardly has any words to it. It comes from the stomach. Consider the call of the people around the Mediterranean who are going into the streets wanting political change. They stand there and chant. It gives voice to a deep-seated emotion. When we speak of body language, we are indicating not many words are required to convey how we feel. When we have a vision or a dream of something, we often struggle to put it into words. But eventually we come to words. Finding the words tells me that there is a listening, for words are an important vehicle for hearing the spirit.
Unless you hear the spirit of the words, you will not be moved. Sometimes that requires reading between the lines. But to hear the story, to hear what actually drives a person, we need to listen to the spirit of the words.
I was watching the other night a documentary about the bombing of Coventry and later London by the German Airforce during the Second World War. The bombing caused deadly fires and destroyed many homes and factories. However because its motive was to bomb the people into submission, it actually had the opposite effect. It galvanized the people’s spirit into one of defiance – that they would not be conquered. It was this spirit that got them through this dark time in their history. We should not underestimate the power of the spiritual side of our community and our nature. We should not ignore or reduce the language of the spirit to the winning of a sports game or to the realm of the economic. The force of the spiritual is deep rooted in who we are and what we are about, and ultimately it comes from God.
To conclude. The story of Pentecost is the language of the spirit. It is not about conformity, of having one language. It is about listening and understanding. Pentecost is a story of diversity, of having different languages, of having different meanings, and through that of finding understanding. It is the language of poetry, of seeking meaning in the layers of the story. And it is from this that we come to the new life found in Christ.
John Howell
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