Reading: Acts 2:1-21 (The Message)
1-4 When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them. 5-11There were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. When they heard the sound, they came on the run. Then when they heard, one after another, their own mother tongues being spoken, they were thunderstruck. They couldn't for the life of them figure out what was going on, and kept saying, "Aren't these all Galileans? How come we're hearing them talk in our various mother tongues? Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; Visitors from Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene; Immigrants from Rome, both Jews and proselytes; even Cretans and Arabs!
"They're speaking our languages, describing God's mighty works!" 12Their heads were spinning; they couldn't make head or tail of any of it. They talked back and forth, confused: "What's going on here?" 13Others joked, "They're drunk on cheap wine."
14-21That's when Peter stood up and, backed by the other eleven, spoke out with bold urgency: "Fellow Jews, all of you who are visiting Jerusalem, listen carefully and get this story straight. These people aren't drunk as some of you suspect. They haven't had time to get drunk—it's only nine o'clock in the morning. This is what the prophet Joel announced would happen:
"In the Last Days," God says, "I will pour out my Spirit
on every kind of people:
Your sons will prophesy, also your daughters;
Your young men will see visions, your old men dream dreams.
When the time comes, I'll pour out my Spirit
On those who serve me, men and women both, and they'll prophesy.
I'll set wonders in the sky above and signs on the earth below,
Blood and fire and billowing smoke, the sun turning black and the moon blood-red,
Before the Day of the Lord arrives, the Day tremendous and marvelous;
And whoever calls out for help to me, God, will be saved."
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God of rushing winds and quiet whispers, speak to us in ways that we can hear. Nudge us, show us your path. Wake us up and get us moving, speaking and talking, sharing the good news of your reign of justice and peace. Amen
Rushing winds, wildfire, people speaking in different languages—this is quite a scene—this event we now call Pentecost. And the whole affair is finished off with Peter preaching and quoting the Old Testament prophet Joel—making some pretty wild predictions. You’ve got to figure that the folks, these devout Jews from many lands, who witnessed these events were pretty blown away, confused, perplexed. Why they thought that all the believers were drunk even so early in the morning. This was crazy behavior, behavior that inspired awe and fear and chaos. And so, in the midst of this wild scene, enters the Holy Spirit.
Jesus came quietly, as a tiny baby…was born like one of us, grew up like one of us, worked like one of us for the first 30 years of his life. And then spent the rest of his life teaching us about God, and life, and loving each other. He turned the world upside down with his teaching about justice and love; he conquered death in his resurrection and at his Ascension, just last week, Jesus promised “power from on high” to those who follow him. This power came anything but quietly, and it filled the followers with such grace and might that they went out from there and changed the world. The coming of the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus promised, changed a miraculous story about a man who lived and died and lived again into the story of how the in-breaking of God’s rule of justice would change the world—when followers, of all ages, cultures and stations in life, went out from that place to spread the Good News.
And, then, we come along. God has been working all this time in the world, in the church, and in our lives. So Pentecost, for us, is not so much about gaining new power, but in recognizing the power already at work in our lives and, most of all, in our hearts. And while I am not limiting God—it is possible that God could send the Holy Spirit to us this day in tongues of fire and rushing winds, I do think that if we spend too much time looking at the ceiling we will miss the Truth—capital T—of the day.
Think of it like going to a movie. If you come late to a movie, the usher (in those places where they still have ushers) does not walk you in and then announce to everyone that you have arrived and, therefore, they are going to start the movie over. And, the usher certainly does not rush you to the projection booth (in those places where they still have those) and tell you that the whole crowd has been waiting for you to arrive so that you could run the projector and show the movie to everyone. No, you go in quietly and find your seat. And you “catch up” with where the movie is and all that has come before. I believe that “catching on” to what God, through the Holy Spirit, has been doing in our lives is a little bit like that.
We would be foolish to believe that today is the day that God starts working in our lives or in our church or in our world. For, in fact, God has been working in our lives and hearts since the beginning of time. We just need to catch up, catch on, take fire, and take flight. It is easy to get caught up in the outer plot of today’s story—it’s got all the visual effects of a great epic film. It is harder to tune in to the inner plot, but that is what God calls us to do. And the inner plot is the story of a journey, a journey of a heart turned to God. It’s the story of our coming to understand all that God has for us, and wills for us to be. It’s the story of our coming into God’s exceeding abundance in a real and tangible way. It’s the story of a people, a church, already at work with God’s help, becoming all that God would have the people of God to become. And we enter along the way on God’s timeline in this journey.
But, that’s not all. In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul talks about the power of the Holy Spirit removing any barriers between us and God. He compares us to Moses and the Israelites. You remember Moses. When he spoke to God, he put a veil over his face so that he could be in God’s presence without fear. And because the Israelites did not know that the story would end with Jesus, they had no real understanding of what God was saying to them. Paul insists that only through the power of Christ is that understanding made clear. In verses 16-18, Paul reveals the truth as he sees it: that when one turns to God, listens to the teachings of Jesus, accepts the Holy Spirit, there is freedom. And all of us, who live in this freedom, contemplating and living in God’s glory, are being transformed into all that God calls us to be.
And so, today, on this day called Pentecost, I invite all of us to enter into the journey, the inner plot that God is writing on each of our hearts every day that we are alive—whether or not we are aware of it. God’s grace is not dependent on our awareness in order to be present in our lives. God’s grace just is. Richard Heitzenrader, a Wesleyan scholar from Duke Divinity School defines this process through grace like this: “Grace is what God, by the Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit, is doing in your inner life.”
We spend so much time planning our journeys—telling God and anyone who will listen where we are going to go and how we will get there. We buy maps, travel insurance, and hatch complicated analyses of the best and proper way to go about doing things. And all of this is well and good, when we are, first of all, in touch with the inner plot already going on in our hearts and spirits. Most of us, I fear, really like running the projector—determining which movie will play next, what time it will start, whether or not it needs an intermission, and when it will end.
But the story is already unfolding and Pentecost invites us to catch up, catch on, take fire, and take flight. Paul, in Romans 12:2, calls us to this journey in no uncertain terms: He says: “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” And so God invites us into a story of saving grace, a journey that will end us in a much better place than we would end if we write our own scripts with no reference to the Spirit of God who has been filling our lives with grace and salvation, long before we came to understand. It also tells the story of God’s gradual transformation of our lives, our hearts, and our minds as we get in sync with what God is doing in our lives and in our world.
This leads us squarely back to our place in the midst of God’s exceeding abundance. I hope, by now, you have begun to take a serious look at what that means for your life and for the life of this church. This is a great relief to me as your pastor. I did not have to come to this pulpit this morning and make anything happen. The fact is, God started that long before I even began to listen to the still small voice that would eventually land me here. It is not up to me to bring down the tongues of fire, or initiate the rushing wind. God walks before me, around me and within me, and sends the light of understanding into all our hearts so that we can find where we are in this journey of transformation through the love and power of the Holy Spirit.
And so, here we are today listening to the still small voice and the rushing wind that both speak of God’s will for our lives. Here is where we catch up, catch on, take fire, and take flight—moving with the ease of a loved one invited to join God on a marvelous, miraculous journey of change, and growth, of grace and peace. Here is where we stop and listen, remind ourselves and each other that God is already at work in our hearts and our lives. Here is the Pentecost of the Heart—the move from old to new, from fear to love, from limits to possibility. Here is where the Spirit says “come!” and here is where we say “yes!” Amen and Amen.
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