Pouring Out
Acts 2:1-13
May 23, 2010
They had it all figured out. Only they had nothing figured out except that they kept wanting to do the same old thing, just a lot better. They had served their times, earned their stripes, and it was incredibly tough surviving that ugly debacle with their Teacher’s crucifixion, but now they were gloriously on the other side of resurrection and of that indescribable ascension into heaven. Jesus was no longer with them in the flesh, yet now they were really going places.
They knew they had progressed. After all, they were no longer just disciples or students, but apostles or missionaries. Yet, here we are. It’s been 50 days since the Resurrection on Easter, 10 days since that Ascension business, and we are still holed up in this upper room, pretty much afraid to go outside. We have been working hard on our committees and membership - just finished electing Matthias - God electing actually - as the 12th apostle in place of Judas Iscariot. Hope Joseph Barsabbas isn’t too disappointed and decides to leave the church.
They were still huddling together in one place, during the feast of Pentecost. Thousands of people bustling around Jerusalem from all over the world - a good time to keep one’s head low if everyone considers you one of those political instigators and a blasphemer to boot. One cannot be too cautious in dangerous times.
When you think of it they were supposedly the freest people on earth. They had been part of the crucifixion and resurrection; they knew what it meant to live again with Jesus for 40 days. Yet now they appeared more imprisoned and lost than they ever were before Jesus showed up. That’s the way it usually happens, however, for we are simply following in the steps of the Biblical narrative. When the Israelites escaped from Egypt after all their centuries of slavery and were free, free at last, they did not how to be truly free. So they wandered in the wilderness for a very long time, 40 years, and when they reached the Promised Land, none of those who started out finished. It was the next generation who looked at the environment of the wilderness with some comprehension and figured out where they needed to be going - which was exactly where their parents had started to head before they became lost.
Then in a twinkling of an eye, as Paul would come to say, everything changed. That’s the infinitesimal amount of time, not the feeling. No twinkling, but a rush, a roar, a deep throated tornado of wind filling their house. At least, that’s the way some of them explained it, but there is really no way to explain physically what was taking place. It was a surprise, because they had not expected anything of this kind.
That is usually how the Holy Spirit works, as a surprise that we can never manage or control. The Spirit blows where it will, we are fond of saying, but we don’t really believe it. Ah, believe is not quite the appropriate word, for we are afraid of it because it doesn’t fit into our plans and we have typically decided what is the proper way for ourselves to live. The description of the coming of the Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles is intentionally strong. This was no whisper or gentle music, no breeze, but a wind that blew right through you, and tongues of fire that singed you but didn’t burn. Nothing subtle, for you knew you had been had by the Spirit. Yes, you were “had” - possessed by the Spirit.
There’s always been a lot of fuss about what these “had” apostles then started to do. Too much fuss about speaking in tongues and not enough about what they were saying and trying to do. Connections have been made between this story of the birthday of the Christian Church - and there were fireworks! - and of the confounding of tongues at the Tower of Babel in Genesis. The Tower was the symbol of humanity’s arrogance, trying to appropriate divinity for themselves. It never has worked, because it is apparent that human beings don’t have enough of the right stuff to be God. Just give us time to prove what we don’t have. So instead of one universal language, people started babbling to one another and no one made any sense to the other, the origin of humanity’s languages.
On Pentecost day, at 9:00 a.m. in that sequestered room, the apostles not only reversed the flow of Babel - they started babbling and somewhere somebody understood every one of them - they simply were doing what they were supposed to be doing, but had been wandering too long in their wildernesses of self-enslaved freedom. They started preaching and telling the Gospel to the world outside their window. Had they rehearsed? Did they have a script? I doubt it. Sometimes you just know the right thing to say, not because you in your intelligence and knowledge know it, but because you have been given something to say. You don’t know where it comes from, and all too often you fool yourself into believing it came from your brain. But this is why we are here. You didn’t know that there was God except for the Spirit turning your head and heart in the right direction and enabling you to listen and to see. Sure, you could have read about Jesus, but it is the Spirit living inside other people whom you have met and who have made you realize that Jesus is not just a figure of speech.
It’s funny. Once you find yourself saying the right thing at the right time for no good reason at all, you will simply keep talking, humbly and without pride, because that’s what you are supposed to be doing on every Pentecost day. Of course, not everybody wants to hear that Good News stuff and they will call you a drunk. Perhaps that’s the Spirit’s way of keeping your ego from getting you lost in the wilderness or hiding in an upper room.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan