Rush
Acts 2:1-13
June 12, 2011
It is often proclaimed that today, Pentecost, is the birthday of the Christian Church. That has not been as obvious as some think, for immediately one thinks: “What about Christmas Day?” That’s when it all began, Jesus’ birthday, didn’t it? On the other hand, there’s the beginning of Jesus’ ministry when he was about 30 or even his baptism – that’s when we officially become Christians. And of course, Easter is our defining moment if there ever was one.
Nevertheless, it is this day when the still scared disciples, now completely alone after the Ascension of Jesus ten days before, received the gift of the Holy Spirit coming down like tongues of flame and touching them. The Tower of Babel was reversed and the innumerable languages of the world surrounding them on this feast day in cosmopolitan Jerusalem were the languages they could somehow speak and communicate the Good News of God. Many people were amazed and others thought they were drunk. I guess that is like some of our birthday parties!
What it does mean is that without the Holy Spirit there is only a pretend church. In our spiritual genes, we are Pentecostal. Fred Craddock, the teacher of preachers was once approached by a student who asked: “Are you Pentecostal?” Craddock took the question as a request to know about his denominational background – did he speak in tongues? He really didn’t know how to respond – but later understood the question as whether Fred believed that the Holy Spirit was still present and active in the world. “Are you Pentecostal?”
Some of you don’t want to be caught dead being a Pentecostal for all their unseemly characteristics. There’s been a spate of interest lately in one of the modern pioneers of Pentecostalism, Aimee Semple McPherson. Sister Aimee was a Canadian, born and raised in southern Ontario, went to China with her first husband as missionaries. Her husband died of malaria within the first few months, so she returned with a baby son, and started preaching for the Methodists, Salvation Army, Assemblies of God, eventually establishing the International Foursquare Gospel Church with a huge Angelus Temple in Los Angeles. She was the first woman to acquire an FCC license to preach on the radio and became known for her folksy humour and dramatic presentations of the Gospel during her evangelistic prayer meetings. Out of her Angelus Temple she fed more than a million and a half people during the Depression and in an age still sharply divided along racial lines, her meetings and followings included blacks, Hispanic and Asians. She wrote voluminously as well in all sorts of media. Yes, she was married three times and there were accusations of affairs and financial irregularities; she was all too human. But isn’t that a good characteristic for someone devoted to the service of God?
We often associate the Holy Spirit with the wind. Who can see the wind? Nobody can, yet we can feel it and hear its ‘rush’ and we do see the results of its passing. Many of the most important things in life are unseen, yet are often more powerful than the things we can see. Without air – you cannot live but you can’t touch it. Love can’t be touched. Mercy can’t be touched. Self-respect can’t be touched.
While all these things can’t be seen they do have an impact which can be seen. Life can be seen in the rising and falling of our chests as we breathe in and out. God’s love is seen in the kindness of strangers and the acceptance of those different from us. Mercy is seen in every act of compassion. And self respect is seen when we treat ourselves as important people – too important to destroy with poor choices or feeling of “I’m not good enough.”
We do speak in tongues, and there are many of them in this room right now. You know Winston Churchill’s classic quip about the British and American peoples divided by a common language. We don’t have to have an ocean between us to have the same problem, whether it be different accents and vocabularies, English as a third language, what generation you belong to or what part of the world you come from. It barely matters what profession you are involved in or what special subject has captured your imagination and energy, most of us won’t have a clue what you are talking about.
I remember hearing about international exchange physical education students who came to study at US and Canadian colleges. You would think that sport is a universal language, given the Olympics, and for the most part the students did well, until they were required to play baseball, that simple game of bat and ball and four bases – they just could not understand the confusing set of rules and terms. I know what they meant – try to listen to a curling commentator if you haven’t grown up with the sport. Despite our foreign languages, we come to understand one another on a deeper level when the Spirit intervenes and acts as a quiet and subtle interpreter. It is no longer a Babeling noise, but a moment of Pentecost.
God keeps choosing what is little, tiny and insignificant - to work with an illiterate teen age peasant girl to become the mother of Jesus; simple fishermen for disciples; adulteresses and tax collectors as followers.
God has the unfortunate habit of loving the people others despise and reject. The signs of God’s kingdom are not found in big churches in gold or silver or fantastic wealth, but in bread and wine – the kind of thing you find at the Co-op or in most fridges. God’s work may be done occasionally by flashy people, but most often it is done and done well by you and me.
We may not speak another language or even speak in tongues, but whenever we help a person whose car is stuck; give a few dollars to a needy cause; or contribute to the food bank or feeding program whenever we volunteer to cut a neighbour’s lawn or pick up their mail; or run meals around town or remember someone’s birthday or coach a children’s event or pick up trash by the roadside – our actions and our love proclaim with a different kind of vocabulary what the Spirit directs us to say.
All these barely seen insignificant things, all these acts of care, are God’s work. Out of them grow the Kingdom of God and without them there is nothing. God uses ordinary people for extraordinary purposes. We are Pentecostal people when the Spirit of God resides in each of us enabling us to do all these things and to say the right word at the right time.
Many people are like Chicken Little and see the sky falling. They look all the time at the darkness and evil in our world: the struggling economy, unemployment, drugs, crime, oil spills, volcanoes and tornadoes, earthquakes and nuclear plants, and all manner of social problems. Planting fear in their hearts and the hearts of those around them - fear of failure, fear of losing what they value, fear of being alone, fear of death - they rob themselves by focusing on what is bad, and the more they look at it the bigger it gets.
The joy and punch line of Pentecost is that we don’t focus on what is wrong with the world or other people, but focus instead on the good that is all around us. Focus on God and on God’s goodness. Instead of foreign languages, indistinct accents, and new vocabulary blocking our ability to communicate to one another, the Spirit translates our intentions and our love.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan