Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
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Acts 2:1-8 and 11-21
The Holy Spirit Comes at Pentecost
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in their own language. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language?
11 We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”
13 Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”
Peter Addresses the Crowd
14 Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. 15 These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! 16 No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
17 “‘In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
18 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.
19 I will show wonders in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood and fire and billows of smoke.
20 The sun will be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.
21 And everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord will be saved.’
We’re going a little out of order here, because the story of the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost was a listed lectionary reading for Friday, when the gospel reading was the story of the discovery of the resurrection. We needed to think about the resurrection that day, but we also need to devote a day to the Pentecost story, so let’s do that today.
This is a pretty long passage, and you might notice that I’ve deleted a few verses. For the sake of brevity, I’ve left out the list of languages the followers of Jesus were suddenly able to speak. If you want to review the list, you can check it in your own Bible. For our purposes, it seems sufficient to say it was a lot of languages.
Most followers of Jesus would probably agree that the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost is one of the major events in the history of God’s relationship with humankind. And there are several aspects of the story that seem to me important for us to think about from time to time.
First of all, there are the two symbolic manifestations of the Holy Spirit – wind and fire. It’s easy to overlook the differences between those two elemental forces and the fact that they came upon the gathered disciples differently.
Sometimes fire can be kept under human control. Little fires cook our food and warm us. But fire can get out of control, and when it does, it becomes dangerous and destructive. On the other hand, the wind is completely beyond our control, invisible and mysterious. We can catch it to push a ship or turn a mill, but even then, we have no control over the wind itself. We’re literally “along for the ride.”
On Pentecost, the wind came as a force that struck the disciples as a group, but the fire separated and settled on the followers of Jesus as individual “tongues of fire.” Doesn’t that seem like it’s meant to signify something? Maybe that the Holy Spirit engages us both individually and as a group?
Sometimes that Spirit works in us when we’re alone in prayer or reflecting on the Bible or whatever. But sometimes the Spirit seems to catch hold of a group of believers, and set them in motion like the wind drives a sailboat. It seems to me that the church only moves with real power when it’s being propelled by the Spirit, so every congregation needs to be praying for the Spirit to be directed into our sails. And probably that we’ll keep our sails up and ready to catch that wind.
But it also seems to me that we should each be praying regularly that the Spirit will renew its fire in our hearts individually, setting us on fire with a passion for God’s mission.
The truth, it seems to me, is that we need both the wind and the fire of the Spirit to be the disciples and the churches God wants us to be.
I suppose that the part of the Pentecost story that people think of first is the disciples’ mysterious ability to “speak in other tongues.” To me, it seems clear that the gift of tongues was intended as a tool for the followers of Jesus to ‘declare the wonders of God’ to people in their own native languages, not as some mysterious holy babbling to perform in worship services. (“Speaking in togues” apparently took on that aspect of mysterious babbling very early in the history of the church, but it’s worth noting that the apostle Paul was skeptical about its value.)
The ability to tell the story of Jesus in other languages, on the other hand, fits right in with one of the major themes of the Acts of the Apostles. From the earliest days of the church, God was breaking down barriers to let the followers of his Son carry the Word into the lives and homes of people of every gentile nation. Later in Acts, he would do that by canceling the requirements to eat only kosher foods, so the apostles could break bread with gentiles as they told them the story of Jesus.
Translating the good news into new languages is still a mark of the Spirit-empowered church. That can mean translating the Bible it into languages as we traditionally understand the term. But it probably also means communicating the word through new media, and even just telling the story of Jesus without the “churchy talk” we’re so used to. Some of the most effective evangelists in the life of the church today are telling the story of Jesus in language most traditional congregations would consider ‘too coarse.’ But people who have been alienated from the church are opening their hearts to the good news because of these “outside the box” ways of telling it.
Peter’s recitation of the prophesy of Joel about the coming of the Spirit strikes me as an under-appreciated part of the Pentecost story. That prophesy said that God would speak into the world in unexpected ways through all kinds of people. We sometimes make the mistake of thinking that the Word of God only comes into the world through “professionals” like preachers and theologians and seminary professors. But the first disciples were just fishermen and tax collectors and other ordinary people. They found their hearts set on fire by the Spirit on Pentecost, and they tapped into its power to tell anyone who would listen what God was up to.
Let’s pray. Holy Spirit, come upon us once again with wind and fire. Ignite us with passion for your mission in the world, and drive us irresistibly to move out and tell the story of Jesus to anyone who will listen. Come, Holy Spirit, come. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
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