Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, seven weeks after Jesus’ resurrection and ten days after his ascension into heaven, Pentecost raises a number of questions raises a number of questions for the Church. None of these questions are as straight forward as they might at first appear, and not all or any of which have answers which we could find or express. To begin with there would be the obvious one: What happened? Luke describes an event. But, as with any witness testimony, what is it that he is describing? The words which Luke finds are just that, words. We have no unmediated access to reality, we are always limited by our ability to describe it, and that is often a limit imposed by language itself. Which is ironic given the nature of what Luke describes. On this occasion we do given a simple answer to an obvious question: what happened? The Spirit came. Which just goes to show that some answers conceal just as much as they reveal. It is answer that just poses more questions. Indeed as answers go, it is more of an assumption than an answer. How did the Apostles know it was the Spirit? And if it is the Spirit, what did the Spirit do? And even if we are able to answer those questions, we only arrive at the questions that actually matter to us. First of all, we would find ourselves echoing the crowd that gathered on that Pentecost Sunday, we find ourselves asking with them:
What does this mean?
And then we find ourselves with the sort of questions that we should probably end up after every reading from the Bible: What difference can or should this make to us now? We read the Bible because we give to testimony it make authority over us. What it says should have some bearing on who we are and what we do. The final question we must always find ourselves with is: Given that we accept the testimony given here is true (and surely we do), how should we live? When it comes to Pentecost, we might ask: what happened that Sunday? But only do that in order to ask: what might happen this Sunday?
The events of that Sunday are reasonably familiar to us. We repeat the reading of this story at least once a year every year. We know what Luke says:
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.
The Apostles and those who accompanied them had gathered on this Sunday morning. It was already a Jewish festival, falling fifty days after Passover, celebrating the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai after the children of Israel had left Egypt. This is why Jerusalem was full of people from all over the world. It was one of those of occasions when the scattering of God’s people was reversed in part, by pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The Apostles and those who accompanied them had gathered, as they frequently did for worship and for fellowship. They still do not seem to distinguish between the two, when the church gathers to be together it worships, and when it worships it comes together in fellowship. Companionship and praise of God happens together. These things are familiar to us, even if sometimes we make them into separate events. But while they are together that morning something happens. Christian worship has seldom been as dramatic since. Luke describes what happens in startlingly sensory language, more than telling, he shows us what happened. There was a great noise, which could only be described is being like the rush of a storm wind. The sound filled the house where they were gathered. Then something resembling fire appeared among them, its flames rested on them. Even as Luke tries to show us happened he reaches the limits of language’s ability to describe reality. As dramatic as his description is, I suspect it hardly does justice to the event. Is the Spirit wind, or the sound of a rushing wind? Is the Spirit fire? Did the Apostles see and hear the Spirit? Or did they see and hear the things that accompany the Spirit? In the same way, we can’t actually see the wind, but only the accompanying effects, as it moves the leaves of trees, or ripples the surface of water. But at that moment the Spirit takes effect upon the individuals in the room. They were filled with the Spirit. How did they know? I guess it is just one of those things, that before it happens you can’t know, and when it does you’re certain. The impact of the Spirit on them was immediate. They began to talk. They began to bear witness to what God has done, and they did it in s many languages as there were speakers. When we ask what does the Spirit do, perhaps the first answer we should give is that it gives voice to the Church’s testimony to God.
The work of the Spirit is defined by the impossible. The Spirit does what human beings cannot do on their own. What happened in that room fits that description. The people who experienced it and who witnessed what happened, knew that it was the Spirit because without the Spirit to cause those things they would have be impossible. Rushing wind, tongues of fire, ecstatic speech, are the very definition of the supernatural things that might be used to identify the Spirit when the Spirit comes. Christian worship has seldom been as dramatic as that Pentecost. The Spirit enters into the church and does the impossible, what could be more dramatic. And such a dramatic event has a wider impact than on just those who were experiencing it directly. The other effect of the coming of the Spirit was to prompt the curiosity of the crowd. At the very least they heard the commotion coming from the house where the disciples were gathered. They too heard the sound of the rushing wind. And then they heard the voices of those who were gathered there all speaking at once:
And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.
Once again we are faced with the sort of question that has been facing us all along. What is the the work of the Spirit here, and what is merely a by-product, a side-effect, of the Spirit doing something else? Did the Spirit gather the crowd? Or did the crowd gather because of the effect that the Spirit was having on the Apostles? The impossible is happening here. But which impossibility is being overcome? It is impossible for Galileans to speak in every language of every nation under heaven. It is impossible for people from every nation under heaven to understand Galileans when they speak. But which impossibility is being remove here. The work of the Spirit is defined by the impossible. Did the Spirit change the Apostles’ speech, or did the Spirit change the crowd’s hearing? Or was it both, and neither?
In all our questioning and answering there is a certain indeterminacy. Much as we want to pin the Spirt down, much as we want to say: there it is! There is the Spirit! We can’t. As Jesus himself said of the Spirit in his conversation with the uncomprehending Nicodemus:
The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.
But even there the Spirit is slippery. Does Jesus say “wind” or does he say “Spirit”? Like the crowd we are left with the effects, and to say in amazement, surely that must have been the Spirit.
Christian worship has seldom been as dramatic as that first Pentecost. And the work of the Spirit is defined by the impossible, and only by amazement at the effects it leaves behind. But because of that we set the bar of what is impossible a little too high, and look only for effects we think are amazing. If it is only drama we are looking for, we are missing most of what the Spirit was doing at Pentecost, and continues to be doing now. The one definite answer I am going to give is to the question about speaking and or hearing, was that the Spirit? I am going to say “Yes”, that was the Spirit. It was both/and. The Spirit enables both the speech of the Apostles, and the hearing of the crowd. What is more, I am going to say that it is only the Spirit that enables me to make that claim. And that that despite the apparent lack of drama, the same miracles occur every time the church gathers, Christians speak, and people listen and hear! Pentecost hasn’t ended. The work of the Spirit doesn’t stop. And yet through all of that the Spirit remains as illusive as ever.
When it comes to speaking, as a preacher, as any Christian might, I can say that I am capable, on my own, of opening the Bible and reading silently or out loud what is written there. That is nowhere near the realm of the impossible. Reading lies very much within the sphere of the humanly possible. Nothing amazing, no drama, therefore no need for the work of the Spirit. Furthermore, I have been a preacher for a long time, more than 30 years. I have had a lot of practice at composing sermons. And the church as a whole has been doing it for a lot longer than that. There is a great deal of wisdom about how to put God’s deeds of power into words. There is craft in it and all preachers learn that craft from the forebears and from one another. There are skills that we can acquire, in the same way that we might acquire any skill Again none of it is impossible, no need for a miracle. Yet what I am going to say to you is that we set the bar for impossible too high.
At the other side of the event there is “hearing.” There is your listening to and hearing of what I have to say. Hearing is a natural human capacity. Mostly we take it for granted, and only become very conscious of it when it is absent. And in all likelihood you have had more practice in that than I have had preaching. My guess is that some, most, perhaps all of you have heard more sermons than I have preached. Sometimes listening is difficult. Sometimes it is hard to follow what is being said, especially when it is preachers who are saying it. But it is not impossible. Perhaps we don’t demand of ourselves that hearing/listening is a skill that can be acquired, or that is worth acquiring, but those of us who come to church regularly have listened often to sermons often enough to have acquired some skill in that direction, without having really to try. Hard as listening sometimes might be, it doesn’t appear to require a miracle. It is definitely natural rather than supernatural, not impossible, no need for a work of the Spirit. But you know I am going to say to you that we set the bar of impossible too high.
Pentecost is a miracle at both ends. The Apostles can only speak of what God has done, is doing and will do, because the Spirit enables them to do so. The crowd only gathers, hears, listens to and understands what the Apostles are saying because the Spirit enables them do so. And it is not different for us now, despite what we might think. Preachers read and preach, only as the Spirit enables them. Congregations hear and listen, only as the Spirit enable them. If we are listening only for a rushing wind or looking only for tongues of fire, if we are expecting drama, then we are going to miss what the Spirit is actually doing. Though I might say that a rushing wind is here, there are tongues of fire amongst us, and this is very dramatic. There is a miracle happening, it is more that we have been desensitised and so aren’t hearing, seeing, and experiencing what is actually there!
Which brings us to the crowd’s question, a question which is also our own:
What does this mean?
The answer is salvation and judgement, since those two always go together, and they are the real work of the Spirit. An effect of Pentecost which we almost overlook is what it does to the crowd:
All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
Pentecost divides the crowd. The crowd divides, between those who are being saved, who on that occasion numbered three thousand, and those who as yet are not, those who continue to deny and reject what God has been doing in and through Jesus. Some are amazed, others are sceptical. Some recognised and accept that what has happened here is the work of God. Others deny and reject that interpretation. Either the Apostles are testifying to the truth, or they are not. Some see a miracle, others look for a naturalistic explanation, however implausible. We might miss it, but this too is the work of the Spirit. The work of the Spirit confronts us with the mystery of God. Which is why, of course, the Spirit is so hard to define and impossible to pin down. Having been confronted with the mystery of God we are left with a moment of crisis. Is that mystery God, or something else? The answer we give to that question is the decisive one, in it lies And the answer we give makes all the difference in the world to us now! And that answer is also a work of the Spirit.
Amen.
Another sermon for Pentecost and based on this text can be found here.
Pentecost; The Work of the Spirit by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0