“And So It Begins… ”

Sermon delivered May 23^rd, 2010 at Belleville Presbyterian Church.

Scriptural basis: Acts 2:1-21, John 14:8-17

Have you ever stopped to think just how pervasive the idea of wind is in our faith tradition and in our culture? The mighty east wind that cleared the Red Sea so the Israelites could cross over to the other side, Jesus calming the wild wind when he and the disciples were crossing the Sea of Galilee, Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit into the disciples, and in today’s reading from Acts, the wind that announces the arrival of the Holy Spirit and by tradition, the founding of the church. There are also a few references to windbags in the Bible, and I’ll thank you all to keep the thoughts that just entered your minds about yours truly to yourselves… In our culture, we talk of long-winded politicians, the winds of change, the winds of war. By the way, did you know that Chicago is known as the Windy City not because of the winds blowing in off Lake Michigan, but because of that fair city’s history of verbose politicians? Popular musicians, from Peter, Paul and Mary to Bette Middler to Christopher Cross have incorporated thoughts about wind into their songs. Reap the Wild Wind was the title of a 1942 feature film and of a serialized story in the Saturday Evening Post. There’s plenty of wind, or at least hot air, blowing around Washington and Lansing, the airwaves and Presbytery.

Wind can be scary, destructive, refreshing and cleansing. In this part of the country, tornadoes are the most frightening weather phenomena you can think of, the devastation from which can be awesome and the aftereffects of which can last for years. In coastal areas, hurricanes take the prize as the malevolent force of nature that is most feared. At the same time, what can be more pleasant than a summer’s breeze or more fragrant than laundry hung out to dry on a clothesline, caressed by the wind? It’s the wind that dries the ground after a rainstorm, wind that carries away smoke and dust, wind that blows the leaves from your yard to your neighbor’s. Wind can make or break our recreation; think about how dull sailing would be without the right amount of wind, or how terrifying it can be with too much. If you’re a golfer, the wind can either make you look like a monster off the tee if it’s behind you, or a duffer of the first order if it’s from the side. Mothers blow on a child’s skinned knee after spraying on Bactiene to ease the sting, and we blow over a freshly-poured cup of coffee to cool it a bit before we take the first sip. Kids blow dandelion seeds off the stem and into the summer breeze. And the wind can blow away the old order of things and usher in the new. It can blow a small religious movement in the ancient Near East into the church we know today. And so it begins…

It is fitting that on the first Christian Pentecost Peter and the other disciples have gathered in a house in Jerusalem some fifty days after the Passover festival, which is forty days after the events of Easter on the Jewish festival of Shavuot, the third of the great festivals of Judaism and one of great joy during which the first fruits of the harvest would have been given to God. The establishment of the church most certainly was, and is, to be joyfully celebrated. Shavuot, or the feast of weeks which became known as Pentecost in later generations, also called for the renewal of the covenant God made with Noah, and later in Jewish history after the destruction of the temple by the Romans in about 70 AD it became linked to Israel’s sacred history by celebrating the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai, all of which fits very nicely with the founding of what we now call the church. Being tied to a harvest festival brings up a couple of timing concerns, however. We celebrate Easter and in turn Pentecost in the spring of the year, yet Shavuot would most likely been celebrated in the fall. According to chapter sixteen of Deuteronomy, the date for this festival is set as “seven weeks from the time the sickle is first put to the grain” so it seems to me that an argument could be made that Easter should be celebrated in the later summer or early fall. However, a little digging into history reveals that Shavuot was also celebrated as a spring harvest festival that featured foods gathered from the fields, perhaps winter wheat being the grain to which the sickle was put so maybe tradition has Easter in the right spot. Pentecost falling forty days after Easter certainly fits with Israel’s forty years of wandering in the desert, forty days and forty nights of rain in the story of Noah’s Ark and Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness.

Had we heard the Hebrew Scripture for today from Genesis which is the story of the tower of Babel, we might be tempted to see the reading from Acts as a reversal of the confusion God caused amongst the people so they could not complete their tower, and now are unified in their faith and will go on happily ever after. Sadly, it’s not that simple. The tower of Babel explains the creation of multiple languages and the dispersal of people over the face of the earth; reversing this would have reestablished a common language and gathered all the people of the earth into one area. That clearly isn’t what’s happening in Acts, where devout Jews from every nation were in Jerusalem and they heard the disciples speaking in their native languages. Remember that this is a high Jewish feast, with many pilgrims visiting from foreign lands in addition to expatriates of all these countries living in Jerusalem. It’s possible that the disciples were multi-lingual, after all the official language of the Roman Empire was Greek, Latin was common among the elites and the disciples, being Galileans, would have spoken Aramaic which is similar to Hebrew and other Semitic languages but that doesn’t help with the Egyptians and Arabs. And it wasn’t only Jews who gathered to hear the disciples; the rush of the wind got everybody’s attention so adherents of other religions from other countries would have heard the eleven as well. No, my friends, what’s happening here is the establishment of Christianity as a world religion. The early church was called to spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth in the languages of the people of the world, not to force all people everywhere to speak one language. It also would seem to grant divine permission to translate the Scriptures into local languages. Now let me say that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with going back to original languages to study the Scriptures, that’s great for academic research or seminary students but for the vast majority of folks in the pews that only serves to keep the Scriptures out of their hands where they belong. For instance, it’s perfectly fine that Jews around the world study Hebrew but it’s equally fine that the Septuagint is available in several languages.

The eleven weren’t filled with new wine, as Peter told the crowd it was only nine o’clock in the morning and I don’t think the phrase “it’s five o’clock somewhere” had been developed yet. They were filled with new Spirit, the Holy Spirit that was saying to all who could hear, in their native tongues that “in Christ there is no east or west!” Look closely at what Peter is saying when he quotes the prophet Joel: God is pouring out his Spirit, the Holy Spirit on all flesh. This is great news for the gathered crowd in Jerusalem and for us today! And what about the following verses? As we look to grow our church, don’t we want our youth to talk of a bright and prosperous future, to prophesy? Don‘t we want our young men and women to have a vision of what we can do and be, our more seasoned members to have dreams of what the future holds? Don’t we want everyone who calls on the name of the Lord to be saved? Isn’t that why we’re in business here, to share the Word of God so all can be saved?

In the Gospel lesson for today, when Phillip asks to see the Father, Jesus sets him, and us straight by asking “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” Ideally we’ll believe this because Jesus has told us so, but he then gives us a get-out-of-jail-free card by telling Phillip that if he can’t believe that Jesus and the Father are one as an article of faith, then believe it because of the evidence of Christ’s works. And once again we’re called to love, specifically to love Jesus and as a result to keep his commandments. Then Jesus tells us that another Advocate will be with us forever, that Advocate being the Holy Spirit, that same Holy Spirit that descends on Peter and the disciples accompanied by a sound like a great rush of wind and took the appearance of divided tongues, as of fire resting on the eleven. And so it begins…

So begins the Christian church, out of the chaos and confusion of a crowded city in the midst of a great religious festival. So begins a movement that would sweep the earth, led by a small group of Galileans who were given the ability to speak the languages of the lands they would travel to as they spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So begins a tradition, built upon the words of Peter, who was both Jesus’ confessor and his denier that leads directly to us right here in Belleville. A tradition that places such importance on the day of Pentecost that we have incorporated the Pentecostal flame into our denominations’ logo. We don’t speak in tongues, and our worship is pretty low-key (most of the time) but we’re still heirs to the Holy Spirit that came in a great rush of wind and flashes of fire. The question is what are we going to do with it?

What are we going to do with the Holy Spirit among us that is ready and willing to guide us along the way? The Holy Spirit that is the tangible presence of God and Christ? Are we going to listen and act accordingly, or are we going to sit on our hands and wait for another great rush of wind and flash of fire to convince us that Jesus really meant it when he said God would send another Advocate to be with us forever, forever including the here and now? Are we going to get fired up about what the future looks like, about all the great things we can accomplish? Are we going to build on the foundation laid for us over the centuries by faithful men and women who gave their all to establish and grow Christ’s church, in spite of squabbles and schisms, in spite of denominational splits and reconnections? Are we going to encourage our young people to have a vision of the futures and our seasoned members to dream of what can be? Are we going to get our heads and hearts together and create the church we want to have right here? Or are we going to hold on to old hurts and broken dreams of what used to be or what might have been? I hope and pray that we’ll choose the former and not the latter, because I believe that’s what God wants us to do, I believe that’s why God sent the Advocate to be with us. We’re supposed to do something special here.

There’s a wind blowing through town. We can either hunker down and hope it passes us by without doing much damage, or we can let it sweep away the old and clear away the fog so that our vision is clear and so that we’re ready to let the Advocate be our guide. We know how the story of the church begins, in a rush of wind and tongues as of fire. How will the story play out here? Will we write a new chapter that adds luster to the legacy of Christ’s church? Will this Pentecost be a new beginning for us, a fresh start? And so it begins…

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.