May
27, 2007
Pentecost
Sunday
Acts
2:1-21
Starting
Over
On two different occasions
in recent weeks Jordan has heroically lighted the chancel candles while dodging
flaming projectiles launched from the lighter, itself. I don’t know if the problem has been faulty
lighter wicks, shoddy manufacturing or my own inept installation, but whatever
the explanation, we have breathlessly watched as fire descended erratically but
dangerously, if not quite on Jordan’s head, certainly near enough to his person
to appear almost Pentecostal. While
Jordan was deftly dodging the danger, I was the one who was speaking in strange
tongues – strange, at least, for a sanctuary chancel.
All
that reaction from a phenomenon strange, but hardly supernatural. What must it have felt like for the disciples
in the familiar Pentecost story we heard again moments ago in the presence of a
force far less explainable? Now, let’s
be clear that the narrator makes no assertion that actual flames of fire fell
out of the sky and landed on the heads of these good folk. Using the appropriate grammar of simile, what
the story specifically says is that “tongues LIKE fire” descended upon them,
and the disciples began to preach – apparently powerfully so, given the
postscript that 3000 were baptized as a result.
And not just fire – something, again speaking metaphorically, LIKE
wind.
Hear
it in Eugene Peterson’s contemporary rendering of the story: Without
warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force – no one could tell
where it came from. It filled the whole
building. Then, like a wildfire, the
Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number
of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.
I
like that version; conveying, at least for me, the dynamic presence and
movement of something powerful, without the impression of Hollywood special
effects. And that last part seems
important to me. If those metaphorical
descriptions had been literally, objectively and observably real, wouldn’t the
ultimate effect of the moment been even larger?
“It was large enough,” you might counter, but I still say it was not
large enough.
Let
me tell you a love story. Once upon a
time, two people shared an obligatory dinner at the insistence of mutual
friends. Painless enough, the two some
weeks later agreed to get together again, this time on a Saturday morning over
omelets and muffins and a hot cup of coffee – or two. The morning had begun overcast, humidly
still, but as the two prepared to go their separate ways outside beside the
cars, something happened: while risking
a brief, if only slightly more than platonic hug, the clouds parted just wide
enough to allow a brilliant beam of sunshine, and a cooling breeze rustled the
leaves. Nothing was said about it at the
time, but months later both recalled what, at the time, had seemed like a
miraculous sign from which they both derived great significance.
Now
would anyone else in that parking area that September morning have noticed the
changes? And would anyone else have
ascribed to them significance? I can’t
answer that question conclusively, except to say that no newspaper reported the
moment, and not even Chopper 13 was called to investigate. The events of that morning were very real, I
would argue, but their significance – their meaningfulness – was and is very
open to debate if not outright dismissal.
Or
if you prefer that we stick to scripture, what about Matthew’s description of
Jesus’ own baptism, when a disembodied voice supposedly interrupted the chatter
of the crowd and announced, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well-pleased.”
Or
think of Luke’s description of the conversion of Saul in the book of Acts, when
a blinding light supposedly knocked Saul off his horse and a voice called him
by name, saying “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”
Who
heard those voices, and who saw the light?
If the answer is “everyone who was nearby,” then why were there still
doubts? Why didn’t anybody chime in, in
the coming months when credibility was dismissed, saying “Yes, but we heard a
voice from heaven”? Don’t you think such
phenomena would have been fairly persuasive?
Don’t you think such interventions would get YOUR attention if it
happened close to where you were standing?
None
of which is to suggest that something powerful did NOT happen the day that
Jesus was baptized or the day that Paul took a new direction, or the day the
disciples became evangelists. It is,
however, to suggest, that some of the most important things that happen in the
world aren’t always visible to the camera lens or detectable by a random
microphone. One of my teachers once said
that the voice of God never speaks so loudly or so plainly that even the most
disinterested passerby can hear it.
There is always space for a different explanation.
If
the story centering this day is ultimately good for anything it is less as a
record of what might have happened once upon a time and more of a sense of the
kind of thing that can happen at any time – when, regardless of what might be
visible in the room, the barometric pressure of the soul suddenly changes, and
a gale force wind somewhere within us – and sometimes mystically among us –
fans a wildfire of the Spirit empowering those caught in the wind and the flame
to speak and act and interact in ways they hadn’t imagined possible – quivering
in a parking lot embrace, awed beside baptistery waters, enchanted by a new
baby’s inquisitive eyes and contented coos, or otherwise embodying and
proclaiming the good news of God’s transforming reign as embodied in Jesus
Christ, our Lord.
I
am inclined to think, in other words, that Pentecostal moments begin with
dramatic stirrings inside of us that lead to powerful expressions outside of
us, rather than the other way around.
Dramatic stirrings of the Spirit that make it seem as if we are
powerfully starting afresh.
Anytime. Anywhere.
Even here – even now.