The Rush of the Wind
The Rush of the Wind
Acts 2:1-11
So, back in January, on Epiphany Sunday, I offered you ten epiphanies. During Easter, I’ve offered you a take on each of the four Gospels. This morning, I want to offer six insights into Pentecost. Let’s start counting…
Insight number one: Long before the events in our text happened and Christians called this day, “Pentecost,” this day was already called…wait for it… “Pentecost.” (That wasn’t very creative, right?) Pentecost had been a Jewish holiday for centuries, an important one because it was the celebration of the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures knows as the Torah. At the heart of the Torah is Moses receiving the Ten Commandments and establishing the covenant between God and the former slaves: “If you keep these commandments, I will be your God and you will be my people.
Of course, we know the rest of the story. The bottom line is that all human beings, not just our ancestors in faith, fail miserably when we try to keep all the rules and be perfect. After you’ve failed long enough, your only hope is denial: “Who failed? Not me!” This was true for the nation, too: “Who failed? Not us!” Eventually, the unthinkable happened: the people were dragged into exile. The former slaves essentially became slaves again. Just before that, though, the prophet, Jeremiah predicted that there would be a new covenant, one written not on tablets of stone but on people’s hearts, one in which God’s love was unconditional and forgiveness was the norm.
Hundreds of years later, God seems to have a delicious sense of timing by picking Pentecost: “While you’re all gathering thinking about the original covenant, let’s try something totally new. Meet Pentecost 2.0—the day when God becomes available to everyone in the room.”
Insight number two: As soon as the wind starts blowing, the people in the room started making connections. So these believers have been gathered in Jerusalem, waiting for something to happen. Why? Because Jesus told them that something was going to happen. (“Waiting in Jerusalem” vs. “fleeing to Galilee” is one of the interesting ways in which the gospels differ on what happened after Jesus died.) They wait. Then, they wait a little longer.
Suddenly, there is a rush of the mighty wind rushing through the room. Yes, presumably there were windows. Yes, potentially, it could have been a natural event. However, that’s not the experience or the meaning that people were experiencing. Everyone loves a nice breeze on a warm day. However, the meaning of a mighty wind for anyone steeped in Judaism rested in the very first moment of the first creation story. In the beginning the world was formless and void and then a wind from God moved across the face of the earth. Wind was the original force for creation, the first way that God’s presence shaped this and brought something new to life.
To put the matter succinctly, the presence of this mighty wind, rushing through the room is a giant statement that God is “in the house.” God is present. Now, welcome to the moment of a whole new creation—the creation of a whole new ordering of the world.
Insight number 3: This time, everyone gets to be Moses. You remember, or possibly you don’t remember but our ancestors would have, Moses initial encounter with God was in the wilderness while he was tending his father-in-law’s sheep. He had run away from his life in Egypt because he had killed an Egyptian who was abusing a slave. While on the run, he met a “nice girl” and settled down.
While he’s tending to the flock, he sees a bush that’s on fire. He’s curious (an perhaps horribly tired of staring at the sheep!). So, he decides to check out the bush. (Just as an aside, almost everyone who has had a calling tells the story of what “caught their eye,” what made them curious enough to go check things out. It could have been the first glimpse of the person you would later marry. It could have been your first run in with a new idea that changed your life. You were paying attention. You were curious.) When Moses gets the bush, he sees that it’s on fire but it the fire is not consuming the bush. The the bush starts talking…
Any Jewish person worth their salt would hear the Pentecost story and immediately recognize this familiar pattern: things are on fire but their not burning. What’s interesting here is that there is a tongue of fire for every person in the room. It’s like that one episode of Oprah: “You get a burning bush and you get a burning bush and you get a burning bush, too.” God is not simply trolling for the next great leader—the next Moses. God is ready to connect to everyone. Everyone gets to be Moses this time.
Insight number four: If everyone is a burning bush then God is now speaking through every person. The text tells us that all of a sudden, everyone starts speaking in other languages that they previously couldn’t speak. Understand, this is not “speaking in tongues,” the practice of “glossolalia,” which Pentecostal Christians practice to this day—where one person speaks what sounds like gibberish and the another person “translates” “God’s words.” No, this, specifically, is about, all of a sudden, being able to speak Aramaic when you never learned to speak Aramaic.
The idea here is that God—through the Holy Spirit—can work through us and make us able to do things that we otherwise would never have been able to do. Now, let me be upfront. I worked really hard in every language class I ever had and never suddenly became fluent. I’ve always wished I could play guitar and would love to suddenly be able to do that, too. Apparently, the Holy Spirit doesn’t work “on demand.” However, I will tell you that I have seem amazing things happen—not tongues of fire and sudden language acquisition but everyday amazing things. I’ve had moments where while I was speaking, my words were better than I could have come up with on my own. I’ve witnessed people who never should have been able to forgive one another who somehow found the power to forgive. I’ve seem dreams become real and love beat the odds and people be so brave and compassionate in the face of terrible things.
In short, the Holy Spirt is at work around us all the time. They key is to look for that “something more” of God’s presence, to watch someone who is engaged in a noble project like feeding someone or staying patient with some difficult soul or like raising their voice on behalf of someone who is being abused. The Holy Spirit almost always makes us more able than we otherwise would be—able not to win the lottery but to have someone else feel like they might have because of how we are helping them. People utter statements like this: “How did that happen;” “How did we ever do that;” “Where did those words, that energy, that patience, come from?” The answer might be—crazy as it might sound—maybe, for a few moments there, we were filled with the spirit of God.”
Insight number five: Whatever the Spirit makes us more able to do, that ability will be directed toward connecting with others. So, it’s not just the people in that upper room are able to speak other languages and they hang out with each other and say, “Wow…that’s cool.” God’s not into party tricks. No, the ability to speak a language should lead a person to speak to people you’ve never spoken to before. And when those people hear their own language being spoken, this should lead to real understanding and an actual conversation. (God knows our own world would benefit so much from people who haven’t been able to understand one another suddenly being able to do so, right?)
For those folks steeped in the Jewish Scriptures, this would have led to yet another connection. In the story of the Tower of Babel, all of the people in the world are gathering and joining forces to build a tower. In fact, they want to build it so high that they essentially can check out God, because, everyone thought, God was “up there.” (Don’t laugh! When the early astronauts were sent into space, people objected for religious reasons because they still thought that God was “up there.”) In the story, God feels threatened so God scatters the people and makes them all speak different languages so that they can’t understand one another. Pentecost is literally a reversal of that story. God is helping people to overcome the language barrier and understand one another again.
Insight number six: The barrier that can block the Holy Spirit from working through people is people. Do you remember the story of the disciples struggling in the boat on the Sea of Galilee? Jesus recognizes their distress and he comes to them. They can’t believe what they are seeing when they see Jesus walking on the water. Admittedly, the “walking on water” part is a surprise. What shouldn’t have been a surprise was that he loved them enough to do whatever it took to help them. It also shouldn’t have been a surprise that this man who they had watched do miracles might do this, too. This is Jesus, after all. The Spirit really goes to work though not when Jesus is able to walk on the water but when Peter turns out to be able to walk on water, too. Now, that’s news. Peter walks on water until he stops and thinks to himself, “Hold it! I can’t walk on water!” Then, he sinks.
We can get in God’s way. In the middle of almost any small, daily, miracle in our home or at work or with friends, I can stop at any point and question things: “Hold it! How is this happening?” Like the tight rope walker who was doing just fine until he looked down, I can start wobbling. And if I wobble long enough, fear and doubt can cut me off from the Spirit that was sustaining me every step of the way.
Or, you may hear that and think, “Man, what’s Mark been smoking or sipping today?” (The crowds accused the disciples of “sipping” a bit too much.) You can be a spectator to the Spirit at work or even a recipient of that work and undercut what’s happening: “I don’t believe this. This can’t be happening!”
Like a mighty wind, the Spirit will roll around the barriers and find a new direction, a less resistant path to empower someone, somewhere to do something astounding, creative and new.