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Tuesday, June 09, 2009
I Hear You
Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost Sunday was a gray and chilly day weather-wise, but our people were warmed with the glow of God's Holy Spirit throughout our time together.
The worship service's music was glorious, from both choir and congregation, all of it resounding with joy and praise in a sweet variety of musical styles. Even a lively Caribbean chorus, performed in our best Calvinistic white rhythm (we try our best).
Acts 2 tells us that, on the Church's very first Pentecost Sunday, onlookers thought the disciples and their friends were drunk! That would explain all the wild stuff going on, they thought. Why else would these simple folk be running around speaking in a cacophony of foreign languages?
(Do you think anyone would mistake your church's meetings for a drunken revel? Do you wish God might once in a while make it at least resemble a happy hour?)
Well, a bit too much to drink would be a reasonable guess to explain one strange thing. But it made no sense at all to cover the other two miraculous phenomena taking place. What does wine have to do with a strong wind blowing all around? Or with flames of fire flickering on the heads of all the people who were speaking in tongues?
So Peter got everyone's attention and told them, "This kind of stuff doesn't come from alcoholic spirits, but from the Holy Spirit of God!" And then he preached the great good news that Jesus was God's Messiah and that their entire lives could be changed, for now and all eternity, if they'd simply put their faith in him. And 3,000 people did just that, right on the spot! It was the birthday of the worldwide Christian church, which now comprehends every continent and hundreds of languages in thousands of cultures.
In my message I quoted John 3:16 as the best brief summary of Peter's gospel sermon on Pentecost. The King James version goes, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life."
Then six members of the church family stood up and recited, one after the other, that same verse in the language of their family heritage: Dutch, Spanish, Assyrian, two indigenous dialects from Ghana, and Tagalog. And then they all spoke the verse again, simultaneously. That gave us a taste of what all the people in Acts 2 experienced when God's Spirit broke through the linguistic sound barrier once and for all.
When our worship was done we gathered a while in the church courtyard with members of the Alameda Korean Presbyterian Church, with whom we share the buildings and grounds. There we relived Pentecost one more way: We sang and prayed and praised God in English and Korean; then we released several white doves (think Holy Spirit again), which quickly disappeared into the cloudy sky before our wondering eyes.
The greatest gift of the Holy Spirit is this thing of speaking in tongues. Not so much the ecstatic utterings of the Pentecostals, wonderful as that can be. Much more, it's the mini-miracle that happens when people become able to speak clearly and hear accurately what is truly the heart of the matter between them.
That's what the Day of Pentecost was all about, 2000 years ago and on May 31, 2009. That's what every single day is about, truth be told (and heard), as we make our journey together on the path of Christian discipleship.
posted by Jack Buckley at
10:08 AM
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