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Acts 2_2010
| 23.10.2010, 18:16 | |
| Rev. Tatiana Cantarella Psalm 116:10-19, 117; Genesis 11:1-9; Ezekiel 36:22-28, 36; ACTS 2:1-21 Pentecost – only a past event or a norm for the present times? Without an understanding of the events of Pentecost it is impossible to correctly understand our journey through the book of Acts and the role we should play in the Divine Drama of the salvation of this world. Even though we read this text just a few months ago, if we miss Pentecost then we won’t be able to understand everything that follows in the book of Acts. Pentecost was a Jewish holiday that the apostles and other disciples of Christ gathered to celebrate. Tons of people, Jews and Godly gentiles who had come to faith in the One God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, streamed into Jerusalem on this holiday. There were two sides to this celebration. One the one hand, Pentecost was the agricultural celebration in which the first fruits of the grain harvests were offered to God. Exodus 23:16-19 says: "Celebrate the Feast of Harvest with the firstfruits of the crops you sow in your field. Celebrate the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in your crops from the field. Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God.” These offerings were a proclamation of the faith that everything we have is given by the Lord, and a declaration of the hope that the Lord would bless their next harvests as well: "Worship the Lord your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water.” (Exodus 23:25a). We will celebrate that as well next week in our Harvest Sunday. There was another side to Pentecost, however. On this day the Hebrew nation commemorated how fifty days after Passover (i.e., the Exodus from Egypt), on Mount Sinai the Lord gave his people the Law on which they should model their lives. And that’s what Pentecost means: 50 days. Luke’s first audience couldn’t not catch both of these subtexts in the events of this day! Three thousand souls came to Christ that day, and they were the beginning of the harvest, the first fruits of Christ’s mission, of his heavenly service through his disciples. John Chrysostom wrote about this: "The time has come to set in motion the scythe of the Word, for here, like a scythe, the two-edged Spirit has descended” (Homilies). This is what happened with the giving of God’s Law, which, in the words of the prophets, the Lord will write on the tablets of the human heart: "And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws” (Ezekiel 36:27), "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33). On the day of Pentecost described in Acts Jerusalem was packed full of people who had lived for the promise, people who had dreamed and thought about it their whole life, people who had been tormented by questions about when it would all become reality, when that long-awaited moment would come that would bring the sigh of relief: Now we can start really living! (Remember last week we talked about the same expectation in the question of the disciples: "will you restore the kingdom of Israel now, Lord?” That is exactly how Jews of the first century interpreted Scripture. The prophet Daniel talked about some sort of captivity that would last for 490 years. If you counted from the Babylonian exile, which happened 400-500 years before, then it should happen soon, very soon. They saw themselves as the generation that would see the promises of God fulfilled. These "devout people” read, meditated on, memorized Scripture that spoke of radical changes, about how God would lead them to a new place and give them a sign when they arrived. When we understand all of these expectations that reigned in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost we understand why Peter started explaining the events of Pentecost by quoting from the prophet Joel. People were waiting for signs of the end, and Peter says, yes, we are at that point of the way that the prophets foresaw. The "last days” have arrived. The last days are a time for the fulfillment of promises, history is approaching its culmination and something new is beginning. But let’s not confuse "last days” with the very last Day -- The Day of the Lord, when Jesus will appear again to unite heaven and earth in a great renewal. With the coming of the Spirit a long day of opportunity stretched out between Pentecost and the Day of the Lord, an extended time of opportunity in which the Gospel of salvation would be proclaimed throughout the whole world. In that extended time of opportunity we live. Amid all of these tense expectations came the surprising events Luke describes in Acts. When the apostles and other disciples were together in one accord, in prayer, in the Word, in fellowship, the whole building was filled with a sound like rushing wind and the Holy Spirit descended on them in the form of tongues of fire. Luke doesn’t described everything literally, he says "like rushing wind” and tongues "like fire,” trying to underscore that what happened was so unexpected and powerful, like rushing wind and fire. Unbridled strength and natural phenomena of supernatural origin and character were at work. God broke into their meeting as an irrepressible, elemental force because it is impossible to restrain the Spirit or God’s Word in rational frameworks and narrow categories. Through the Holy Spirit the creative power of the Creator descended from heaven to earth, not just to give people some sort of "spirituality,” but to transform earth with the power of heaven. Luke is describing something new, the beginning of a new movement, similar to a fleet of ships at sea, driven by a strong wind. Do you remember the tornado in the Wizard of Oz? Everything was normal, uninteresting, nothing out of the ordinary until the WIND came. It picked up the house, Dorothy and Toto and carried them to a place where EVERYTHING WAS DIFFERENT. Little dancing people, flying monkeys, unexpected dangers, friends with inexplicable gifts: Courage, Mercy, and Wisdom. There was no explanation for all of this. The Emerald City was beautiful and full of promise. The Wizard at first seems to be a charlatan, but maybe he wasn’t after all. He was playing tricks, but at the end of the day he was just a simple person in need of attention and respect. But the Wizard knew that Dorothy had everything she needed to get home. And when she did get home, had anything changed? No. But she had changed, she was already different. She understood her life, in which her soul hovered in the air because of wind and she gained sight illuminated by the spark of the Spirit. That is what Luke is explaining in his description of a small group of terrified, confused and for the most part uneducated people, who were quickly transformed into a force that the whole world would have to reckon with. The wind of the Spirit lifted them and made them ‘fly’. It is important for us to understand the expectations that were brewing among those present at Pentecost in Jerusalem, but you can’t reduce the events of Pentecost to theological formulas and citations from the Old Testament. Just like a tornado is a lot more than some meteorologist’s diagram, what happened on that day is not just "proof” of Old Testament prophecies. It’s important that people pay attention to tornadoes, but with the Holy Spirit you need to open yourself up to the Wind, stretch out the wings of your life, your heart, your imagination, and your speech, so that the Wind will make you fly. Let it turn a lifeless weakling into a person whose heart burns with the fire of God’s love. Let yourself be transformed into a person created and renewed in the image of God, a person who behaves and even talks in new ways. A lot of believers, however, tie the hands of God’s Spirit and live with a feeling of guilt for not having experienced a "tornado-like” infilling of the Spirit like the apostles at Pentecost. Or, if they don’t feel guilty, they envy those who have had a similar experience. Or they think that what happened was a unique event, only for that day, and in our lives it won’t be repeated. But that is all a dead end. That first day of the "new creation” was a watershed: the expectations had been so high and the signs had to be so clear that God decided to act as He did. But God always acts as He will, and its different with each person. As we will see in the rest of Acts, the Spirit often acts quietly, unobtrusively, gradually changing lives and life circumstances. We shouldn’t search for a "normal” coming of the Holy Spirit in these dichotomies: it isn’t "either/or,” quiet/tornado. No matter how quietly or noisily the spirit comes into our life what is "normal” is the new life and joy, the fellowship and worship, freedom, courage and strength. The norm is the destruction of barriers and making God’s House an open and inviting place for everyone. The norm is the unification of what was divided, the rebuilding of communities that were broken, the appearance of understanding where previously there had been no hint of understanding. Jesus spoke clearly: God desires to give the Holy Spirit to people and demands of them only one thing, that they ask (Luke 11:13). No one can predict exactly how the Spirit will reveal Himself when he comes. When we read this story, we shouldn’t perceive it as something that was given to the apostles in the first century. To correctly interpret this chapter as part of the Divine Drama in which each of us has a role means we have to be ready for anything. As N.T. Wright has written: "ENGLISH”. We don’t know how He will decide to fill us. But we can be sure that all who thirst for His Spirit will receive, and afterwards whatever form and direction our life takes, if it is lived in obedience and faith, will ultimately bring glory to God! The norm isn’t in how the Spirit comes, but in the "renewal” that He brings when He visits His people in a special way and the whole community clearly recognizes and feels His powerful presence. This renewal begins in the bodies, minds, hearts and lives of Jesus’ disciples, disciples here meaning the community of believers. Luke in particular mentions that they were gathered in one place, unified in spirit. The Spirit descends to unite us, not to separate. The Spirit came to unite all peoples under the Lordship of Christ. The sign of this unity was the fact that all of those gathered from all over the world heard words about the great works of God each in their own language. Nothing could better illustrate the multinational character of the Kingdom of Christ. Many have seen in Pentecost a reversal of the curse of Babel, when human language was confused and peoples dispersed. Humans had tried to build for themselves a "tower as high as the heavens and to make a name for themselves,” but nothing came of it because the same fate that always accompanies human arrogance awaited their impudent project. God confused their speech and they stopped understanding one another and, consequently, could no longer work together to build their society in which God would no longer be needed. In Jerusalem the language barrier was removed in a supernatural way as a sign that now all peoples would gather together in Christ, in anticipation of the day when the redeemed "from all tribes and peoples and languages” would stand before the throne of God. At Babel, people tried to unite together to achieve a godless goal -- to turn from God for the sake of their own pride and interests. In Jerusalem they gathered together to seek God and to wait for the fulfillment of His promises. They were united by a thirst: "Thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.” Pentecost laid a foundation for the last days in which God will make everything completely new, an age of the Spirit, where His service will be service in abundance. That is why the Lord says, "I will pour out My Spirit!” That is an image of a terrible tropical storm, illustrating the generosity of God’s gift of the Spirit (not a drizzling rain, not even a strong rain, but torrential downpour). It expresses the finality of the gift of the Spirit (what has been poured out can’t be gathered back up again) and its universality (the gift of the Spirit is accessible to the whole world). Before God had worked among His people by inspiring one person, then another: kings, prophets, priests, the righteous ones. But now, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, a new eruption had occurred: the Spirit of God came down on many all at once and in equal measure. The Spirit descended on slaves and freemen, men and women, young and old, Jews and Gentiles -- all of them became part of the core of the true people of God. When we read this chapter rightly we understand that God’s new creation begins where the friends and family of Jesus gather, where those who encountered Jesus could not remain silent about what they had seen and heard. This is what Joel is saying: "In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams” (Acts 2:17). Prophecy in Scripture is when God says things, when God makes himself known through His Word. When we accept the Holy Spirit we are called to give other people the opportunity to know Him because we know Him! But there remains one more question. Several of those present at Pentecost watched what was happening and scoffed. They thought the unfamiliar speech was "drunken nonsense.” In Acts again and again word about the Christ will meet inspired acceptance, but just as often it will encounter resistance, distrust, and ridicule. In our day as well there are plenty of people who think we’re wasting our time and talking nonsense, all in vain. Because of that a lot of Christians are afraid to talk about Christ, fearing that people will think they’re out of touch and perhaps a few bricks shy of a load. Scripture today is giving us a challenge: is there enough of the Spirit within us, enough new life, to provoke a reaction, any reaction at all, to what we say? If not, then why? Are we in tune with the Spirit or have we so successfully extinguished the fire of the Spirit that nothing is happening at all? Perhaps it is time to open up to the Spirit of God, to be prepared for wind and fire, prepared for what God will do in us in a completely unexpected way? Quietly or noisily, in whatever way He deems necessary to work in us, let’s ask Him to make us ooze with new life, joy, fellowship, freedom, courage and strength. That is what happened in Pentecost and that is what the Lord desires to do by His Spirit in those who live in these last days of opportunity, in those who are open to His will and who cannot keep silent about what they’ve heard and seen, about how the Lord is uniting everything and everyone by His Spirit, about how He desires to renew this world and everything in it, and that there is no other name in heaven or under heaven by which one can be saved but the name of Jesus Christ! Come Holy Spirit, fill us, air out our hearts and kindle them with fire! | |
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