When Confusion Turns to Understanding

Sermon by Rev. Steven McClelland on Acts 2: 1 – 21.  Focus on how God’s Spirit brings us together rather than dividing us!  Check out Jody Sinkway and the choir following the sermon.

There’s no better proof that Jesus was who he said he was than the before and after pictures of the disciples at Pentecost, they were dense, timid bumblers who fled at the least sign of trouble. But afterwards, they were fearless leaders who healed the sick, cast out demons and went to jail gladly, singing hymns until the walls of the prison that contained them fell down.

How this took place is what the book of Acts is all about.

The last thing Jesus told his disciples to do before he ascended into heaven was to go back to Jerusalem and wait there for God’s Holy Spirit, which would cloth them with power from on high. With little or no idea of what that meant, they did as they were told. They went back to Jerusalem to an ordinary room in an ordinary house-and there they waited, along with the women who had come with them, including Jesus’ mother and brothers. (Acts 1: 14)

For the most part they prayed while they waited and I suspect that at least some of them were asking God what they were waiting for. How would they know when the power had fallen upon them? Would it tingle? Would it hurt?

After all Jesus had said something about fire, which sounds a little dangerous to me. Did he literally mean fire or was he speaking metaphorically? Maybe they should have some water just in case things got out of hand.

Well they didn’t have to wait long for the answer. On that day they got a crash course in power.

First there was wind, then there was fire, then filled with the Holy Spirit they began speaking strange languages: one spoke Parthian, while another spoke Latin, and two others found themselves speaking Egyptian and Arabic for the first time in their lives.

They may not have known what they were saying, but the crowd sure did. The Holy Spirit turned out to be an amazing linguist. Everyone who was there understood the nature of salvation completely.

Yet everyone was baffled, the speakers as well as the listeners, because they were in the grips of something that bypassed reason and logic. So they started looking for an explanation, and somebody shouted that they were drunk, but Peter said, no, it was only nine o’clock in the morning, meaning I suppose, that if it had been later in the day drunk might have been a real possibility.

But what happened in that room on that day turned out to be the birthday of a movement that turned the world upside down. What happened in that room spread from Jerusalem to Athens, from Rome to Alexandria. It spread across nations, across centuries, across cultures as far removed from Israel as we are from the moon.

Because of what happened in that room, people who don’t speak a lick of Hebrew have come to believe in a Hebrew Lord, who is worshiped today in every language on this earth.

When you think that you can’t make a difference in the world think on this. What an entire nation over thousands of years could not do, twelve guys, and two women did in one day, they became a light to reveal God to the rest of the world.

It happened because of the power of the Holy Spirit, which according to Scripture, tends to act in at least one of two ways.

Most of us know it as the abiding presence of God in Christ, which we experience when we give and receive love and forgiveness. It’s this Spirit that smoothes our ruffled feathers, revives our weary souls, and is the very breath that sustains our lives.

But there’s another way that the Spirit acts that’s not nearly so comforting. This is the Holy Spirit who blows and burns, that can literally pick up houses and toss them hundreds of yards from their foundations. This is the Spirit of God that can explode like Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano upon the world.

Just ask Job about the whirlwind or Ezekiel about the chariot of fire. Ask anyone who was in that room on Pentecost what it was like to be caught up in this manifestation of the Spirit.

“Only a fool would pray for such a Spirit,” said my preaching professor Dr. James Forbes. “Only fools for Christ that is,” and he says that the Holy Spirit is usually present in three vulnerable places in our lives: “In the unpredictable, in the place of risk, and in those areas over which we have no control.”

Which is precisely where the disciples were that day. And this is where we are, more times than we would like to admit-not only as individuals, but also as the church, born two thousand years ago and continuing down to First Presbyterian of Hackensack today.

It’s not a bad thing to pray for the gentle Spirit God of God, to ask God to restore predictability, to remove us from risk, to give us back the illusion of control that helps us sleep at night.

But Pentecost is our reminder that there’s another side to God’s Spirit, in Hebrew this side is called El Shaddi, which means, “God Almighty” maker and shaker of heaven and earth, the one that can set us on fire with passion and faith, transform our lives, turn the world upside down, turns fear of death into hope and belief in a new life, make us feel this big, which I like to experience every now and again, for it reminds me that I am not God and that I exist because and only because God has decided I should.

It’s this Spirit that we lift up and celebrate on Pentecost, it’s unpredictable, and risky to be in its presence, but it’s this Spirit that transformed the world and gives us understanding and awe, which today and in all our days to come reminds us above all else we ultimately belong to God And once you are no longer afraid to die, and willing to testify to the life and teachings of Jesus. Well then you are unbeatable too. Happy Birthday! Amen.