Scripture Acts 2:1-21, from The Message Bible by Eugene Peterson

Transcription

1 Evie Macway May 27, 2012 Pentecost Ezekiel 37:1-14, Acts 2:1-21 Psalm 104:24-34 Prep for worship: Every year, on the Day of Pentecost, we are reminded of who we are a church, what we proclaim, and the source of that proclamation. It is a message to the church from the church, passed down through millennia to each generation. 1 from Kristin Emery Saldine, professor of homiletics at Austin Presbyterian Seminary in Texas. Scripture Acts 2:1-21, from The Message Bible by Eugene Peterson 1 When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 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. 3 Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, 4 and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them. 5 There were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. 6 When they heard the sound, they came on the run. And were bewildered, because they were each one hearing them speak in his own language. 7 They couldn t for the life of them figure out what was going on, and kept saying, Aren t these all Galileans? 8 How is it that we can each hear them in our own language? 9 Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; Visitors from Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene; Immigrants from Rome, 11 both Jews and proselytes; Even Cretans and Arabs! They re speaking our languages, describing God s mighty works! 1 Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Feasting on the Word, year B, volume 3, pg. 6, Kristin Emery Saldine. 1

2 12 Their heads were spinning; they couldn t make head or tail of any of it. They talked back and forth, confused: What s going on here? 13 Others joked, They re drunk on cheap wine. 14 That s when Peter stood up and, backed by the other eleven, spoke out with bold urgency: Fellow Jews, all of you who are visiting Jerusalem, listen carefully and get this story straight. 15 These people aren t drunk as some of you suspect. They haven t had time to get drunk it s only nine o clock in the morning. 16 This is what the prophet Joel announced would happen: 17 In the Last Days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on every kind of people: Your sons will prophesy, also your daughters; Your young men will see visions, your old men dream dreams. 18 When the time comes, I ll pour out my Spirit On those who serve me, men and women both, and they ll prophesy. 19 I ll set wonders in the sky above and signs on the earth below, Blood and fire and billowing smoke, 20 the sun turning black and the moon blood-red, Before the Day of the Lord arrives, the Day tremendous and marvelous; 21 And whoever calls out for help to me, God, will be saved. Pentecost Miracle The day has arrived. Today is Pentecost Sunday, 50 days following Easter, and the day we celebrate the birth of the church and the work of the Holy Spirit in the world. The waiting is over and now it is our turn. A commentator I read this week put it this way, The Day of Pentecost completes the cycle that begins with Ash Wednesday and continues through Lent and Holy Week and into Eastertide. It is the capstone of our liturgical journey that moves symbolically from ashes to fire. 2

3 Pentecost sums up the gospel with simplicity and audacity: Jesus Christ offers salvation to all, and the church exists to proclaim it. 2 What started way back on Ash Wednesday, when we marked ourselves with ashes as a reminder of the ways we fall short of being the people God calls us to be, then moved through Lent and the events of Holy Week and on to our Eastertide conversations about hope, when we talked of the trust and faith we carry that bears us up and give us both vision and energy to live into God s future, now comes to this day and the tongues of fire that danced over the heads of the first followers of Christ, and symbolically dance through our sanctuary, over our heads and in our hearts this morning. By the power of God we come to know in Jesus Christ and experience in the breath of the Holy Spirit in us and among us, we, with our ash stained foreheads and sin stained lives are transformed into a community of believers, called to change the world! At the beginning of our series on hope we affirmed that God is the source of our hope. Today we celebrate that truth as we experience it in the breath of the Holy Spirit coming to us and moving among us. The two scripture passages we heard this morning are common texts for Pentecost Sunday. Both proclaim powerful witness to the work and presence of the Spirit of God in the lives of people. Both stories are so engaging that I decided to focus on both briefly, for what they may say to us this morning. First we have Ezekiel s vision. The story engages us immediately. The hand of the Lord came upon me, and set me out in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. There were very many in the valley and they were very dry. This is one of the most familiar visions recounted in scripture. It is the prophet Ezekiel s word picture, his image, for the loss God s people felt during the exile, and the power of God to transform that event. Ezekiel was called to be a prophet/ priest to the Israelite people in the midst of the exile. They had been a people under foreign rule for decades. They were feeling not only the loss of their land and their nation but also the profound lose of hope. Through Ezekiel God said to the people, I will breath life into your dead and dry places. I will lay sinew give you strength. I will cover you with flesh and skin 2 Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Feasting on the Word, year B, volume 3, pg. 6, Kristin Emery Saldine. 3

4 protect you and give you warmth and suppleness. And I will put breath in you and you shall live. And then this vision becomes like a movie playing backwards. The bones rattled and came together. There was sinew and flesh and skin and finally, by the word of God, breath came and they lived. Where there was death now there is life. Where there was no hope now there is hope. Through the image of bodies long dead brought back to life, Ezekiel proclaims the power of God as experienced through the Spirit. Now we jump several hundred years ahead to the story of Pentecost in Acts. Once again the Spirit of God comes and breaths life and hope into people. This time the life that forms is that of a new community. The wind or breath or spirit rushes in and fills the entire house and the church is born. It is not what any one expected it caught them all by surprise, but some how, some way this group of believers, regular people, far from perfect, by the grace of God became something new. Even they could not believe what was happening to them. The whole was suddenly, somehow more than simply the sum of all the parts. The Spirit of God, powerful and unpredictable, like fire and wind, ignited them to speak to one another and hear one another as they never had before. It stirred them to come together and act and care for one another in the name of Jesus Christ in ways that gave life and hope. This week I read an article on Pentecost written by Dr. Michael Jenkins the president of Louisville Seminary, my alma mater. In the article Jenkins looks at Pentecost from a slightly different perspective. He acknowledges the miracle of the coming of the Spirit among the people and the wind and the fire of that day, but he suggests that the real miracle of Pentecost was a miracle of hearing. Jenkins writes, When the church was born, it emerged in a world almost as diverse as our own. The story of the church's birth is set amid a cacophony of different tongues, people chattering away in Aramaic, in Latin, Greek, and a whole host of languages. People from language groups scattered throughout the ancient world were together on the day the church was born, "Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya around Cyrene," as well as "visitors from Rome," Cretans and Arabs. There were people present whose language the Romans 4

5 derisively called "barbarian," because to Roman ears it sounded like a repeated, "bar-bar-bar." They were all chattering at once. And, we are told: "when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were bewildered, because they were each one hearing them speak in his own language"(acts 2:6) This was the miracle of Pentecost. And it gave rise to the question: "How is it that we can each hear them in our own language?" Pentecost was a miracle of hearing, of comprehension, of listening. Jenkins continues, That should give us pause in these days when so many people strain to shout their views at others, but seldom strive to listen. The church's birth is swaddled in listening to people who speak differently. To speak a different language means to experience the world differently. A language marks the boundary between different cultures, different ways of understanding the world around us. Christian faith crossed these boundaries not by force of argument, but through the generous act of hearing, listening, entering into the ways others conceive of the world we all inhabit. And when the church did utter its first words at its birth, they were words that bore witness to the fact that in Jesus Christ God has come into the world to seek out sinners, to forgive us, to redeem us. The church, at its birth, did not attempt to force others into rigid agreement. And the church certainly did not attempt to build walls and construct motes to keep out those who are different (that reaction came a little later, though the gospel broke through those barriers and even gentiles were admitted to the faith). At its birth, the church entered the language worlds of those around us so that it might articulate the good news of Jesus Christ in terms that could be heard and understood. The miracle of Pentecost was a miracle of hearing. It still is. 3 On this Pentecost Sunday we remember the power of the Holy Spirit as it is recounted in our scripture. On Pentecost Sunday we recognize and celebrate the Holy Spirit at work among us today, bringing hope even to the parched and dry 3 5

6 places in our lives, bringing us together as a joyful community of faith, and turning us out with ears and hearts open to who and where the Sprit will take us next. Jesus Christ offers salvation to all, and the church, you and me, us together, exists to proclaim it. 6