By Rev. Dr. Charles J.
Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist
Partnership
Third Sunday of Easter,
April 19th, 2015
And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. (Act 2:2 NRS)
“Are you
Pentecostal?”
This is
what a student once asked a well-known preacher during a question and answer
break. The preacher wanted to be sure
about the question, so he responded, “Do you mean do I belong to the
Pentecostal denomination?”
The student
continued, “No, I’m wondering if you are Pentecostal?”
Still
unclear about where this student was coming from, the preacher asked, “Do you
mean, am I charismatic?”
No, the
student asked once more, “I just want to know whether or not you are
Pentecostal?” “Are you asking whether or
not I speak in tongues?”
No, the
student retorted, “I just want to know whether or not you are
Pentecostal?”
The
preacher tried to clarify once and asked: “I’m just not sure what your question
is.”
The student concluded, “Well, you evidently
are not Pentecostal!”
Our text
today is taken from the story of the birth of the church on the day of
Pentecost. Pentecost was day when
ancient Jews celebrated the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai, but now God sends
his Spirit to fulfill the law on the very day of that very important
celebration. Without a doubt, according
to Luke’s account, God sends his Spirit on Pentecost as a ‘rush
of violent wind’ to shake things up, but what might this mean for us? Should we want to be Pentecostal?
THE ABILTY TO SPEAK
For the
first disciples of Jesus, Pentecost was even more than a ‘wind’ it was also a
‘fire’ and this fire is represented as ‘divided tongues, as of fire’ that
‘appeared’ among them and
‘rested on
them’. Clearly this was not a destructive
physical fire, but it was a spiritual and theological and healing ‘fire’ that
‘filled’ them with ‘the Holy Spirit’ and ‘enabled them to speak in other
languages, as the Spirit gave them ability’ (Acts 2:4). I call this a ‘healing fire’ and not a ‘hurting
fire’ because this fire is about the ability to share the good news of the
gospel in the world. It was a fire that
is about the undoing of the curse of Babel (Gen. 11), to heal the world from
its confusion of language and cultures through the saving message of Jesus
Christ.
What we
need to understand first of all, is that the gospel is not about destroying
cultures or languages, but it is about learning to speak them, to appreciate
them, to share good news through them. The
way to overcome cultural confusion always begins with learning or speaking the
language of the other person, so that we can speak to each other, not past each
other. This is what Pentecost is, and
should be about. It is about language
learning. It is about cultural appreciation. It is about being filled with the Spirit that
enables you to have the ability to speak.
This is in
no way to diminish the ‘miracle’ of Pentecost, but it is to understand
precisely what this miracle of tongues was about. It was not simply a form of ‘tongue
speaking’ for the sake of some strange gift of emotional ‘glossolalia’. While ‘glossolalia’ is a gift of the Spirit,
it is a gift that has the purpose of pointing the people of God to what we are
supposed to be about---sharing good news with many cultures of the world.
When Teresa
and I were commissioned as Missionaries back in 1990, the most moving part of
the service was not as we pledged ourselves to mission. We had already done that privately, long
before. For me, at least, the most moving
part of the service was watching the parade of flags from every nation as they
entered the sanctuary reminding us that the good news we have to share is a
message of love that is to be spoken in every language and to every
culture. It is the love for people that
motivated us as God’s Spirit moved within us.
Pentecost
is about the church gaining the ‘ability’ to speak and witness to God’s love in
a way that others understand. While the original day of Pentecost was an
unrepeatable miracle that signifies what the church is to be about, we should
not say that the miracle is over. An
even greater miracle happens every time we overcome differences in language and
culture to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.
While
Teresa and I were learning German, we went out ‘barefooting’ where we would
take our new language skills out of the classroom and practice them. Once I walked up to a German and asked him
for directions to get so a certain part of town. The man spoke German so quickly I didn’t
understand a word he said, so I asked him, to please speak more slowly. By then he picked up my American accent and
he stopped speaking German and changed to English. But unfortunately, English was also a
challenge for him. I stopped him with
another suggestion. “If you would speak
your German as slowly as you are speaking my English, then I believe that I
would be able to understand what you are saying. At that moment, I realized that we both
wanted to practice our language skills for the other, and that was the good
thing that was taking place between us.
Everybody
wants you to try to speak their language, and most every culture is happy when
you try to speak and you try to understand.
Language is always the first barrier to sharing the gospel with the
world. It is also the barrier that we
face, even when we speak the same language.
Even when we speak the same words, we can live in very different
cultures and only God’s spirit can help us overcome barriers like this.
THE WILL TO SPEAK
But do we
want to? Do we want to overcome the
differences of understanding, in languages, and in culture that we all
experience still today? Do we want to
be Pentecostal in a way that we seek to try to understand what the other is
saying or try to speak in a way that someone else can understand what we are
trying to say?
One of the
most powerful stories of the clashing of cultures came out the conflict of the
Bosnian and Serbia wars. What made this
war so tragic is not only the terrible slaughtering of innocent people, but it
was also that most all of these people had lived separate lives in the same
geographical areas, but did not really want to understand each other. They preferred holding grudges, getting
even, and getting rid of the other, rather than finding connections, learning
to talk, and finding a way to make peace.
It was
during that terrible conflict, that a film maker made a powerful movie entitled
“No Man’s Land” which depicted what could happen if both a Bosnian and a Serb,
found themselves accidently strapped to the same bomb. That bomb would indeed kill both of them, if
either of them tried to let go, unless they found a way to help each other
remove the bomb so that both of them would live. In other words, they could not live, unless
both of them lived. They had to make
peace to stay alive, because if they didn’t, both of them would die.
This movie
was not a true story, but it was the truth about what had to happen, if both of
their very different cultures would survive the conflict. If they wanted to live, they both had to
change their will to kill into a will for them to both live in peace with each
other. According to the film maker,
this was the decision both cultures had to make. They had to want to live together or they had
to die together, but they could not have it any other way.
However you
want to interpret Pentecost, you must come to grips that something like this is
what God is still telling the church and the world through this miracle. We cannot live with each other unless we are
willing to talk to each other, and the only way we can talk to each other is to
be willing to learn how to speak a language the other person can hear and understand.
Sharing the
gospel of Jesus is as much about our willingness to speak to each other as it
is about what we say. If you look in
this passage, you will not find Luke telling us anything about what those first
Spirit-filled disciples spoke about until the end. We are told that they ‘began to speak in other languages’ (2: 4) and we are told that
other languages could ‘hear’ in
their own language (2.8), but we are not told exactly what was being said until
the very end, when Luke has people saying, ‘we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power’ (Acts.
4.11). Isn’t it rather incredible that
the miracle of Pentecost was just as much about ‘them speaking in our own language’ (2.11) as it was about the
message they were speaking?
The heart
of this miracle may be in the very reason why some ‘sneered’ and accused these ‘spirit filled disciples’ of being
drunk (2.13). I don’t think that
speaking another language is all of the surprise that overwhelmed those
strangers who were probably Jews who had come from other lands to celebrate
Pentecost. What I think was the really
big surprise to them was that these disciples wanted to speak their language.
I’m thinking this because, when a person is drunk, you normally don’t
understand them. You don’t understand
them, unless them unless the alcohol has loosened their tongue to do some
things people don’t normally do or say some things people won’t normally say. Could this not have been the real surprise at
the heart of Pentecost? It is not just
that people are speaking in other languages, nor that people are hearing in
other languages, but right in the middle of this miracle is the strange fact
that some people had their tongues loosened to share what needed to be said? But it was not wine that has loosened their
tongues, Peter goes on to say, for it is indeed, too early for that (2.13). It is something entirely different.
SOMETHING WORTH SAYING
What did
loosen the tongues of those first disciples? “What
does this mean?” is the question people were all asking (2.13). This is also the question Luke wants us to
ask so that we can hear Peter’s answer which comes next.
What Peter
tells the confused and perplexed people is what is happening at Pentecost is
something that God has been planning for a long time. He says this goes all the way back to the
dreams and visions of the prophets, like Joel who promised that ‘in the last days, God will pour out (his)
Spirit upon all flesh…’ (Acts 2.17, Joel 2.28). While many had read these words as words of
judgment and terror, Peter now interprets these prophecies to be words of hope
and promise. This is the “Lord’s great and glorious day”, he
says, ‘when everyone who calls upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved’ (Acts 2.21).
More than
anything else, the miracle of Pentecost is the miracle of having something worth
saying to the whole world. Pentecost is
still a ‘miracle’ of being able to say it, and it also a greater ‘miracle’ of
wanting to say it. But still, the
greatest miracle of Pentecost is that we can say it at all---that we, as God’s
people, here and now, not just then and there, still have something to say that
is worth saying to everyone and anyone who is willing to hear.
What do we
have to say that the whole world needs to and is able to hear, even in their
culture, their language, and maybe even in their religion? While Jesus was a Jew and is supposed to
be the Lord of all Christians, the saving message of Jesus is still bigger than
Judaism or Christianity. To be able to
share the good news of Jesus with another culture or in another language is to
communicate why and how Jesus can and does save us all, but how do we
communicate it? How can we be
“Pentecostal” and have something to say so the spirit communicate God’s saving message
through us? How do still invite
strangers to this salvation that calls ‘on
the name of the Lord’ who is also our Lord?
Is this not
the best answer? The answer we need to
enable us to speak and enables others to hear what we are saying is right here
in the text and will also show up in what we are speaking. Unless we live what this means and mean what
it says, who could understand what we are trying to say? Only when we call upon Jesus as our “Lord”
will people understand, both in our language and also in their language, Jesus
is, indeed, the “Lord” who will save. This
is my definition of what it means to be “Pentecostal.” When the church lives what is says it can
still speak about Jesus in a way that it can be understood—that’s
Pentecost. When this happens, it is miracle
enough to get anybody saved and if this happens, that is always enough. Amen.
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