A Wild Gospel
David C. Myers
May 11, 2008
Acts 2:1 - 21
Text: "All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, 'What does this mean?'" . . . Acts 2:12
Not long ago, while attending a clergy gathering, I took the occasion to walk through the host church. In the hallway of the Sunday School wing there was a huge sign on one wall. This sign gave the "Rules of the Church." These rules were a series of don'ts: "Don't run." "Don't be loud." "Don't leave out the crayons." "Don't make a mess." In other words, "Don't have any fun."
Observing this made me think about first impressions given by churches; and, by association, how we think of God. For that church I imagined God as a kind of cosmic Miss Manners, preoccupied with doing the right thing. We all know that often churches are very decorous and proper. We are quiet and solemn and somber. We speak in hushed and holy voices.
But God is not proper. Or, at least, not the God of Pentecost. And, not by coincidence, today is Pentecost, often called the birthday of the church.
To set the scene the disciples are gathered to share in the celebration of the Jewish Holiday of Pentecost. They are still puzzled and somewhat befuddled about what all the events of the past few weeks really mean. Yes, Jesus had arisen from the grave. Yes, He had appeared among them, walking with them and teaching them. And just a day or two before Pentecost Jesus had been lifted up before their very eyes and taken into a cloud. Two angels had appeared and told them that Jesus had gone to heaven. What were the disciples supposed to do now? Oh, sure, Jesus had made some kind of vague promises that they would receive power and that the Holy Spirit would come upon them, and that they would be His witnesses throughout the world, but who knew what that meant?!? Right now, they felt (and were) aimless and leaderless and clueless.
So, taking comfort from one another, these disciples have gathered together. Perhaps they were talking quietly, having a snack or a late breakfast. Certainly they were doing nothing out of the ordinary when suddenly the ordinary is charged with the extraordinary.
Then there was this rush of wind - a violent wind, Luke tells us.
Sometimes in the summer while Deb and I are at our cottage in Maine which is on a point of land exposed to the west and north, we experience the coming of a cold front after a hot, humid spell. Those sudden first blasts of wind before the thunderstorms are what I can imagine the Pentecost wind was like. We are sitting quietly in our cottage one moment, and the next a savagely fierce wind begins swirling through.
But at the first Pentecost, with this wind, comes flashes of fire. The fire is caught up in the wind as it gusts wildly around the room. And the power of this wind causes some mighty strange things to happen.
What does this mean, this stuff we talk about? That was the question they asked at Pentecost. You remember how it was, how all the people had come together in one place, like some meeting of an ancient United Nations. The Parthinains were there . . . and the Medes . . . and the Elomites . . . and people from Mesopotamia and Phrigia and Pamphylia . . . people of ever land and every language . . . and then the oddest thing happened. After this strange rush of wind a totally bizarre thing took place. Though everyone spoke in their own native language, each heard in his own native language. Parthinians understood Medes, Medes understood Elomites, and Scripture says, "all were amazed and perplexed, asking what does this mean?"
Well, for some it was so odd that the only possible explanation was "they are drunk with new wine." Peter, however, is quick to protest, "No, they are not drunk. Why, it is only nine o'clock in the morning!" I have heard of a 5 o'clock custom, and I don't think the song "It's Five o'clock Somewhere" had been written back then.
This is not the story of a prim and proper God. This is the story of a wild and unpredictable God delivering a Gospel. No matter how we try to domesticate the Almighty, this is a God that keeps escaping the bounds of human notions of what is right and proper. Peter tries to defend this slightly scandalous situation, "No, they are not drunk. Why, it is only nine o'clock in the morning! Granted it is an odd occurrence, but it is not as you suppose!"
And then Peter proceeds to explain this in a sermon that has become one of the most famous sermons of all time. "I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams." You've heard it a hundred times. And you know Peter is quoting Old Testament prophet Joel. Only here Peter is putting a New Testament spin on it. The difference is that Jesus had come and gone, has died and been resurrected. So the people now suppose they are without a Savior.
Note carefully the odd sequence of the wild Pentecost events. For ordinarily, when a church gets fired up, we think of it as happening when some fireball preacher under the power of the Holy Spirit is so charismatic and Spirit-filled that he or she gets the congregation so excited that they do all sorts of amazing things; they start new mission projects, they sponsor a missionaries in Nicaragua, they create new worship services. That's the way churches usually think - if only we can get just the right preacher - maybe , say Billy Graham, Robert Schuller - then the Holy Spirit of God will descend upon us, things will happen, people will come, the church will grow and God will be praised.
That's the way we usually think. And incidentally, that is the way most ministers think. You'd be surprised. We ministers get mail all the time for promotional seminars - how to fire up your congregation - how to create a Spirit-filled church - and the whole thing is based on the premise that if you can find just the right leader, miracles will happen . . . if we find the right leader.
Don't get me wrong, I know leadership is important, absolutely crucial. Supposedly I am one! But do not lose the meaning of this Pentecost story. Peter's sermon came in response to - an explanation of what already had taken place in the congregation. In other, the preaching came after people were already - literally - "fired up".
On Pentecost, curiosity-seekers had come from the outside because word had gotten out about what was going on in that church, and Peter's sermon was an explanation to those who were standing outside the church looking in, curious to know, "what does this mean?" It was not the preacher who fired up the Pentecost crowd. It was the Holy Spirit of God moving so powerfully through that little congregation of neophyte Christians that they attracted the attention of the whole town. The curious came to see what it meant and the preacher simply set out to explain it.
As P. C. Enniss said in a commentary on the Acts Pentecost passage: "It was the lesson of Pentecost. It is that more preachers are made by spirit-filled churches, than churches by spirit-filled preachers. What inspired Peter's sermon was that that congregation was acting so spirited, saying things and doing things that people had never seen and heard before in the synagogue. What did it mean?"
Flannery O'Connor, paraphrasing Jesus' words, writes, "If you continue in My word, you will know the truth, and the truth will make you odd." Now that is a peculiar thing to say, especially in a culture where conformity counts so much, but that is the Pentecost lesson. Flannery O'Connor is so right, and so often ignored. ". . . continue in God's word and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you odd." That's what happened at Pentecost.
And do you remember the way the day ended? When Peter finished the sermon, they asked the second question. First, before the sermon they asked, "What does it mean?" and after the sermon they asked, "What should we do?" Peter's congregation that day rightly understood that the Christian faith is not primarily about beliefs or about ideas or doctrines. It is about a way of living.
By the time for the benediction, the Pentecost congregation had come to realize that the Christian faith called them to change their whole way of living! So we skip to the end of the day. And if you think a whole lot of people speaking in their own tongues and everybody understanding everybody was wild, wait 'til you hear what the response of the Pentecost believers was! Hear again the words:
Those who welcomed Peter's message were baptized and about 3,000 were added. Awe overcame everyone, because many signs and wonders were being done.
And while that's odd! But now it gets very, very interesting!
All who believed were together and had all things in common. They would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, each as had need. They spent time together in the temple (that is, they worshipped together), they broke bread and ate with glad and generous hearts, praising God, and having the good will of the people.
So what does it mean, this wild gospel we call Pentecost? The first thing it means is that the Pentecost wind still blows and the fire still burns; the Spirit of God has not abandoned the world, nor left the church. What it means to us this morning is to allow that wind of the Spirit to blow through us, allowing us be interpreters of the Spirit for our time, for our church - to dream some dreams, and to imagine such visions that you have never dared before. It means you are being challenged to run the risk of being called odd, by a culture that has come not to expect very much outside the ordinary from the church.
"What does it mean?" That is what they wanted to know at Pentecost. And for them it became commonplace that all were generous, that all were disciplined in their study and in their worship, and in their witness and in their prayers, and that all were welcome, no matter their nationality or language. And everybody, in response to the spirit, shared all they had, distributing the proceeds among them according to each person's needs. In other words, the budget was oversubscribed!
Outrageous, wild!
And you know what is wilder still? Imagine it happening here.
The Pentecost God is constantly breaking the bonds of convention and expectation. This is a God of wildness, a God Who ruffles feathers and turns upside down what is accepted as real and rational and true and proper. This is the God Who chooses the foolish in order to shame the wise; the God Who sides with the meek to upset the mighty. This is the God Who is constantly coming in the most unexpected ways and choosing the most unexpected people.
Who knows what such a God might have in store for you and me?