PENTECOST – C, May 27, 2007
 

Sometimes I have a difficult enough time speaking in my own native tongue let alone trying to speak a language foreign to me. At times the words that flow from my lips simply do not convey the message I am trying to get across. That is why what happened on that first Pentecost is important and, even more amazing. Somehow everyone who was present was able to hear the message of the Apostles in their own native tongue.

In many ways Pentecost and what happened that day has its parallel, if you will, today. We, too, are to preach the Gospel so that all can hear it and understand it. The way to do that, however, is not so much by speaking our message by words as telling our story by the way we live our lives. We all know that actions speak louder than words. They also speak to the subject better than words.

Words, especially Gospel words, are empty if they are not completed and explained by visible actions. When our actions do not exemplify our words, explain our words, then what we are doing is speaking in a foreign language, a language others cannot understand. Our words are translated by our actions; and when our words do not translate into action, we are really not heard.

Sometimes when we are listened to, what is heard through word and action often comes out a mixed message. We say one thing and do another. It must have been a mighty wonderful sight seeing everyone present that first Pentecost understanding the message. But they did not truly and fully grasp the message and make it part of their lives, I suspect, until the Apostles, whose words they heard, lived out in their lives what they were telling the people.
 
Missionaries to foreign countries have discovered that learning the native language is important in spreading the Gospel. But what is most important is that they model the message they are preaching and teaching in their daily lives. Doing that converts more people than any amount of verbal understanding. Conversion is impossible if actions do not exemplify and explain the words one uses to teach.
 
That same Spirit of Pentecost granted and given to the Apostles is granted and given to each of us. We, too, preach the Gospel in a language that all can understand, no matter what language they speak. For they listen with their eyes more than their ears. Today, more than ever, we need the Holy Spirit to help us speak by action the words people need to hear in a language they can understand.

That is often easier said than done. I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I read Scripture, I think I am reading a foreign language. I read the words all right, but the meaning is so obtuse that the words are just words and might as well be in Sanskrit. I can make neither hide nor hair out of what is being said or trying to be conveyed. There are others times when I have a very good understanding of what is being said. And then there are those rare moments when the words, which I thought I once understood, now speak to me in a language I can truly understand.
 
We all have those Pentecost events in our lives, moments when we hear God’s word in a way we have never heard it before. It can happen when we are alone by ourselves, reading and praying and reflecting on Scripture. It can happen in a Bible study class when we are discussing with others what a particular passage might mean. It can happen while listening to a sermon or a lecture. The truth is, however, Pentecost events usually happen when we least expect them to happen.
 
The people who heard Peter preaching were caught off guard. They were in the city to celebrate the feast, not to hear a sermon from some uneducated fisherman who could not even speak their language. But hear they did and in their own language and in a way they clearly understood. How or why it happened, they never knew. All they knew is that their lives would never be the same again.

God’s word, God’s revelation almost always catches us by surprise, as it did for those milling around the streets of Jerusalem that Pentecost morning. That is not to say we should never place ourselves in a position to be surprised – church, study groups, classes, and so forth. It is simply to say that when we least expect it, God often makes known to us something we have never experienced before, never thought about before, never understood before. We cannot anticipate the event; we cannot prepare for it; we can only be present and allow God to surprise us as God surprised all those people – including Peter himself – that day.

It is tempting to try to read between the lines in this account of what happened that day, the day that truly gave birth of the church. It seems that the people of the time, at least all those faithful Jews, had come to Jerusalem from the four corners of the world to celebrate their Pentecost. It was early in the morning and the crowds were milling about the city streets, probably shopping, visiting, gawking, whatever one does on a holiday and/or to celebrate a holy day.

While all this was going on in the streets below, the Apostles who gathered in that upper room experienced The Pentecost Event of all Pentecost events. They did not quite know what hit them, so overcome were they by the Holy Spirit. But that same Spirit so moved them that they went out onto the balcony and, led by Peter, began to speak to the crowds in such a way that everyone not only heard what was said in his or her own native tongue, but they listened as well.

Why they listened when they were certainly predisposed not to listen is what is interesting. Obviously they had not heard a good sermon in a long time, but they listened intently to what Peter and the others were saying. And it must have made sense or else they would not have continued to listen. And yet there was just enough nonsense in what they were hearing that they concluded the preachers were drunk, even if it was too early in the day to get plastered. And yet many decided that what they heard was not drunken gibberish but the truth itself.
 
Perhaps that is what Luke, the author of Acts, was trying to convey. Perhaps this passage is a reminder that one has to be a little tipsy to preach the Gospel and just as tipsy to accept its message. Any sane and sober person would write off the Gospel message as the words of a lunatic or someone drunk out of his mind: turn the other cheek, forgive ones enemies, walk the extra mile, die for ones faith. Are you crazy? Are you drunk? No, Peter and the rest responded, not drunk, just alive in the Spirit.

In a few moments we are going to welcome Elizabeth and Kylie into our family of faith. We will promise them that we will show them what it means to be a Christian by the way we live our lives. That will not always be easy. There will be times when in living out our faith, these little girls may look at us and say, either to themselves, or when they are teenagers, say out loud, "Are you crazy? Are you drunk? Why in the world are you doing that?"

No matter what we say to them it won’t make any sense. It may not even make all that much sense to us. But, as it was with Peter, so it is with us. We are able to do what we do as Christians, as difficult as that is at times, because we are alive in the Spirit, because the Holy Spirit lives in us.