Pentecost Sunday 2014
Acts 2:1-21
When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. 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. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs-- in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
- `In the last days it will be, God declares,
- that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
- and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
- and your young men shall see visions,
- and your old men shall dream dreams.
- Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
- in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
- and they shall prophesy.
- And I will show portents in the heaven above
- and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
- The sun shall be turned to darkness
- and the moon to blood,
- before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day.
- ________________________
- Some real examples of witness statements:
- Q: "The truth of the matter is that you were not an unbiased, objective witness, isn't it? You too were shot in the fracas."A: "No, sir. I was shot midway between the fracas and the naval."----------------------------------------------Q: What is your date of birth?A: July fifteenth.Q: What year?A: Every year.----------------------------------------------Q: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?A: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.------------------------------------Q: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?A: Yes.Q: And in what ways does it affect your memory?A: I forget.Q: You forget. Can you give us an example of something that you've forgotten?--------------------------------------------Q: How old is your son, the one living with you?A: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.Q: How long has he lived with you?A: Forty-five years.--------------------------------------------Q: What was the first thing your husband said to you when he woke up that morning?A: He said, "Where am I, Cathy?"Q: And why did that upset you?A: My name is Susan.---------------------------------------------Q: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo or the occult?A: We both do.Q: Voodoo?A: We do.Q: You do?A: Yes, voodoo.-----------------------------------------Q: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?A: Yes.Q: And what were you doing at that time?----------------------------------------Q: She had three children, right?A: Yes.Q: How many were boys?A: None.Q: Were there any girls?-----------------------------------------Q: How was your first marriage terminated?A: By death.Q: And by whose death was it terminated?-------------------------------------------Q: Can you describe the individual?A: He was about medium height and had a beard.Q: Was this a male, or a female?------------------------------------------Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?A: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.--------------------------------------------
- We are all witnesses. The question is, what kind of witnesses are we?
- At the beginning of the book of Acts, right before his ascension, Jesus makes a descriptive promise: "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8).
- From this we can deduce two things: empowering is the chief characteristic of the Holy Spirit and the primary reason of the Holy Spirit's empowering is so that we might be witnesses to God's outrageous love.
- In Acts, "the disciples were all together in one place." In the upper room, cowering, fearful of the Romans and Jewish religious leaders who were out to get them. But they were Jesus-less now. They didn't have the power of the messiah. But they had the promise of the Holy Spirit which is realized at Pentecost like a violent rush of wind. The Holy Spirit even allows them to preach in such a way that they would be understood in various languages! It is no wonder that when promising the power of the Holy Spirit, Luke's Jesus uses the word dynamin, from which we get the word dynamite. The Holy Spirit's power is explosive.
- The Holy Spirit transformed a group of cowering misfits into courageous proclaimers (witnesses) of the good news that God loves us and wants to be in relationship with us. And so empowered, they carried that message to the ends of the earth. But they could only carry a message of God's diffusive love that they themselves experienced, otherwise, they would have been false witnesses.
- Taking this in we can ask ourselves:
- Have I experienced the love of God?
- Am I in an intimate love relationship with him?
- What kind of witness to this relationship am I?
Can I imagine being madly in love with someone and never talking about him or her? - What are my real life "witness statemments."
Because Pentecost is the day on which 3,000 new converts were added to the church, Pentecost Sunday affords a wonderful opportunity to publicly acknowledge our own, priestly and prophetic mission as Christians. While Pope Francis has famously described the church as a "field hospital" where wounds are healed and God's love is proclaimed, to often it is tempting to treat it as a comfortable private (sometimes ethnic) club where outsiders need not apply. - One of the great challenges of the Church in the modern age is to return the proclamation of the Gospel (evangelism) to its proper foundations and rescue it from the increasing secularism of marketing growth and moralistic interpretations. Christ did not come to make bad people good, but to make dead people live. The conversion of 3,000 at Pentecost was not a membership drive, but glorious reversal of both The Fall and the tragedy of Babel. That is the Gospel we proclaim! Not, “Join our church, be good, and God will take care of you,” but “Life, freedom, healing, forgiveness, redemption, and salvation are offered to you in the death & resurrection of Jesus.”
- That's a message we can not only get excited about, but also boldly proclaim.
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