Language of the Holy Spirit

Acts 2:1-21 (Genesis 11:1-9)

It can be tempting to celebrate Pentecost as a singular fixed moment in time, as the birthday for the church and just leave it at that, as the day to commemorate the moment when the flaming tongues of the Holy Spirit descend on the apostles as a sign of the outpouring of this divine gift, of the presence of God among them. We could celebrate this event as a final, complete moment in itself, in which no other can compare.

We could box up the Spirit in our tidy, commercialized language of success. I frequently overhear other ministers talk about the work of the spirit in their churches, and more often than not it has something to do with a shiny new building or an influx of new members—God can do amazing things! Like help us build this new gymnasium. As if to say the presence of the Holy Spirit in our congregations is measured by our numbers or by the amount of money we receive. As though God created a finalized product in the church, that we must simply maintain now, keeping up our numbers and appearances. At which point we have domesticated God, tamed the divine down to tiny little expectations.

There are other stories, though rarer, of churches who send people out into the world, who fully embrace mission locally and globally and choose to believe that the transforming power of the Holy Spirit—the flaming tongues of Pentecost have more to do with working to change the world—in very real and tangible ways, that move beyond supporting an established institution and an expensive infrastructure, more than “playing church”, but actually being “church” for a world that is broken and hurting.

The event of Pentecost is truly an amazing, miraculous story, which informs us that amazing, miraculous stories are still possible for the church today. (more than nostalgia for a past when God was active)

Pentecost was already a Jewish holiday occurring 50 days after Passover. The eleven remaining disciples were gathered to observe this Holy Day. Of course, they had already been through a lot at this point—Jesus had left them once again, this time ascending into heaven. And these men from Galilee are gathered to worship and to remember the event of Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai with the gift of law for the people. And in the midst of this—this moment that so defines the birth of their religion, the law and ordering of their lives, their ritual is disrupted by a loud, rushing, mighty wind, that draws attention to them and a crowd forms around the house. They are inundated with the Spirit of God the same that moved across the chaotic waters of Creation, assaulted with tongues as of fire, and babbling in languages they can’t even understand, to be ridiculed by those who do not understand and find comic relief in accusing them of being drunk!

But they are not drunk with wine, they are intoxicated with the incredible power of the Holy Spirit and that is how they are each able to speak the message of God in a language that is foreign to them, but recognizable to the diversity of the crowd. The message of God, instantly translated into a dozen different languages, allowing for clear communication and unity.

In the book of Genesis, we find the story of the tower of Babel. Human beings had become numerous on earth and decided they wanted to build a tower to the sky, to reach God in heaven. But God didn’t like this plan and realized that if the people could not communicate well to each other, they could not successfully pull off a big project like a tower to heaven. So God, who created the world with a single spoken Word, scattered the people to far reaches of the earth and jumbled their languages, thus creating a diverse world.

The event of Pentecost reverses the tower of Babel—at least temporarily. It doesn’t eradicate all languages and unify them into one, rather the people are able to hear the message of God in their own native languages, and to understand. The diversity continues to exist, but there is new understanding, new community within the Holy Spirit.

Language can create and unify and it can destroy and scatter. We are increasingly separated through language. Not just different linguistic families, but also through rhetoric and jargon. It is difficult for Republicans and Democrats, Christians and Muslims, to speak with one another, rather than at and against. It’s difficult to find even an objective news story because everyone has an opinion and hardly anyone can look at an issue from several angles. It’s either all good or all bad, the solution to the problem or the death toll for us all.

For the thousands of Jews gathered in Jerusalem, language kept them divided, but through the Holy Spirit they were able to truly hear one another for the first time.

Hear the words that Peter quotes from Joel: telling the critics that in the last days, God will pour out the Holy Spirit on everyone and sons and daughters will prophesy, young men will see visions and old men will dream dreams, slaves will also prophesy, and there will be signs in heaven and on earth, the sun will turn to darkness and the moon to blood.

There will be much, much more than simply speaking in other languages, there will be visions and dreams, probably some of hope and some of terror, and there will be a reversal of creation as the bright shining sun goes dark and the luminous yellow moon turns blood red to show the “great and glorious,” wonderful and fearful return of the Lord.

The Spirit of God is serious business, powerful and transformative—she is not just sweet and comforting.

In our prayers, we invoke the Holy Spirit, asking God to descend upon us, to unify us. When we say these familiar words, we better know for sure what we’re asking!

Annie Dillard, in Teaching a Stone to Talk writes “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does any-one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return."[1]

It is madness to ask God to help us achieve our church or personal goals unless we are willing to ask God what our goals should be in the first place. We may invite God into our lives hoping for protection from life’s trauma and our own foolishness, we may be mostly hoping for good health and personal satisfaction, but we often forget about the terrifying God on the other end of the deal—the one who’s will we ask be done, without the foggiest idea what that will might be, without really comprehending just what God might ask of us, what God might truly demand of us, how God might really shape and form us. The terrifying Poet, T. S. Eliot, has this to say to us:

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.[2]

Pentecost is not some remembrance of a past event, of the one-time only birth of the church, sprung fully formed from the mind of God, instead it is the ongoing, often painful, growing and shaping of the community of faith in the world. Thanks be to God.

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[1] Dillard, Annie. Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982

[2] Eliot, T.S. “The Dove Descending.”

Hospitality of Lydia

Acts 16:9-15

In the book of Acts, we travel with Jesus’ followers to new lands as they spread the good news. Paul has a vision of a man asking for help in Macedonia, with his companions, Paul travels to this Roman district in Europe. On the Sabbath, they go to the river. Perhaps there is a temple or synagogue there or just a known place for gathering and prayer and there they find a group of women worshipping God. Among these women is Lydia, a dealer of purple cloth. We know very little about Lydia, but what we do know is fascinating. The rest we could imagine from the text.

Lydia was a rarity in those days, not defined by husband or children, but by her textile business. She was her own woman, successful and free. The leaders and elites of Macedonia looked to her to supply the luscious purple fabric for their robes. And in return, they paid her well with money and respect. They listened to her, this woman who possessed a strange authority, as she measured out bolts of the fabric, she told them stories of a foreign God, not the gods of Rome, not stories of Jupiter, Apollo, or Venus, but stories of a tribal God of Israel—a single God who was greater than the many, a God who created, a God who protected and liberated, a God of love and mercy. Lydia was strange indeed, but the people accepted her.

She observed the Hebrew Sabbath and would gather with other women by the river side. There they would worship this God with songs and prayers. They would tell each other stories of their encounters with God.

One day, several men, foreign travelers joined them. And the one named Paul began to tell them new stories about this same God: about how this God had also become human, had lived and breathed among them, had appeared to Paul, and showed him the error of his ways as a zealous Jew who persecuted Christians, and had convinced him that he, Jesus, was truly the Messiah, the Son of God, for whom they had waited for so long. Lydia was immediately convinced that this man spoke the truth—that the Messiah, whom she had heard about, had really and truly come—had died, and then risen again, and continued to live through his believers. She vowed to do whatever she could to help spread this new message. Since she was already telling the story of God, she would happy tell this story of Jesus too. She asked to be baptized and to have her whole household baptized as well, so that they might all begin this new journey. And finding out that these foreigners were traveling missionaries, with no place to call home, Lydia insisted that they stay at her house and use her good fortune to help spread the good news.

God opened her heart and she, in turn, opened her home. After her baptism, she turns her house into a base for the spread of Christianity in Europe. Her baptism leads immediately to hospitality and a sharing in all the risks of mission.

Luke, the writer of Acts, doesn’t expand on just how important Lydia’s hospitality is, but we can see that she gives them a home-base. A place to sleep and eat, a place to return to from preaching and later from prison. Paul and his companions are in a foreign country, they have no place to call home, and the gift of Lydia’s home provides much needed creature comfort so that they can have the physical strength and sound mindset to continue the work of God. Maybe she went out and preached too, or maybe she continued with her business, providing fine clothes for the rich, telling them her story, of this Jesus she had met and of these travelers staying in her home.

Hospitality: no matter who it is from is a great gift: having a place to go, to stay, to sleep, to eat, to rest weary bones and fill empty stomachs, a place of safety cannot be overestimated. Neither can kindness to strangers.

Lydia is a model, an early church mother, for us now and for the church. Jesus might have asked Lydia to give up her wealth, to sell her house and follow him—but she gives these things to god in different ways: she doesn’t sell her house, but she gives it to Paul for God’s purposes.

What if we extended our resources: our time, our money, our space to help feed those who are hungry? It would be our basic task as Christians, and a clear example of Lydia-like hospitality. It would not change the whole world, but it could help, in small ways, to transform part of the world. What if we served breakfast, once a week, to the homeless and hungry in Alexandria, right here in our social hall?

This might include coming in on a weekday morning before you head to work or go about the rest of your day. It might include scrambling eggs or having a cup of coffee with someone who is struggling and in need. It might include washing table clothes, setting up tables, or buying food. This is not the kind of thing that is easy. It won’t be for the feint of heart, but it will be for the kingdom of God. After all, it is so important to eat a healthy meal in the morning. Most of us know how much some caffeine and protein can make a huge difference. On a cold morning, we could provide a warm place to sit for an hour or two. Our neighbors could find church doors that are open, and people who care—not because of our own agenda or because we have to, but because God cares. For people living on the margins, seeing a volunteer, someone who gives their time and effort just for the sake of giving it away, can give these folks so much hope—just to know there are people in the world who would care for them and expect nothing for themselves in return is life-changing.

Paul responded to a vision from God.

Lydia responded to Paul’s message of God.

How will we respond?