Acts 2:1-21
“Church, Wind and Fire”
May 31, 2020 Pentecost
The unseen is powerful. Until our attention is drawn toward it, most of us are paying little attention to the exchange of gases that is keeping us alive. The lungs within us are working right this minute to take in oxygen and kick out carbon dioxide. To breathe a clean, unhindered, fresh breath – Those of us who are able to do this barely ever give it a thought. Those among us for whom breathing sometimes needs some help, have a profound respect for the unseen.
In Judaism the 50th day after Passover known as the Feast of Weeks celebrating the first fruits of the harvest was called, in Greek, Pentecost. Over time, the Jews who were the earliest Christians adapted the tradition to observe the 50th day after Easter. Today is the day to remember the time when the Holy Spirit dramatically came to the disciples and the Church was born.
Folks from all over arrived for this Pentecost celebration including those from Egypt, Galilee, Cappadocia, and Asia. Each came speaking in their own language which wasn’t so strange given what happened at the Tower of Babel. What was the amazing part was that they heard about what God was up to also in their own tongue. There was not a host of interpreters, United Nations style.
This is dramatic stuff what with a rush of wind and tongues of flame. This gift-the gathering of diverse and different people in one place – is church and the Holy Spirit breathed on them all and there was plenty of God for everyone to share in.
Back in the Middle Ages, some churches observed Pentecost with lots of drama. Some of them created “Holy Spirit holes” in the ceiling of the church which were meant to symbolize that they were open to God’s presence. Doves would be released through those holes, dropping rose petals on the worshippers below. There would be choirboys imitating the wind with whooshing sound effects and drums so that, though unseen, the Holy Spirit could be imagined.
On the Pentecost that is recounted here in Acts, the rushing wind and fire tongues did not arrive in a temple. This sensory extravaganza “filled the entire house where they were sitting.” Today we may see a lot of red and the temperature is supposed to cool down but the Holy Spirit, whose power is at work in each of us in our individual houses may not be as dramatic but its power is within us. That is the power to love.
The unseen is powerful. This week was marked with a sad and mournful milestone of how something we cannot see takes on a power all its own. We, as a nation, passed the count of 100,00 dead from the Coronavirus with that number continuing to grow each day. With respiratory distress forming the core, we know that the last breaths, many taken alone in a hospital room hooked up to a machine left so many then unable to be properly mourned and buried. May we continue to do what we can to keep each other safe from this unseen virus even if it means we must continue to be church in new ways for some time to come.
The unseen is powerful as demonstrated by the pain that has been seething below the surface of this nation. The death of George Floyd on Monday has once again opened the festering wound of racism in this country that has been with us from the start. The diversity of our peoples is a gift as borne out by this day of wind and fire now as it was in that house with all of those people speaking differently but hearing as one.
Fear of the other, this week we are especially mindful of the other being our African American brothers and sisters, has the power to solidify into action that imprisons rather than frees, that demeans rather than lifts up, and that goes against the great Commandment Jesus’ whole life and ministry was about – the love of neighbor and the treatment of them aligned directly with our love of God and self.
Each of us must lean into the Holy Spirit, what theologian Jurgen Moltmann referred to as “the shy member of the Trinity” and determine how we will act as God’s agents of mercy and justice at this turning point in history. That may mean making time, starting today, for serious reflection and extended prayer as well as listening deeply to those who speak from the heart of real pain. Then what we hear and feel must become the change we wish to see in the world.
The unseen power that we each have to hear the word of God that comes bearing love and grace and mercy, is always heard best in each of our own languages. There can be joy, like that which Peter assures those listening is not the wine talking but rather the Holy Spirit at work. We, the church of today, get to proclaim boldly and in the language that we know so well, the goodness of God, to the entire world – one conversation, one issue of justice, one act of advocacy, one gesture of compassion at a time. May the Holy Spirit continue to flow through us speaking of God’s powerful love. Amen and amen.