Resurrection Spirit: Pentecost!

SCRIPTURE TEXT:  Acts 2:1-13 

Rev. Monte Marshall 

Let’s pray:  Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your people  and kindle in us, the fire of your love.  Amen.  

So it’s Pentecost Sunday!  It’s been fifty days since Easter Sunday.  And throughout the Easter season, we’ve been telling resurrections stories.   

But today, a shift occurs.  It’s noticeable in the flow of the story that Luke tells.  At the end of Luke’s gospel, he’s telling resurrection stories of the risen Christ.  He continues to tell these stories into the opening verses of chapter one in his second volume, the book of Acts. 

But then, the shift occurs.  Luke says that the risen Christ is “taken up…into heaven.” This “taking up” sets the stage for a new act in the unfolding drama of God’s saving work.   

The curtain goes up on this new act at the beginning of chapter two:  The disciples of Jesus are in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost.  They’re gathered in one room.  They hear a sound “like a violent, rushing wind from heaven.” They see something like “tongues of fire,” separating and coming “to rest on the head of each one.”  The images convey a message:  God is present!  

The text then says that the disciples are “all filled with the Holy Spirit” and they begin to speak “in other languages” as the Spirit enables them.  This cacophony of voices draws a crowd “from every nation under heaven.”   

The crowd is amazed, astonished, bewildered and disturbed.  The Galilean followers of Jesus are proclaiming the “marvels of God” in the native languages of the people in the crowd.  Some of the people ask, “What does this mean?” while others mockingly declare, “They’ve drunk too much wine.”  What an amazing story!          

And it’s a good question:  “What does this mean?”  A woman named Debie Thomas found an answer to this question is her own life experience.  Debie writes: “My native tongue is Malayalam, one of India’s twenty-two official languages.  Though my parents immigrated to the United States when I was an infant, they insisted we speak Malayalam at home, so I grew up bilingual.   

“I also grew up with a divided and defensive sense of identity.  We (brown people) were Indian and spoke Malayalam, while they (white people) were American and spoke only English…. I had never even met an American who'd heard of my language.   

“I must have been nine or ten years old when my aunt and uncle called our extended family together one weekend for a ‘special surprise.’  When all thirty of us were packed into his living room, my uncle introduced a guest — a blond-haired, blue-eyed woman in her thirties, named Sarah.  He explained only that Sarah had spent a few childhood years in Delhi, where her parents worked as journalists, and that her family had vacationed occasionally in Kerala — the South Indian state my family is from.   He then handed things over to her. 

“It's hard to do justice to what happened next.  Suffice it to say that thirty jaws crashed to the carpet when Sarah nodded to my uncle, smiled warmly at us, and said [in Malayalam] … ‘Hello, I'm so happy to meet all of you.’  Over the next twenty minutes — while my relatives gawked and gaped — Sarah told us her story in careful but convincing Malayalam.  Those childhood trips to Kerala had fascinated her.  So much so that she moved to South India after college, and immersed herself in the language and culture. 

“Over dinner, she went on to explain how much her Kerala immersion changed her.  ‘I didn't realize before how limited my own perceptions were.  My ideas about humor, about art, about God.  I didn't know how many things were unsayable in a single language.’ 

“I thought about Sarah for a long time after that evening, because her visit altered my world.  Something became possible for the first time — an alliance, a bridging, a new kind of empathy and friendship.  When my family experienced the unprecedented pleasure of hearing ‘an American’ speak our language, we realized that the many distances separating ‘us’ from ‘them’ were not, in fact, un-crossable.  Sarah — the stranger — had taken a risk, made herself vulnerable, and entered our world.  In doing so, she had rendered us less strange.  Less alien.  Less Other.  

“But she had also offered us a challenge: it would no longer be possible, in the light of her generosity, to hang onto our stingy, self-protective narratives about identity.  She had bulldozed her way through that barrier, and only a massive act of cowardice and denial on our part would re-erect it.” 

Debie’s experience with Sarah helped her to gain insight into the meaning of Luke’s Pentecost story.  Debie notes that “What I love about the Pentecost story is that it required surrender and humility on both sides.  Those who spoke had to brave languages far beyond their comfort zones.  They had to risk vulnerability in the face of difference, and do so with no guarantee of welcome.  They had to trust that no matter how awkward, inadequate, or silly they felt, the words bubbling up inside of them—new words, strange words, scary words—were nevertheless essential words—words precisely ordained for the time and place they occupied.  

“Meanwhile, the crowds who listened had to take risks as well.  They had to suspend disbelief, drop their cherished defenses, and opt for wonder instead of contempt.  They had to widen their circles, and welcome strangers with accents into their midst. 

“Not all of them managed it—some sneered because they couldn’t bear to be bewildered, to have their neat categories of belonging and exclusion explode in their faces.  Instead…they retreated into the well-worn narrative of denial: ‘Nothing new is happening here.  This isn’t God.  These are babbling idiots who’ve had too much to drink.’  

“But even in that atmosphere of suspicion and cynicism, some people spoke, and some people listened, and into those astonishing exchanges, God breathed fresh life.” 

Well, it seems to me that Luke’s Pentecost story not only has meaning for Debie; it also has meaning for the rest of us in this day and time.  Debie observes that “We live in a world where words have become toxic, where the languages of our cherished ‘isms’ threaten to divide and destroy us.”  She says that “If we don’t learn the art of speaking across the borders that separate us, we will burn ourselves down to ash.”   

Isn’t this a word we need to hear as Americans, especially in this presidential election year?  And isn’t this a word we need to hear as United Methodists, especially as General Conference continues to meet this week in Portland, Oregon to set policies that will govern our church over the next four years?     

Debie notes that in circumstances like these, “the temptation to retreat into our political [and theological] enclaves [are] especially strong.”  We’re tempted to ask ourselves: “Why bother to understand—much less speak—the languages of those whom we disagree with?  Why not sneer?  Isn’t sneering easier?  Isn’t it more fun? 

“Maybe,” she replies.  “But it is no small thing that the Holy Spirit loosened tongues to break down barriers on the [day of Pentecost].  In the face of difference, God compelled [the] people to engage.  From Day One, the call was to press in, linger, listen, and speak.” 

As Debie sees it, “here’s the thing: no matter how passionately I disagree with your opinions and beliefs, I cannot disagree with your experience.  Once I have learned to hear and speak your story in the words that matter most to you, then I have stakes I never had before.  I can no longer flourish at your expense.  I can no longer make you my Other.  I can no longer abandon you.”1  

Dear friends, can we hear what the Spirit is saying to the church?  I pray that we can.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.