Texts on Sunday, June 4, 2006, the Day of Pentecost
Ezekiel 37: 1-14; Acts 2: 1-21
“What does this mean!” So the ancient festival-goers exclaim in the Jerusalem square, the story says, when they hear in their own languages men from Jesus’ band speaking about the great things of God. Holy Spirit tongues of fire turn humble human tongues to speech full of meaning for many. Yet it’s not what they’re hearing that amazes them; it’s the fact that they’re hearing–and understanding. What does this mean?
In Spanish or French, when you want to say, “What does this mean?” you use the words What does this want to say? In the original language of the New Testament, it’s the same expression. Our translation has the men asking “What does this mean?” but the words on the page are What does this want to be? Coiled inside that little word want, you can read a beautiful truth. It says: whatever you look at–no matter how ordinary, no matter how wonderful–isn’t fully what it is all by itself. It isn’t boring in itself. It isn’t marvelous in itself. No, somehow the event wants to be something. It wants to say something, but it needs an interpreter. What does it want to say? The beautiful truth is that you are involved in deciding what it wants to say–what it means. It is up to you to choose what is marvelous in our eyes.
What did the Pentecost event mean? There isn’t just one answer. Some sneer at the languages lavishly poured out in the love of God: A bunch of drunks! Put another way, the sneerers decide that they don’t want the event to say or be anything much at all. If the event were to speak to them–if they thought it wanted to say something to them–they would have to listen. They would have to open like a flower to the sun, or to a bee. They want to shut out such possibilities in the square.
Peter decides to contradict them. First he uses a little logic. They’re not drunk–it’s only 9:00 a.m! The bars aren’t even open yet. But his next words are far more important. He chooses how to hear what this event is wanting to say. He doesn’t have inside knowledge of its meaning; he decides what it is wanting to say. To be sure, he knows the promises of scripture, and to be sure, some think that the scriptures are inside knowledge about the future, but they misread. Peter must know how long the people have waited for those promises to be fulfilled, how many times false prophets have barked This is the day! and how many times hopes have been dashed. He knows the risk in deciding what this event wants to say. Nevertheless, he suddenly risks a great claim. He says, “This is what was spoken through the prophet Joel.” We are calling upon the name of the Lord, and see: our God, who has seemed so long absent, is alive in us in power here now. Peter claims it, and history shifts toward God.
Now, I don’t hold with the notion that the Bible’s miracle stories are mere facts that you could have recorded on your Sony digicam to store on a disk next to ET and Star Wars. Why? Because mere facts don’t need you to be what they are. Mere facts are dumb. They don’t want to say anything or be anything or become anything. But God, who calls all things into being from within the depths, is calling you to come into being by choosing what your world is wanting to say. God wants you: your trust, your decision. This is how we discover our relationship to reality–by taking risks and making choices. In the grace of God, we choose the meaning of what we see and feel and hear, just as Peter chooses the meaning of Pentecost.
Facts can’t prove the meaning of any event, though they can disprove that an event happened. In this direction, one Bible fact does raise a question. Like many other great miracles of the New Testament, this one has an Old Testament parallel or echo. It reverses the curses laid on humanity at the tower of Babel (Genesis 11), when God confused the language of all nations under heaven and scattered the people because they wanted to be equal with God. The Pentecost story unfolds like running a disaster movie backwards. All the scattered Jews are drawn back from every nation under heaven and every ear is now able to hear what their God is wanting to say.
Pentecost is probably also a great legend. It is not concerned with mere facts that happened regardless whether you care about them. Pentecost is about what the church of that day was wanting to say: that Babel shows reality going in the wrong direction, but all people are rolling forward with God now. Of course, Peter may well have said in a Sunday sermon, “Men of Judea, what is happening in the church is what was spoken through the prophet Joel!” for it must have seemed to him that the ancient storm of confusion was over, as God’s children were coming from everywhere to hear what God was wanting to say. Now they could hear the word of God in one communication, one community, one communion in Christ. That is what the church was wanting to say about their experience of Christ. They said it with this story. They claimed it, and history shifted toward God.
I am sure that you see how peculiar it is and how risky, that we are still telling this legend now on the day of Pentecost. What does this mean–this gathering right here of a few disciples listening to an old story, preparing for the ancient ritual of sharing the bread and the cup? What does this want to say? What do you want it to say?
Happy Birthday, O Church? If Christians are satisfied to have a party on this day, the church is as good as dead, because no new language for new ears can be formed from the idea that long ago, when God was clear and present, amazing things happened to amazing people. What has that sort of hero worship to do with us? Here’s another choice for what our gathering might want to say–how sad it is to dwindle and die; how not-so-fun it is as it was some decades back when we were hundreds; and how doubtful we have become that we have anything to offer the world. Whoever claims that interpretation will keep watching history shift away from the church. But there are other possibilities. What do you want this day to say?
Because people in droves have abandoned the great church traditions everywhere across Europe and North America, our own small gathering could mean for us that we are witnesses to something very great and historic, even if it is confounding and somewhat frightening. This much is clear: the languages of God’s children are scattered again, for we of the church are not speaking a language that our brothers and sisters can understand. Teaching Christianity as belief in strange old stories–that’s a dead language, or should be, and we see that! That’s a good beginning. So what does this small gathering want to say in a world of scattered languages? Try this. In a world of scattered nations and opinions, we are once more pre-Pentecost people.
According to Luke, the author of the Pentecost story, the very last time the disciples were with their risen Lord, he had said to them: “See, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24.49) Is that what this little band wants to say–that we don’t yet know what receiving the Holy Spirit will be like; that we don’t yet have that gift of speaking for our times and our people; that we must stay together–here in the city?–until we are clothed with the power of God from on high? What do we mean? What do we want to say, to be? “Mortal, can these bones live?” In the grace of God, the choice is yours, to claim the gift of God who says, “I will put my spirit within you and you shall live.” Wherever that claim is made, history shifts toward God.
delivered at Central Presbyterian Church, Buffalo, New York
© Stephen H. Phelps, June 2006
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