Acts 2:1-21
“Lights, Camera, Action!”
May 28, 2023 Pentecost Sunday
This account of Pentecost has all the makings of an amazing movie.
If you’ve been to see a movie in the last few years in a movie theater, especially an action film or even the trailer for one, you may have been blown away by the sheer volume, as if standing next to a rocket on a NASA launch pad or right in front of an oncoming train.
The sound is so loud that it can make your body draw back, as if being physically pushed by all that sound.
So, on that day there were all those people crowded together – a great throng of humanity, each of them talking to their loved ones or friends in their own language and, more than likely, a lot of their talking was about all those other folks who they assume do not understand a word they are saying.
So just as Jews had done for centuries, they came together 50 days after Passover for Shavuot (sha-voo-OAT) which is the Jewish pilgrimage festival that was a very inclusive celebration of the harvest.
After a time, it also became a cause to celebrate the receiving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.
This was a highly celebratory crowd, filled with expectation, because Jesus had promised that the Holy Spirit would arrive very soon after he had left.
And the big event suddenly takes a dramatic turn when everyone of them from all those places Patti named, were able to hear from the Holy Spirit in their own language, using the familiar words and phrases and idiosyncrasies that come with every language on earth.
The speaking that was done in all those languages seems miraculous enough – imagine the camera going from person to person as each becomes aware that the Holy Spirit is talking to them in tongues – plural.
That is miraculous enough but what if every one of those gathered that day also heard in tongues.
What if they were listening so intently that they actually heard God’s voice?
Every one of us has been misunderstood at some point.
Or someone has taken our words the wrong way and not as we intended them.
We know that so often our language is really vague and does not get across an accurate representation of our ideas and thoughts or we work so hard to make what we have to say relatable to the one we’re talking to that it ends up being a bland or lifeless version of what is really on our mind or heart.
Having spent a semester studying among folks who spoke a language that I was only beginning to learn, I know full well that I missed out on so much of what my deaf friends were saying at Gallaudet.
I also know that the interpreters that were in the classroom for my benefit and one or two other hearing graduate students were not always able to fully express the meaning behind the words of my professors or fellow students.
One valuable lesson that I still carry with me to this day 33 years later is the importance of listening to understand not just to respond.
So much of the time when someone is speaking to us, it is really tempting to be gearing up our response, getting ready while the person is still speaking.
And that might just be one of the greatest gift of the written word – of this magnificent story of the start of the Christian Church and all the other stories in the Bible.
We get to hear the experiences of our ancestors and witness their reactions which in turn informs ours.
Because this happened centuries ago, the words used to describe the events are treasured and gleaned for any and all wisdom – even the parts of scripture that we struggle with.
We value and treasure language as Christians.
Just like our Jewish and Muslim siblings, we are People of the Book.
God spoke creation into existence.
We read aloud responsively a different Psalm each week where we get to own it more by having the ancient words come out of our 21st century mouths.
Each week, a story that is no less than two millennia old is broken open and we hear the words that all of our ancestors since have either had read to them, or fairly recently in history, were able to read for themselves.
What happened when the words during that amazing Pentecost moment were shared is that they had to listen deeply.
And suddenly all the differences between them fell away, even if only for a short while.
What better way for God’s message, embodied in the life of Jesus, and delivered by the Holy, to be shared then to be offered so inclusively that no one was left out.
For a time, the idea of boundaries and difference and outsiders or foreigners ceased to exist.
Maybe that is the takeaway.
A generosity of spirit that we have within us and that was able to be brought forth in this account in the Acts of the Apostles.
A way of being that we strive for in our Kingdom building – “on earth as it is in heaven.”
It can be tempting to become skeptical and look at this model of church and say this is Utopian – we can’t possibly live into such an ideal.
And yet faith is what these followers had.
The huge leap in numbers of believers and the sacrifices they made in order to make sure no one went without were the effect of their faith not the cause of their faith.
What people do with their belief in God and God’s power is what starts with listening and really hearing.
There are those Biblical scholars who point to this description and say that this is an idealized version of what probably happened – maybe.
But aren’t we always holding up an ideal and striving for better?
The story of what comes next, this new Christian movement was also not without its measure of pain and suffering like the stoning of Stephen and the imprisonment of Paul but what fills these early participants in the Jesus movement 2000 years ago is something we still have today.
What is so compelling about this account is the strong sense of community that developed after this. They didn’t just listen. They heard and then went about living it out.
Having truly heard, folks then took Jesus’ teachings to heart and tried to live them to the best of their ability.
In receiving the message in a way that made sense to them, they knew that there was value in working together for something bigger than themselves.
They were not alone and neither are we.
On this birthday of the church, may we continue to listen for and truly hear God’s still speaking voice, in those rare dramatic moments and in the many everyday experiences and voices that fill our lives. And then may we turn them into acts of love.
Amen.