Acts 2: 1-21
Offered to the congregation at the Wharton Hungarian Presbyterian Church on Pentecost Sunday, June 5, 2022
Mel Prestamo, Ruling Elder PCUSA
If you view today, Pentecost from our joined Judeo-Christian shared heritage, Pentecost is a unique event. In Palestine during the time of Jesus, Pentecost, was the end of the first growing cycle, 50 days. It was the time when the wheat was gathered for the first harvest of the year. The time was called the Festival of Harvest. It was a time that Jews came to celebrate and give thanks for the first Harvest.
At a later time, after the destruction of the Temple, there developed a Rabbinical tradition where this Festival of Harvest became known as Shavuot. It became the celebration of God’s handing down of the 10 Commandments to Moses. During Shavuot, Jews celebrate their coming together as God’s Chosen People when God gave them the Law. The Law that would define their relationship with God. It laid down to them what their relationship with God and their neighbors should look like and how it should function. The first three speak to their relationship with God. You know these. “I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the Land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other god’s before me. You shall not make idols to worship. You shall not wrongfully use the name of the Lord, your God.” The remaining seven, tell the people how they are to relate with their neighbors, and the world around them. First, the Sabbath is a day of rest. Then, honor your father and mother, do not murder, no adultery, no stealing, no false witness, and no coveting of anything belonging to your neighbor, not his wife, his slaves, his oxen or his asses.
So, this Rabbinical thinking comes to define Shavuot as representing the day that God chose them and set them apart to be God’s people by handing down God’s Law.
For Christians, Pentecost marks the 50 days that passed since Jesus’ triumph and Glory over the Cross, that is his resurrection. It had been 50 days since God stepped in and changed the history of humankind. God stepped into human time and glorified the Christ as the Christ glorified God in his conquering of death and sin. Jesus’ conquering of death and sin through the Cross allows us to come before God with a new righteousness, not earned but gifted through the Grace of God. And on this day, Pentecost, some two thousand years ago, God sent the Spirit that Jesus had promised to be an advocate for his disciples and to provide them with the understanding and guidance they needed so that they could see the reason for the Cross and then witness and interpret it to the world. And today we celebrate God’s gift of the Spirit to us and the birth of the Christian movement, which for a time was called the Way.
I am struck by the beautiful symmetry that has developed around Pentecost. From a Festival Day around the time of the first Harvest which was a way of celebrating the giving of God’s gifts of food to the people to the recognition of the handing down of the Law then into the celebration of God’s gift of the Spirit, that is, the advocate that will help us to understand the Law and the whole of Scripture so that we can know who Jesus is and how Jesus is the fulfillment of the Holy Scriptures, all of this is a beautiful thing that God has given us.
Luke tells us, on that day that the disciples were gathered together in “one place”. Luke doesn’t clearly tell us where that place was. The text tells us that a violent wind came and filled “the house.” So, we naturally think of them being in an enclosed place. But from what follows we can get the image that it was close by the Temple because when they went out, it was into a large open area where thousands of people could gather. Also, Luke gives us the image that when the Spirit came like a “violent wind”, it attracted the attention of the crowd and they were drawn to it. So, the disciples must have been close to where the crowds were and at a time of Festival, that would have been the Temple.
There are devout Jews from every nation close at hand. As Luke goes through the list of nations, he groups them in geographical segments beginning near Persia and then moving around through Asia Minor, Greece and then to Rome and then back south going out from Judea through Egypt and west to Libya. They were there from all around the known world. A great diversity of Jews had come to celebrate the Festival.
And it was in this setting that something unusual was about happen.
“Suddenly from heaven, there came a sound like a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.” I find that phrasing by Luke to be striking. The Spirit does not come as a gentle breeze. It is not a cool, refreshing Spring like breeze. It is not what we are told the voice of God might sound like – a wee small gentle voice. Isaiah hid in the crack on the rocks as the storms passed for the voice of God was not in the storm. He waited for the quiet voice of God to speak to him. But here we are told that the Holy Spirt comes as a “violent wind”, and I think it tells us something of there being a different purpose in the Spirit at Pentecost. You know we experience the triune God in different ways. And I mean that to be three ways. We know God as a creator which we can witness simply by seeing the vastness of the universe around us. This can be no accident. We hear the Word of God through the Christ wherever he is present throughout Scripture and whenever we hear the voice of God speaking to us. Then we experience the presence of the Spirit. The Spirit is a mover and a shaker. The Spirit is what we feel when we are swelled up with Christian love and purpose. The Spirit of God is what gives us the courage we need to go out and witness to the world the Christ that we know. And that is what the Spirit is doing in that “one place” in Jerusalem.
In that one place, the Spirit anoints the disciples with tongues of something like fire suspended over their heads. And at once, they were filled with the Holy Spirit. We get the sense from Luke that they are filled with the fire of their faith and the courage to go and witness and tell the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I don’t know if they felt the presence of the Spirit and made a decision to go out or if the Spirit as a violent wind pushed them out onto the streets of Jerusalem. Either way, the crowds notice something strange and the disciples are in the midst of them.
Pentecost becomes for us the day that Christianity has its birth, its beginning. God chose the day upon which Jews would come to celebrate the giving of God’s Law to the chosen people as the same day that God would pour out the Holy Spirit upon God’s second generation of God’s chosen people, the church of Jesus Christ.
And then what happened next? Is it that they quietly shared a meal doing it in remembrance of him and then returned to their homes to relax and dwell on the events of the day? Is that what the Spirit did? No.
No, they were spurred to action. They were pushed out onto the streets. The Spirit began acting through them. It pushed them out into the streets of Jerusalem, and they began speaking and the Jews assembled there for the Festival heard them speaking in languages they could understand about Jesus, the Messiah, and his triumph over death through the Cross.
But let’s be clear about how this happened. First, the Spirit comes as a violent wind that catches the attention of the crowds. They are attracted to this disturbance to see what is happening. As the disciples begin to speak about their experiences what the people hear is the truth of the Christ in their own native languages. And this is a curious thing because the Jews of that day would have spoken and understood two maybe three languages. They would have understood Aramaic if they were there in Jerusalem. In order to travel and do business in the Roman world, they would have had to understood Greek. But they also would have been able to speak and converse in the native languages of their home country which might have been Persian, or Arabic, or Egyptian and so on. If the disciples were speaking Aramaic, they would have been understood with no problem. But on that day, at that moment, each of those in the crowd, heard what was being said in their own native language. That was different and it speaks to the universality of God’s truth.
So, everyone listening to these Galileans and hearing them in their own native languages asked, what does this mean? They were perplexed and amazed. The deniers came up with the idea that the disciples were drunk on “sweet” wine. What was sweet wine? Well, it is wine which would have been held over from the previous Festival of Grapes which would have occurred the previous Fall. Again, this celebration was for a Wheat Harvest. There was no new wine.
That’s what the world does, doesn’t it? When confronted by the witness of Jesus’ glory and resurrection, they wave us off and snicker that we are just prattling some nonsense. They say we are filled with new wine, drunk with some misguided yearning for cosmic answers to the universe that don’t exist.
But Peter steps forward. Peter has always been the bold one. Peter has always been the one to rashly blurt out what he was thinking. But this time is different. This time, Peter points out quite astutely that hey, it is only the third hour of the day, nine o’clock in the morning. So, no, these people are not drunk. Then Peter, now filled with the Spirit, turns to Scripture, the Book of Joel, and tells the people that what they are witnessing is a fulfillment of the prophesy in Joel concerning the last days.
“And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams. And on My menservants and on My maidservants, I will pour out My Spirit in those days; and they shall prophesy. I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath: blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord. And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Peter was a good student, wasn’t he? Notice how he has learned from the Lord. Anytime Jesus came into a conflict with the devil or with the Teachers of the Law, he went to Scripture to validate his teachings. He went to the Word of God. And that’s what Peter does here. Peter, guided by the Spirit, goes to Scripture to provide understanding of what is happening. No, what you are witnessing is a fulfillment of the prophesy of Joel. But not only the part that sons and daughters will prophesy or seeing visions or dreaming dreams.
Look at the part about portents in the heavens and signs on Earth. Peter is using this prophesy to tell the people that the last days have begun. When Jesus went to the Cross and died, what happened? The Sun went black – a portent in the heavens. The curtain in the Temple was torn in two – a sign on Earth.
Peter is telling them that at the Cross, God had set the last days in motion. That it was a great and awesome day of the Lord. And now here’s the rub. “And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
What did that mean? It meant that if they did not want to be left behind, they needed to come forward and call on the name of the Lord, and that name was Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, the one who had they had killed on the Cross but who conquered death and was raised again by God. This, Peter was a witness to. At the end of this day, 3,000 people believed Peter’s witness and came to be baptized.
By the power of the Holy Spirit, Peter was given extraordinary ability just as Jesus had promised. God be praised!
But this is the thing. My friends, at our Baptisms, we were given the same power of the Spirit, the same authority in the Spirit, the same call to witness. I don’t know if we will be swelled up with that same violent wind today that pushed the disciples out onto the streets. But as we sit in this one place, we must be open to the Spirit and allow it to be heard and allow it to push us out onto the streets and witness.
Charge & Benediction:
My friends, Jesus has provided the Spirit of God for you – not only to be a Comforter but to be a Counselor – and a Motivator. It is the one to guide you on your path. Let it light your way. Be bold. Step out and proclaim that these are the days of the Lord.
