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June 3, 2001
A couple of weeks ago, a Presbyterian minister from Minnesota named Rollin Kirk was in Hungary as part of a delegation from his presbytery to their partner presbytery in the Reformed Church in Hungary. Kirk doesn't speak any Hungarian, while the pastor in whose home he was staying speaks very little English. Fortunately, the host pastor speaks German fluently and Kirk was able to reach back through the mists of some forty years to remember enough of his high school German for the two of them to get by. Most of the time when we think of Pentecost, we think of it being a historical event something like that - a time when the Holy Spirit enabled the earliest followers of Jesus to leap dramatically over barriers of language and culture to speak to people in their own languages. But recently, a group of biblical scholars have come up with another interpretation of the first Christian Pentecost. It's one that I'm not sure about myself, since it's so different from the traditional way of thinking about what happened that day. But I have to admit that this new interpretation does fit what is reported in the second chapter of Acts. And, better yet, it does make much clearer one of the main points of the whole Pentecost experience. So I'd like to share it with you. Because Luke emphasizes the various nationalities represented by the Pentecost-day crowd, we often read right over the fact that this crowd was composed entirely - or almost entirely - of Jews. As one commentator says, "They may have been from many different places, but they had gathered [together] because of their roots in a common faith. This multi-ethnic crowd had a Jewish soul." Given the long Jewish history of being conquered and exiled and conquered again, Jews were scattered all around the known world and the vast majority of them had adopted the language and culture of the country in which they lived. Inspite of that, however, their native language remained either Greek or Aramaic, depending on whether they lived in the east or west. Therefore, if the disciples were to address the crowd in their native language, they would merely have to speak to them in Greek or Aramaic. That's hardly a miraculous experience. But these scholars suggest that the most obvious place for a gathering of devout Jews to take place in Jerusalem on a holy day like Pentecost would be at the temple. And there in the temple, the language of worship was always Hebrew, which was called "the holy tongue." The fact was by Jesus' day Hebrew was essentially a dead language. No one used it in their day-to-day lives any more. It was artificially kept alive by being reserved for use in the temple. That custom wasn't any different than the Catholic church celebrating the mass in Latin for all those centuries, even though the common people didn't understand what was being said. And so this new interpretation suggests that the crowd of worshippers in the temple was suddenly shocked when the disciples burst in and, instead of using the largely unintelligible words of Hebrew, began preaching to them in the familiar words of Aramaic and Greek, words that they could understand. It was as if the veil of church ritual and tradition was ripped aside and God's Spirit was dramatically shown to be moving through the everyday things of life. And that's why the crowd wondered what was going on. Some of them assumed that the disciples were so drunk that they had lost all sense of place and propriety; therefore they dared to use common language on holy ground. As I said, I'm not sure whether I believe that interpretation or not, but it could be true. And it reminds me of another story Rollin Kirk told about his trip to Hungary. It seems that one person who joined his group was an American woman who had spent the last year living in the Czech Republic teaching English as a second language. For the first couple of days after joining the American group in Hungary, she seemed very withdrawn. Finally, Kirk mentioned to her that he had noticed a shift in her personality. She explained she had not heard anyone speaking English for so long that when she joined the group of Americans it felt as if she were suddenly listening in on their thoughts, an experience she found to be very disconcerting. And yet, isn't that what Pentecost is all about? Suddenly through the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon us, it's as if we are able to eavesdrop on God's own thoughts. All barriers are down and God is suddenly revealed to be intimately involved with all aspects of life - from the high, holy moments of worship and sacraments to the mundane world of work and family, war and poverty, disease and death, joy and friendship. All of life is, in fact, interaction with God. Gayle Bach-Watson puts it this way, "The mystics speak about God breathing us, and the breath of God traveling through our every pore. God moves around us and through us. God is near, very near, whenever we reach out. ...we are created, we are crafted by the Creator God, out of nothing, in God's own image, as affirmed by Scripture. At the very core of each person, at the most elemental levels of what makes us human creatures, we are made in the likeness of God. "And because we have, each within, a spark of God, we yearn for the Divine. We search for connection. We struggle, and walk, and limp, each person to find our way to the Loving Creator who has formed us. There is nothing we, as humans, can give to God that God needs. We, however, are not complete until we turn with praise and thanksgiving to our Creator. "In a very real way...worship, that is to say communion, completes us. [John] Burkhart says, 'What matters, therefore, is not whether God can be God without our worship. What is crucial is whether humans can survive as humans without worshipping. To withhold acknowledgment, to avoid celebration, to stifle gratitude, may prove as unnatural as holding one's breath.' The Divine Maker, who has given us a beautiful world to love, and enjoy, and to share, delights when we are on a path to health and wholeness." So how do we best express our love and worship? In his book, The Kingdom of God is a Party, Tony Campolo tells of a time he was speaking in Honolulu, Hawaii. Because of the time change, he found himself wide awake at 3:30 in the morning. So he went out to get a cup of coffee at one of those all night greasy-spoon diners. As he was finishing his coffee, he noticed several women come into the diner. They were ladies of the evening who had just gotten off work, so to speak. And Tony heard one of the women say to her friend that the next day was her birthday and that she'd never had a birthday party. She didn't expect one, but she just wanted someone to know that it was her birthday. After the women left, Tony found out from Harry, the owner of the diner, that the woman who was celebrating the birthday was named Agnes. Tony asked Harry if Harry would let him set up a birthday party for Agnes. And Harry agreed. So, the next day, the diner was filled with balloons and streamers. When Agnes walked in that night, everyone sang Happy birthday to her, and when the cake came out she started to cry. Harry had to blow out the candles for her. And when it came time to cut the cake, she couldn't - she wanted to take it home to admire it and savor the moment. After Agnes left, Tony led a prayer for Agnes and for the other women. When he finished, Harry said he didn't know that Tony was a preacher. Then he asked: What type of church gives birthday parties to prostitutes? What kind of church shares love in that way? Tony's answer was, of course, the church of Jesus Christ. The fact that Harry could even ask that question shows that we have moved away from being the type of community that Jesus modeled for us: one that welcomed people of all kinds - saints and sinners alike - with equal joy. As a religion, we have become staid and institutionalized and so overly-concerned with our rituals and traditions that we often miss the voice of God calling us back out into the real world. As a denomination, Presbyterians are often so sedate and proper that we are regularly called "God's Frozen Chosen." But it wasn't always that way. An old movie called The Presbyterians has a segment which describes a time of a Presbyterian religious revival and it quotes someone from that time as saying, "I'd like to be a Presbyterian, but I'm not up to it physically." What would it be like if the Holy Spirit suddenly swooped down on us "...like the rushing of a mighty wind through the sanctuary, making the flames of the candles on the communion table leap up high, sucking air, and rustling the [paraments] on the lectern and the pulpit, stirring the pages of our hymnbooks and Bibles"? (John Killinger) Wow! It would take our breath away - and replace it with the breath of God. It would suddenly mean that the explosion of a Palestinian bomb in far-off Israel and the precision military response would cause genuine tears in our hearts and a determination not to rest until a true and equally just peace might be found. It would suddenly mean that the grinding existence of poverty in this country and others would no longer be muffled by the glitz and comfort of our own financial security. It would suddenly mean that we would no longer be content when those around us attempt to satisfy their raging spiritual hungers with unsatisfying religious fast food. It would suddenly mean that we would be transformed to experience the world - not through our own language and culture - but through the bottomless love of the heart of God. We would no longer feel any division between the everyday and the holy. Are you up to it physically and spiritually? Let us pray that our own Pentecost renewal will begin today at this communion table. Amen. by the Rev. Jim McCrea
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