Acts 2: 1-4a, 22-32

Garry Wills once wrote a fine book titled, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America. Wills claims that in the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln—in the span of a scant 272 words that took him all of three minutes to deliver—forever altered our understanding of the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln was not even the main speaker that day. That honor was given to a then-famous orator named Edward Everett, who spoke just prior to the President. Everett’s soaring rhetoric about the Civil War lasted a whopping two hours. But few now recall his many words, elegant though they were. Lincoln had been asked to make just “a few brief dedicatory remarks” for the new cemetery at Gettysburg, and that’s what he did. So short was the President’s speech that some in the crowd were disconcerted, wondering, “Is that it?!” Indeed, it was. But it changed history. The Gettysburg Address changed history but it did so subtly. “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here . . .” Mr. Lincoln intoned. But he was wrong. The world has little noted what the Honorable Mr. Everett had to say, but Lincoln’s handful of words are the stuff of oratorical legend. Again, however, it was the subtlety of what he said that altered the nation’s collective thought. “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” But Mr. Lincoln, unlike those founding Fathers, was now including the Negro people in the definition of “all men.” That had not generally been the meaning before then. “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain–that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom–and that the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Through a linguistic sleight-of-hand Lincoln turned the tables on his audience and on the nation: he shifted from dedicating a cemetery to making the American people dedicate themselves to a new birth of freedom–a new birth that was nothing less than the end of slavery...

Allan (not his real name) came to me at my previous church in Hamilton, wanting to be baptized. He was a child (or victim) of the “me decade” and felt compelled to leave home and family to find himself and, of course, lost himself, becoming a stranger to himself and the world, wandering the streets of Vancouver trapped in a world of drugs. One night he managed to get off the street for a night in one of the shelters. He crashed into the bunk, staring up at the ceiling, listening to the groans, and trying not to be overcome by the odors of the strangers in the bunks around him. He didn’t know where he was, he didn’t know who he was, but he wanted it to be over with and he considered how he might take his own life. He was shaken out of this thoughts when someone came in and called out a name from another world. “Is Allan Roberts here?” That had been his name once but he hadn’t heard it for some time. He hardly knew Allan Roberts anymore. It couldn’t be him being called. The caller persisted, “Is there anybody named Allan Roberts here?” No one else answered and so Allan took a risk. “I’m Allan Roberts (or used to be).” “Your mother’s on the phone.” My mother, no, you’ve made a mistake. I don’t know where I am, how could my mother know where I am?...

always good insights!

What counts as proof? Peter offers two kinds of proof about Christ’s resurrection in his sermon—Scripture and experience, or what we might more philosophically call revelation and reason, some word from God and some thinking about human experience. In my Seminary days, logical positivism had a death grip on philosophy. It taught that the only meaningful claims were those that could be proven by observation and experimentation. Only if you could see it and test it was it true. A supposedly authoritative word from beyond or above was completely unverifiable, so revelation had no role in establishing the truth of a statement. Logical positivism lost its iron grip on philosophy when it was demonstrated that its claim about the verification principle was itself unprovable by observation and experimentation. Both revelation and reason/experience can help establish the truth of the claim that Jesus rose from the dead, but in the end only the Holy Spirit can cut open a heart and implant the seed of faith.

Some speeches don’t just interest, move or even bore us. They also change the very way we understand things. In his fine book, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, Garry Wills claims that Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address did precisely that. In it the President— in just 272 words that took him only three minutes to deliver — transformed our understanding of the Declaration of Independence.

("Peter quotes Psalm 16 and claims that in writing this David (or whoever, we might now point out) was predicting no less than the resurrection from the dead via these words. It may seem an odd use of the psalm. After all, Psalm 16 is a fairly sunny poem and appears to have been written by one of those (vaguely annoying) people for whom everything in life has turned up roses...")

("a National Geographic special that aired sometime back which featured a man - a senior citizen, in his 70's or 80's - who climbed a mountain in Antarctica. When he made it to the top and was asked if he had anything to say to those watching...")