Amazed and Perplexed

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Pentecost C

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Acts 2:1-21

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ²And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.⁵Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? ⁹ Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” ¹² All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” ¹³But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”¹⁴But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. ¹⁶No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ¹⁷‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. ¹⁸ Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. ¹⁹And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. ²⁰The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. ²¹Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

The birth of a baby is a wondrous, glorious thing.  Let me get that out first and foremost.  It is the closest we will ever be to actual magic in this lifetime.  The expectations leading up to the event, the countdown, as it were, DURING the birth, and the final, squalling, wriggling outcome was one of the most entrancing experiences of my life.  It was also, objectively speaking, pretty gruesome.  The pushing, the sweating, the blood, the rest of what accompanies a birth … I can understand how some fathers don’t remain conscious through the whole thing, or how some lose the last meal they ate in the middle of it, and how others, as much as they love their wives and are excited about the coming child, have no interest in witnessing that child’s actual entrance into the world. 

We’ve established a tradition in our family, that at some point during each person’s birthday, their birth story is told… with Hannah, we talk about how we had Chinese food a few days before, because someone told us that eating Chinese food would trigger the contractions, or how Leslie and Angela went walking around the mall for several hours in the hopes that the exertion would trigger the contractions.  We end up talking about how we stayed up playing cards on the bed in the soon-to-be baby room as we timed the contractions, wondering if this was finally IT the night before she was born.  We include the details that right after she came out, as the doctor was placing her on Leslie’s tummy, she flung her arm out and splashed Leslie in the face with … stuff … and that Leslie was surprised at the saltiness… little things that stick in our memories.

Today we celebrate the birth of … us, the church, the body of Christ on earth.  And we have the good fortune of not having to rely on our fading memories of the event, or on the verbal variations that can happen in oral tradition.  We have a record of the event right here, right in front of us. 

And that birth, just like our own, or that of our children or grandchildren or nieces and nephews, was full of wonder and miracles.  The sound of a rushing wind, tongues as of fire above peoples’ heads, and then folks with no formal training or perhaps even exposure to a language beginning to speak it fluently enough to draw the attention of those who had spoken those languages all their lives.   

It was also full of the not-so-pretty stuff.  The disagreements, the disputes over the validity of claims that the Gospel was for Gentiles AS GENTILES – not necessarily first converted to Judaism, or the persecution that those first followers of Christ would suffer all came together to make for a less-than-idyllic entrance of a newborn faith into the world. 

And just as WE mark the first smile, the first coo, the first word, the first rollover, the first step, it bears noting and remembering those early days of the church – as Christ’s body began to find it’s legs, flex it’s arms, reach out it’s hands to the marginalized and those without a voice in the first century Roman Empire. 

So why was it such an amazing thing?  Why, if the people of God had the word of God for all those centuries, did this new thing have to happen and begin to turn everything upside down, including those who had been entrusted with the preservation of that word of God that had been handed down to them from the time of Moses forward? 

Simply put, they had forgotten that the served a living God – an active God, a God who was interested and cared about how they felt, how they acted, how they lived, and what moved them.  A God who wanted to be in relationship with them. 

Here’s the thing about relationships.  They can be … messy, sometimes unpredictable, sometimes incredibly comforting, and more often than not, surprising.  It is no different when we enter into relationship with God through Jesus Christ.  Just when we think we have him pegged, and know what he is going to do next, God brings to our attention something so radically different that was so far off our radar screen as to make it incomprehensible to us at first glance … and it is only in retrospect that we realize what was happening and understand it … perhaps in greater or lesser part, on rare occasion fully. 

When you are in relationship with someone, those relationships that most energize you are the ones that are constantly evolving, constantly growing, constantly changing.  It’s the same person you always knew, but as you get to know each other more and more, the fullness of that relationship and the richness and depth of it is something that you come to look forward to rather than dread. 

It is that way in our growing relationship with God.  Each day brings a new experience, a new insight, a new lesson.  And I do believe that with each measure of growth that WE experience, God takes utter delight in us, even as we delight in our own children.

So we tell our birth story, and we remember where we were, and we see where we have come, and we are both relieved and challenged.  Relieved to be able to look back and know that God has been with us, has guided, taught, directed, begun to form us into the image of his likeness in the person of Jesus.  But just as firmly, we are challenged, because we see how far we have to go, we are aware of our shortcomings, our faults, our petty squabbling, our infighting, and we realize that, if we are to be called Christ’s body, then we must exercise to keep in shape – those who have been gifted with leadership, to lead, with teaching, to teach, with prophecy, to prophesy.  And the list goes on and on. 

Will we answer the challenge?       

Let’s pray.