Several years ago, Michael and I were helping to move his godfather out of his house into an apartment. His wife had recently passed away, and he no longer wanted to live in the house they had shared for so many decades. They both had an assistant who had been helping them in their later years, and he was Tongan. So William, which was his name, asked two of his brothers to come and help with the move. On that day, I was in the living room packing some boxes, and the brothers came in the living room carrying a table. They get to the front door and stop. One brother says to another, wait, we should cover this with something. Hearing them, I grabbed a blanket that was within an arm’s reach, tossed it to them and said, use this. They caught it, looked at me, and then wrapped the table up in it and took the table out to the van.
Later that day, as we were unpacking things in the new apartment, William said to me, with a slightly accusatory tone, you didn’t tell me you speak Tongan. I don’t, I said. But my brothers said that you heard what they said and responded to them. I said again, I don’t speak Tongan, but William didn’t really believe me. What I distinctly remember that day was that they were speaking in English. That was what I heard, except that, in fact, they were speaking Tongan.
We hear in the reading from Acts that the Disciples were gathered in the Upper Room when the sound came from heaven, like the rush of a mighty wind. Tongues as of fire rested on each one of them as they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to speak in other tongues. At the same time, the Jewish people had gathered from every nation, we are told, for the Festival of Weeks, and heard the sound, a sound like that of a violent wind. They were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. They were amazed and wondered how is it that each of us hear in our own language? Everyone was confused and looking for a common sense explanation. Some tried to dismiss the entire event by saying the people were drunk. But Peter quotes the prophet Joel to emphasize the power of the Holy Spirit in this event.
Witnessing the presence of the Holy Spirit is difficult when we measure reality by what we can see, touch, taste, or smell. The world is a practical and material world. We understand best those things which we can confirm by sight or by grasping with our hands. Of course, this is important because we have been created to engage our physical world in this way, but throughout his ministry, Jesus was moving people toward a deeper and fuller understanding of what it means to be human in the way that God intended. Our human flourishing, the fulfillment of God’s creative desire in and through our humanity, is meant for the lifting up and healing of human community. Because through this, we are fulfilling God’s call for the world.
Imagine the experience of that first Pentecost Day. The sound, as we are told, was like a violent wind. It must have been frightening to hear such a sound. And then the Disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking as the Holy Spirit gave them speech. Now it is very likely they had been sitting together in prayer before this happened. And in prayer, they were opening themselves up to God’s wisdom. Perhaps they were wondering and asking in their prayers to understand what they were supposed to do, now that Jesus Christ had ascended to God. And the Spirit descended on them with undeniable force and overwhelming presence. No language was foreign, because each heard what was said in their own tongue.
If there is one essential message in this Pentecost story, it is that we are not as different from one another as we think we are. We are not the stranger we assume we are. We are not the foreigners we fear we are. Our needs are not so different from the needs of others. We are more alike than we are different. Even when it comes to understanding each other, the language we speak is like thin tissue paper between us, easily broken through by the Holy Spirit who is moving us toward one another rather than away. Peter reminds the Disciples and the multitude gathered of the prophet Joel’s words: God declares I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy. Your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams. Yes, even on my men servants and my maid servants in those days I will pour out my spirit, and they shall prophesy. And it shall be that whoever calls upon the name Lord shall be saved. No one is beyond the reach of God. No one. Everyone who seeks this life will receive the Holy Spirit.
So the question for us this morning is, can we handle this? Can we believe and receive this enormous gift of the Holy Spirit? Or perhaps a better question is, do we want this gift? I’m going to guess that everyone here has some desire, however tentative, to be received into the presence of God, to be filled with the Holy Spirit. This hunger comes from an inner knowing that we are made for something bigger, something deeper. And that something is not measured by our worldly means. In fact, it is not measurable at all. The Holy Spirit is fully available and eternally present to us, and it is absolutely beyond our control.
Our confidence should rest in knowing this, that the Holy Spirit has been given to us by God, just as Jesus promised before he met his earthly death. That same Holy Spirit draws us together across our perceived differences. In mysterious, yet undeniable ways, the Spirit demonstrates again and again that we are made for community, for relationships that heal, for transforming a stranger into a friend, for trusting that we can understand each other in ways that transcend language.
In a few minutes, I will confirm and receive members of this Body of Christ, and your brothers and sisters from across the way from St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church. We will pray together to help them find their way into the presence of the Holy Spirit. And there will be silence. During that silence we are praying together for the presence of the Holy Spirit to be upon these people, so that they may be filled with the life and love and hope of that same Holy Spirit.
May this Holy Spirit be upon this Body of Christ, so that you might dream dreams and see visions, all in the fullness of God’s grace and mercy.
AMEN.
