Perplexed
Text: Acts 2:1-21
We are familiar with this story of Pentecost. It is an old standard.
We know how it goes. The disciples are in a locked room. They are touched by fire. They feel the wind of the Holy Spirit. They begin to speak in tongues. And everyone is amazed.
We know how it goes. But we know it wrong. None of these things I just mentioned happens in this story in Acts.
Some people—it does not say how many, something between a dozen to 500, depending on which scholar you read; maybe the disciples, maybe not—some people are in one place. It might be a room, but if so it is not locked; or it might be outside, since the crowd all hears them. It doesn’t say.
Not a wind, but something like the sound of the rush of the wind. Not fire, but divided tongues, something like fire. They are filled with the Holy Spirit, but it does not say whether the Spirit is in the sound and the tongues or brings them or is unrelated to them.
The people are moved to speak in other languages. Was it a new language (as some think) or unfamiliar (to them) natural languages in which they were given new fluency?
And finally, the people were amazed. But before they were amazed, they were bewildered.
This is not a simple story about a simple event. It is an attempt to tell us about something complicated and confusing. None of it would have made any sense to those involved. What did it feel like to be touched by divided tongues that seemed something like fire but not exactly fire? Did it smell like something burning? Was it hot, bright? What did it feel like to hear the sound of something like the rush of wind but not exactly wind? Was it loud as well as fierce? Did it feel like a wind, or only sound like it? What was it like to discover yourself suddenly speaking in a language that you never knew? Would you be thrilled? Or would you be beside yourself with fear?
If this is the birth of the Christian church, as some interpret it to be, then the church was born in a unfathomable moment of confusion, chaos, and surprise. A moment powered by the Holy Spirit, who according to Luke, the author of Acts, brings not comfort (as in the Gospel of John) but ineffable astonishment.
This confusion is a gift of the Holy Spirit to the early church. The Spirit is a mover-along and a shaker-up. Because of this, the early church itself was a dynamic, unsettled, and fluid gathering. How was it going to be? Who was going to lead it, who could speak in worship, who could attend worship, who could read, what would they read, how should people treat others in the community, how should they treat outsiders, who were outsiders? No one knew, but they were guided and moved along according to their experience of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, lord and giver of life, was the source of all authority, power, energy. It was the Big Bang, and the Cosmic Expansion was the early church.
But like at the beginning of the universe, things cooled quickly, and all that energy coalesced into form and substance. Very soon, procedures and process and institutions formed. Even by the time of Paul’s epistles, arguments were being settled, open questions closed, expectations of behavior set, canons put in place and canonical answers given. By the time of the pastoral epistles (Timothy and Titus, maybe 50 years later), the church was hierarchical, patriarchal, and organized. The church, and thus the Spirit, was already being domesticated. Structures for teaching, worship, decision-making, were replacing the annoyingly unpredictable Spirit. More efficient, less fun. More settled, less room for surprise.
After two thousand years of this, we have tamed Christianity. We have sanded the rough edges of confused astonishment. We have taken tongues of something like fire and named it simply Fire. We have taken a sound like the rush of a mighty wind and named it simply Wind. We have moved the church into locked buildings. We have ordained disciples out of amazed crowds.
This has sort of all worked so far. But the resulting toothless Christianity seems no longer a match for the powers of the world, or the needs of the world, or the needs of each one of us in the world. It turns out to be inadequate to our time.
It does not save us from the temptations so skillfully constructed by evil, as Martin Luther might say, by our old satanic foe. It does not console us as we witness—and many humans endure—extreme violence and suffering. It does not nourish our souls that are starving for justice and peace or equip us to strive for them.
We have become—as someone said at the Synod Assembly this week—we have become dis-spirited. We need enthusiasm, a word meaning possessed by the Spirit. We need the Spirit who roamed freely at Pentecost.. We need the gifts that the Spirit brought to the people at Pentecost. We need the confusion, and the power, and the dreams.
We need the confusion the Spirit brings. The confusion of an open future. We need to trust less in our own thoughtful pre-judged conclusions than in the inspiration of the Spirit. We need to allow ourselves to not know how it goes so that we can see anew how it is. We live in times of extreme transition. We are not going to do this by things settled long ago. We need to let the Spirit shake us up a little.
We need the power the Spirit brings. Not the power of the world, the power of violence, captivity, and exploitation. Those are the powers of the world. The powers that come from the Spirit are the power of trust in God, the power of forgiving others without condition, the power of serving others and being willing to risk one’s self for their sake, the power of courage that comes from knowing that God is present, the power of solidarity with our brothers and sisters. And the power of sabbath rest.
But confusion by itself can be terrifying. And power alone can be unfaithful. Dreams like the ones the Spirit promises at Pentecost are what make us whole. They keep us on track. They are the idea, the plan, the purpose, the balance. When we are not quite sure what just happened, and we are not quite sure what is happening right now, and we are really not sure about what will happen next, we need dreams to survive. They interpret the past, and reveal the present, and pull us into the future.
At the Synod Assembly, a researcher presented figures about the state of the American churches. It was dire and dismal. His recommendation: urgent attention to better marketing. He did not talk about dreams of the Holy Spirit. I’m sure we are not good marketers, but if we lose our dreams, no amount of marketing will help.
Christians dream of peace. Christians dream of justice. Christians dream of service. Christian dream of gratitude. Christians dream of God’s unconditional love for all people, even our enemies. Christians dream of joy in creation.
These are the dreams of our prophets and dreamers, daughters and sons, men and women, old and young. These are the dreams of followers of Christ. These are the dreams that the Spirit, poured out upon us by God, enables in us.
If we give these dreams up as naive, unrealistic, unattainable; if we find them unrewarding and not worthwhile; if we become convinced that it does not matter, and that God does not care, we are lost. If we forget these dreams, we are lost.
Holy Spirit, come to us.
