A Sermon for Whitsunday
A Sermon for Whitsunday
Acts 2:1-11
by William Klock
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And so the great story began. Six day. God speaks. And creation takes shape. On the first day…on the second day…on the third day…and so on…like a liturgy. In fact, there’s a theory that Genesis 1 was written to be used at the dedication of the second temple. Because it describes God creating the heavens and the earth as his own temple. In Genesis 2 we even see that this temple has a holy of holies: a garden called Eden. There he carefully crafts a man from the dust of the earth, breathes his own life into him, and places him in the garden, in that holy of holies, to act as his priest, to care for his temple, and to live in his presence.
And then we humans sinned and it all went wrong. But Genesis stands as a reminder of what the Lord intended and how it’s supposed to be. The pagans tried to get it back. They built temples for their gods and in them, to represent the gods’ rule, they placed idols carved of wood or stone. And attempt to recover Eden, to re-enter that fellowship with God, but on our terms, not his. But Genesis reminds us that God has built his own temple by the power of his creative word and that he created us to be his image, to tend and to keep his temple, and to steward his rule on earth.
And Genesis…and the whole story that follows…reminds us that the Lord will not leave us forever cast out. Into the midst of the darkness God spoke again and called forth Abraham and with Abraham and his family, God launched a new heaven-and-earth project. Over and over he showed his faithfulness to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, and to the whole people of Israel. When they were slaves in Egypt he heard their cry and he rescued them. He defeated Pharaoh and the Egyptians and led his beloved people through the Red Sea and into the wilderness. At Mount Sinai the Lord gave the gift of the torah, the law, to Moses and the people. And with the torah he gave them instructions, think of them as blueprints, for the tabernacle. The Lord promised: I will be your God and you will be my people. Once again, the Lord would take up his dwelling in their midst. The tabernacle was a portable temple full of the symbols of the garden of Eden. Wherever the people stopped to camp, they set up the tabernacle, and the glory cloud, the shekinah representing the Lord’s presence, would descend to fill the holy of holies. And the torah set the people apart from the nations and taught them how to be holy so that they might be the people who lived with the Lord in their midst. Israel, camped around the tabernacle and the Lord’s glory cloud, were a sort of new creation in miniature—heaven and earth, God and human beings back together, even if imperfectly. It gave the people hope. A hope that one day the Lord would truly and fully set this broken world to rights—to make things the way they’re supposed to be. And it wasn’t just hope for Israel. The Lord intended the watching nations to see his people and take note.
That’s the climax of the Exodus. Not the Passover or the Red Sea. Those are important—vitally important—parts of the story. But it’s Exodus 40, the last chapter of the book, where the Lord’s glory clouds descends to dwell in the tabernacle—that’s the climax. The Lord once again dwelling with his people.
We see it happen again when the Israelites are settled in the land of Canaan. King Solomon builds a permanent temple for the Lord and, once again, at its dedication the glory cloud descends to fill the holy of holies.
It was all there as part of the story to point the people in hope to God’s restoration of heaven and earth—to the day when the Lord’s promises would be fulfilled. Because the Lord didn’t just come to Israel and manifest himself in a cloud of glory; he spoke. Israel’s prophetic tradition was full of promises looking forward to that day.
King David knew the Lord’s promises and sang out in prophetic hope of that future day in Psalm 72: May he have dominion from sea to sea…May all kings fall down before him, all nations serve him…Blessed by the Lord, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things. Blessed be his glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with his glory! Isaiah sang of the coming Messiah who would set creation to rights: There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. And when God has done his work through the Messiah, Isaiah sings, the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Habakkuk similarly would sing out in hope: For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
When the Lord’s cloud of glory descended to fill the temple, it pointed forward to that day when he would—when he will—fill all of creation with his glorious presence.
Think about this hope that Israel had and how great it was and I think it helps give a sense of just how tragic it then was when Israel failed to keep her end of the covenant and the Lord allowed the Babylonian army to capture Jerusalem and to destroy the temple—his temple. Israel sinned, Israel showed disregard for the law the Lord had given to keep her holy. And worst of all—over and over and over—Israel prostituted herself to the gods of the pagans. It was a deep, deep tragedy. As the Psalmist laments in Psalm 137: By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept. Not just for what was lost, but like Adam and Eve, cast out and weeping over their own disobedience. But even then, in those dark, dark days of exile the Lord still spoke. Through Isaiah and Ezekiel, through Zechariah and Malachi the Lord promised that he would come back to dwell with his people.
And yet, as the Gospels begin, hundreds of years had passed and the Lord had yet to return. Israel had returned from her exile. The temple had been rebuilt. The people and the priests went through all the motions. The smoke went up from the great altar. But the cloud of glory had never come down and returned to the temple. And pagan kings still ruled with Israel under their heels.
Again, this is where the Gospels begin. St. John describes the darkness, the hopelessness, the absence and then he says that the word became flesh and lived among us…The light shone in the darkness. Brothers and Sisters, the Gospels are about the return of God to his people in fulfilment of his promises. The word—the embodiment of God’s creative power—the word took on our flesh and was born of Mary. In Jesus God not only returned to his people, he brought heaven and earth, God and humanity back together in his person. Jesus is the manifestation of the hope of creation set to rights, of the breach between us and God healed. Matthew puts it in terms of Isaiah’s prophecy: Jesus is the promised Immanuel: God with us.
And as the church has led us through the story of Jesus these last months, we’ve followed him to the cross where he took on himself the role of the Passover lamb. He died for the sins of his people. And just when sin and death thought they’d done their worst and defeated God once and for all, God raised Jesus from death. It was like the Passover and the Red Sea all over again, only this time it wasn’t an Egyptian king and his army that were defeated, it was evil itself.
And then, last week, we stood with the disciples and watched as Jesus ascended to take his throne in heaven. And if you know the story of Israel, if you know the Old Testament like Luke’s readers did, you can’t help but draw the connection. If Jesus’ death was a new Passover, then his ascension isn’t just his going to heaven to take his throne as king. It’s definitely very much that and that’s significant, but it also parallels Moses going up Mount Sinai to meet with the Lord. And when Moses came down, he had the gift of the torah, the law, with him.
And so now, in today’s Gospel, from Acts 2 Luke writes: When the day of Pentecost had finally arrived, they were all together in the same place.
I’m sure Jesus’ disciples were expecting something. I don’t think they knew exactly what. As we heard in last week’s Gospel, Jesus said that he had to leave, to take his throne—and the disciples would be sorry to see him go—but that it had to be that way, because Jesus would send the Holy Spirit to empower them. At the last supper he’d said that with his blood he was making a new covenant. They knew that a new covenant would need a new law—a new torah—because the law was what taught the people how to live out their end of the covenant, how to live as the people in whose midst the Lord dwelled.
But what that would like was anyone’s guess. But when Jesus told them to go and wait in Jerusalem and that he would send the Spirit in a few days, I fully expect they made the connection with Pentecost, because Pentecost—which is just Greek for “fiftieth” because it’s fifty days after Passover—because Pentecost was the great feast when Israel remembered and celebrate the giving of the law at Mount Sinai. I think that by this time, the disciples were finally putting things together. They were waiting those ten days with baited breath. Jesus was alive. Jesus was king. Everything was happening just as he promised. So they knew the Spirit would come. But how? And what would happen when he did? And how would the Spirit be a new torah for this new covenant. And so they obeyed Jesus. They waited all together in Jerusalem—probably in that same “upper room” where they’d eaten the Passover. And Luke goes on: Suddenly there came from heaven a noise like the sound of a mighty, rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.
So many parts of the story come together here. It helps to understand that wind and breath are the same word in both Hebrew and Greek. And so this divine wind sweeps in to the room to breathe the breath of God into the disciples, reminding them of the way God gave life to Adam in the beginning—taking that lifeless lump of moulded clay and animating it, making it as we say, a soul—a living being. But this time it’s God breathing life into his new Israel. There’s a reason that the one thing the disciples made sure they did during those days of waiting was to appoint Matthias as a successor to Judas. If they were to be the new Israel, they had to be twelve. And now the Spirit comes and breathes the life of God into this new people.
But, too, the imagery of the wind filling the house. It doesn’t just recall God breathing life into Adam. It also recalls God’s presence filling the tabernacle in Exodus 40 and the temple in 1 Kings 8. The way God gives his Spirit is a reminder that Jesus people aren’t just a people full of the Spirit. Brothers and Sisters, being full of the Spirit makes us God’s temple. Jesus and us—together we’re the beginning of God’s new creation, the beginning of his restoration of heaven and earth. Jesus has ascended to heaven bearing our human flesh. And in the Spirit, God has come to earth to dwell with us. In us, in Jesus’ people, the restoration of Eden has begun. That’s why at the head of Jesus’ prayer are is that powerful petition: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
I think this is why all through the rest of Acts, stuff keeps happening at temples, whether it’s the next couple of chapters as we follow the events of Pentecost and Peter preaching and thousands being baptised or later as Paul confronts the pagans in their temples in Athens and Ephesus. All because in Jesus and his people God’s real temple is being built—brick by brick, stone by stone, with each baptism…all laid on the foundation of the death and resurrection of Jesus.
So the disciples already knew when Jesus rose from death that new creation had begun. Jesus was the first part of it. And they were so excited to go out and tell everyone that Jesus had to calm them down and tell them to wait. Enthusiasm is never enough. They needed to be made part of that new creation too. And that’s what the Spirit does here. One day, when the church’s work is done and Jesus returns to finally cast death itself into the lake of fire, God will raise us as he raised Jesus and we will know fully the life he intends for us. But the time for that hasn’t yet come. The gift of the Spirit is the downpayment on that life—or to use an Old Testament term for it: the Spirit is the firstfruits of God’s new creation.
And that’s the other part of the feast of Pentecost that comes into this. Pentecost wasn’t just the celebration of God’s giving of the law to Israel. It was also the festival where the people brought their firstfruits to God. They brought the first of their crops—like a sheaf of wheat—not just to give thanks for the harvest, but in expectant hope of his provision—trusting him for a plentiful harvest. From now on, for Jesus’ people, Pentecost is just that: a reminder that the harvest has begun and that the Spirit is sure to make it a plentiful one.
But it wasn’t just the wind. Luke goes on in verse 3: Then tongues, seemingly of fire, appeared to them, moving apart and coming to rest on each one of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them the words to say.
The wind from heaven fills them and the Spirit manifests himself as flame and then they start to speak in other languages. Again, the big story tells us why the Spirit came this way. Genesis explains the origin of different languages and people groups with the story of Babel. It’s the low point in human history. Adam and Eve sin in Chapter 3, Cain murders his brother in Chapter 4, and humanity goes downhill from there until, in Chapter11, we’ve lost all knowledge of God. In their hubris, the men of Babel built a tower to reach heaven and in response, the Lord confused their languages and scattered them. It’s a bit like Psalm 2 and Daniel 7 that I mentioned last week. The nations rage, but God laughs. But all the while he has a plan to set us to rights. In Psalm 2 it’s the son of David who will reign as king. In Daniel 7 it’s the son of man who will be enthroned by the Ancient of Days. And here at Pentecost, the son of David who is also the son of man takes his throne and sends the Spirit who creates a people ready to undo Babel.
Luke goes on in verse 5: There were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem at that time. [Remember, because it was Pentecost.] When they heard this noise they came together in a crowd. They were deeply puzzled, because every single one of them could hear them speaking in his or her own native language. They were astonished and amazed. “These men who are doing the speaking are all Galileans, aren’t they?” they said. “So how is it that each of us can hear them in our own mother tongues?
Luke goes on to list people from countries across the whole Roman empire and some from even beyond that. And the men hearing this go on with the most important detail, “We can hear them telling us about the mighty things God has done—in our own languages.”
What does it mean? Brothers and Sisters, this gift of tongues to the disciples was a sign. It was a sign that Jesus truly had ascended to his throne and he now rules over a global dominion. And it means that through his people, through his church, Jesus has inaugurated God’s new creation and has begun the work of setting everything to rights—starting with the confusion of Babel.
And that’s where today’s Epistle ends, which is a bit disappointing. I wish we had a Pentecost season where we could at least work through the next couple of chapters. “What does all this mean?” they ask, and in response Peter begins to preach and he explains to the gathered men how this was all in fulfilment of God’s promises. These first eleven verses will have to be enough for today.
Brothers and Sisters, Pentecost reminds us who we are. Again, think of Israel, rescued from Egypt and then formed as a people in the wilderness—a people defined by the law and by God dwelling in their midst. Pentecost is a reminder to us that in Jesus, God has delivered us from our bondage to sin and death and that he has made us a people defined by his new law: the life of the Spirit. And we don’t just have God in our midst; we are indwelt by God himself in the Spirit. Pentecost is a reminder that in making us this Spirit-filled people, God has made us his temple. We are the place where the world meets God. But our calling isn’t simply to sit here like the temple on Mount Zion and wait for people to come. Our calling is to be a temple on the move and a temple dispersed—a temple that goes out and meets the world with God and with the gospel—with the good news that Jesus, crucified and risen, is the world’s true Lord. You and I have been entrusted with the story. Go out and proclaim the mighty deeds of God and the Spirit will use that proclamation to change hearts and to grow the kingdom. And, finally, Pentecost is a reminder that as God’s temple, we are also the firstfruits of God’s new creation. We as a people are called to live out the life of God—not just to steward his word and to proclaim his gospel, but to truly be light in the darkness: living out and working for mercy and love and justice, showing the world the value of goodness, truth, and beauty, teaching reconciliation, bringing healing. In other words, Brothers and Sisters, pulling God’s future into the present. Not just praying “on earth as in heaven”, but living out that prayer so that all the world will see and doing so in trusting hope that God’s promise is true. One day, when the church has done her job declaring the mighty deeds of God, the earth will be filled with the knowledge of his glory as the waters cover the sea. That is what it means to be a “Pentecostal” people.
Let’s pray: O GOD, who on this day taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.