Journey: The Places We Will Go
Acts 2:1-6; Acts 10:34-45
May 28, 2023
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp218WFJStM
It has been 50 days. Fifty days since Easter for us. That was April 9 this year. Do you remember Easter? Maybe it seems like it was just yesterday for some of us. Maybe some of us don’t even really remember Easter 2023.
It has been 50 days. Fifty days since Resurrection for Jesus first followers. Fifty days since that life-altering, world-changing event. Fifty days since Jesus said “Stay in Jerusalem. Wait for power.”
Sometimes fifty days is not a long time. I suspect that on this occasion, it felt long. Jerusalem was not home for the disciples, but they stayed there because Jesus told them to. They stayed for fifty days. They stayed, waiting for the promised power from on high. What were they expecting, I wonder? Did they think the power would come with an angelic announcement? Did they think they would suddenly wake up with special abilities like superheros?
As they wait, they make a habit of gathering and praying together. They are together in one place when the power arrives. The power arrives like the sound of a violent wind. Think tornado, think hurricane. It’s unbelievably loud. And the power arrives like fire. Dancing flames above each person’s head. The sound of the wind fills the room. Maybe they go outside to escape the sound, because the next scene seems to take place in a more public space. People come looking for the source of that hurricane/tornado sound. The power that has arrived with wind and fire has poured over and through the disciples, enabling them to speak in all the languages of this cosmopolitan city. So they speak, trying to explain about the wind and the fire and God’s power.
And everyone present understands what is being said in their own language. Theologian Justo Gonzalez points out that the Holy Spirit had some options that day. One option was to make everyone understand the Aramaic that disciples spoke; the other was to make each person understand in their own tongue. The Spirit chose the second one. The implication is that culture and language matter. The implication is that those who come into Christian faith, into the Jesus movement, are not expected to become exactly like those they join. . . .[Pentecost] is a resounding NO! to any movement . . that seeks to make all Christians think alike, speak alike, and behave alike.” [1]
The people in Jerusalem understand in their first language, what is sometimes called the mother tongue. This is the language used in intimate spaces where people inside talk to each other. The Jewish people have been scattered into diverse language and people groups. Just as God drew near to human beings in the person of Jesus, God is coming close again, to speak to each person in their most intimate language. Scholar William James Jennings says “Speak a language, speak a people. God speaks people, fluently. And God, with all the urgency that is with the Holy Spirit, wants the disciples to speak people fluently too.”[2]
Pentecost is often referred to as the birth of the church. Today we may think of the church as a building or an institution. We might think of it in terms of Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox, or in denominational categories. But it started with a revolutionary intimacy that gave birth to a particular kind of belonging.[3] The church is that revolutionary belonging. That is what we celebrate on Pentecost.
The first translator of the gospel is the Holy Spirit. The love of Jesus evidenced in laying down his life, the power of God demonstrated in resurrection erupts and pours out in one language after another. Surely if the Spirit is among us, we will follow that lead. Because language and culture matter, we will learn other languages in order to share the power of love. We will enter into other cultures to cultivate the revolutionary intimacy that leads to belonging. Perhaps we will learn the language of tweets with less than 140 characters or Rap or Hip Hop or become familiar with the various genres of TikTok videos. Maybe we will enter into the wisdom of indigenous people or accept the hard truth about the reality of white supremacy. Perhaps we will learn the language of the creation itself and attend to its groaning.
God speaks people, fluently. And God urgently wants us to speak people fluently too.
As a result of that outpouring of the Spirit, 3,000 people join the movement and are baptized. But there are some who sneer. For them there is no miracle of language. They mock the speakers or perhaps the listeners for being amazed, suggesting that they are drunk. Justo Gonzalez is a Cuban-American theologian and very aware of how it feels to be a bi-lingual, bi-cultural person. He suggests that those who sneer that day speak the language of the country. They expect to hear their language wherever they go and so are not surprised that they hear in their mother tongue. Pentecost is not miraculous for them. They seem to have the home-field advantage, but it becomes a disadvantage because they cannot see the extraordinary things taking place.[4] I’ll come back to this in a few minutes.
The disciples were obedient to Jesus. They waited for the power of the Spirit. When it arrives, they are transformed. They become bold. Before the crucifixion they had run from the authorities. After Pentecost, they willingly get arrested. They were mostly uneducated ordinary people, but empowered by the Spirit, they speak their convictions passionately and articulately to the most educated elite movers and shakers in Jerusalem.
They continue to lead the revolutionary-belonging movement in Jerusalem until the day when the Spirit leads Peter to the city of Caesarea. Caesarea is a seat of Roman government, a place avoided by many faithful Jewish people because it is enemy territory. Peter does not know why he is going there, but he is prompted by the Spirit, so he obeys. He arrives at the home of Cornelius. Cornelius is a Roman army officer, a Gentile. He is also a God-fearer who gives generously to support the local Jewish community and prays constantly. Peter is there in direct answer to Cornelius’ prayers, although Cornelius is the only one who knows that at first.
Peter is out of his comfort zone. He doesn’t know why he is there and thinks he should not be. The first thing he says to Cornelius that it is unlawful for him to be there. He says “I’m only here because of a vision in which God told me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.” In other words, if it weren’t for that vision, that is precisely what Peter would call Cornelius.[5]
Cornelius explains his own prayers and his own vision in which God had told him to send for Peter. And then, suddenly, everything comes together for Peter. More deeply than ever before, he understands the meaning of Pentecost. God speaks people, fluently. All people. Even the Gentiles. Even the occupiers. Even the enemies. Peter says “Now I understand, now I am beginning to grasp, that God shows no partiality.”
While Peter is speaking, the Holy Spirit fills the room and empowers Cornelius and his household. The people who traveled with Peter are amazed. They didn’t think that the Holy Spirit could fall on Gentiles. And so begins a pattern that will repeat over and over again through the generations – “The Spirit cannot speak through Them, can it?” The Holy Spirit cannot speak through the poor. The Spirit doesn’t belong to women or the uneducated or to enslaved persons, surely. The Spirit cannot move among my nation’s enemies or my political opponents or even among Christians of another denomination. “They” can’t possibly have the Spirit of God. The “Them” changes. The prejudice endures. And so every generation must rediscover this profound simple truth that Peter proclaims “Now I am beginning to grasp that God shows no partiality.”
Sometimes this incident is called the conversion of Cornelius. It is perhaps more appropriate to see it as Peter’s conversion, or one more step in Peter’s ongoing transformation. Cornelius will likely continue in his former path, trusting God with new confidence, but continuing to pray and be generous with his finances as before. But Peter’s life is the one that changes dramatically. He enters the household grudgingly, believing it to be a violation of his faith, but after this, he willingly stays for several days, accepting Cornelius hospitality. He goes on to argue persuasively with other church leaders for the full inclusion of the Gentiles. It is hard for us to grasp how very revolutionary this is.
What I notice on this Pentecost is the insiders. I notice that Peter, one of Jesus’ closest followers, is the one who is most changed. On that day when he abandoned his nets in Galilee to follow Jesus, he could never have imagined that one day he would willingly be the guest in the home of a Roman officer. His transformation doesn’t happen all at once. It is not complete after he encounters the risen Lord on Easter or when the Holy Spirit flows over and through him on Pentecost or even as he speaks truth to power in Jerusalem. He keeps understanding this profound love of God in deeper and deeper ways. And that understanding transforms him. It transforms the church which is just getting started.
I think of those insiders back in Jerusalem. Those who scoffed, because they expected to hear the language they heard and so missed the miracle. What should have been an advantage became a disadvantage.
We who are here today, are mostly insiders. We know the words to the hymns. We know how to read a bulletin, how to set up a potluck, how to serve communion. We speak the language of church.
I’m often grumpy with God lately. I wonder why the Spirit doesn’t fall on us like at Pentecost. I wonder why churches everywhere seem to be out of breath, lacking in wind, spirit, oxygen, vitality. I don’t know why that is, but today I am wondering if my perspective has anything to do with being an insider. I wonder if I, like Peter, am more in need of conversion, of transformation, than some “Them” out there that might exist in my mind. Peter had to challenge his own faith system in order to follow the Spirit to Cornelius. His own set of rules and principles had to give way to the Spirit’s prodding.
He left his home base in Jerusalem and go into occupied territory in Caesarea. As our theme song says, he left his comfortable space to meet Jesus in a difficult place.
That was the call to mission, the invitation to revolutionary belonging offered by the Spirit two thousand years ago. The same invitation is offered to us now. But now we are the keepers of rules and systems, the ones who maintain practices and values that may jeopardize the mission. Like Peter, we may have to question and subvert the faith system we have received in response to the Spirit’s prodding.
I wonder if I need to adopt the posture of an outsider in order to escape the insiders’ disadvantage, in order to truly see where and in whom God is at work.
Friends, this is an on-going conversation, but I pray that we will live more and more deeply into Peter’s proclamation. God speaks people, fluently. God shows no partiality. All of “Us” are welcome. All of “Them” are welcome. The Spirit will welcome us wherever we go, even in the uncomfortable spaces. May we be open and obedient, risk-takers, visionaries. Come Holy Spirit, come.
[1]Justo L. Gonazalez, Acts: The Gospel of the Spirit (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001) p. 39
[2] Willie James Jennings, Acts:A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2017), p.30
[3] Jennings, p. 29
[4] Gonazalez, pp 37-38.
[5] Gonzalez, p. 133