The very first sermon I ever preached, 44 years ago, was on today’s scripture, the 2nd chapter of Acts. And, just like this year when our United Church Centennial displaced this classic Pentecost scripture lesson by a week, that first time I preached on it was also one week after Pentecost Sunday. I was doing a summer placement at Eastend and Shaunavon, SK, and my supervising minister was in a bit of a hurry to get out of town when he passed the Sunday scriptures along to me, so I was given the scriptures for the wrong week.
But there’s never really a
“wrong” time to engage the 2nd chapter of Acts, as it describes the
first Christian Pentecost. The visual
and auditory images of this story are so rich: the rush of wind, tongues as of
flames resting on each believer; language barriers transcended in an ecstatic
display of holy power; and an empowerment of those who followed the risen
Christ, by the gift of the Holy Spirit.
People had gathered in
Jerusalem for the Jewish festival of Shavuot, also known to Greek-speaking Jews
as “Pente-cost”, the feast fifty days after Passover. It was one of three
harvest festivals in Judea, for just like here in the Okanagan where the
cherries and the stone fruits and the ground crops and the apples don’t all
mature at the same time, the various crops of the middle east come to fruition
at different times, and each got celebrated.
Visitors came to Jerusalem from Jewish communities
around the Mediterranean, and within that was a much smaller sub-group, perhaps
120 or so, of Jesus-following Jews who had come from Galilee. In the 26th chapter of Matthew, we’re
informed that Galileans spoke with an unmistakable
accent or dialect: in Canadian terms, say, a Newfoundland accent, or perhaps it
was more their use of words, like those of us from Saskatchewan correctly
referring to a hooded sweatshirt as a bunny-hug while the rest of the land
incorrectly calls it a hoodie. One way
or another, it would be hard for this group of Galileans to escape notice in
Jerusalem, and since it was less than two months since Jesus was crucified,
they would have been worried that their accent would betray them. It is a sobering thought to think that at
this moment, Hispanic residents of the US have similar fears, worried that their
Spanish surname or accent or the hue of their skin could be enough for them to
be deported.
That worried group of Galilean Jewish Christ-followers,
gathered off by themselves, perhaps, it is suggested, in the Upper Room where
they had shared the last supper with Jesus, were revealed by a big, assertive
action of the Holy Spirit, changing them and their movement forever. In a showy
display of wind and flame and language, God used the Holy Spirit to signify
that this new way of being, this path of the living Christ, would cross ethnic
and regional boundaries and rivalries. Peter,
who lost his words in the last week of Jesus’ life, found them now – Galilean accent
and all – and the agenda of the Holy Spirit with the fledgling Church took a
big step forward.
If we fast-forward a couple of chapters, to the 4th
chapter of Acts, we read that the newly energized followers of Jesus got busy
right after that Pentecost day in Jerusalem, speaking Christ’s words of
forgiveness and inclusion, bringing his healing touch to those in distress, and
irritating the same religious leaders who had put Jesus to death. Much was happening, but as things happen when
you’re learning something new, it was still a bit haphazard, they were missing
things and getting ahead of themselves all at the same time. So that first group of Christians prayed for
the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and Acts 4:31 states “When they were finished
praying, the place where they were meeting was shaken. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit,
and began to proclaim God’s message with boldness.”
That boldness is one of the qualities of the Holy
Spirit: the courage to confront with clarity, a quality we saw on full display
yesterday, as protestors south of the border raised their objection to the
actions of their president, including a truly ghastly parade. The Spirit shaped
their words to be clear, courageous, and timely: in that first Christian generation,
and now. Christ’s followers had both the
power and the responsibility to affirm God’s gift of life, to confront
ideologies and individuals who try to squelch the lives of others, to be the
voice for the voiceless, to BE the presence of Christ in a world of need.
That, my friends, is an awesome and humbling
responsibility. At Pentecost we are
reminded that the Holy Spirit has entered not only my life as a follower of
Jesus, but has placed heavy expectations on our gathered life as the
Church. In the words of our new United
Church call statement, the Holy Spirit empowers us to lives of Deep
Spirituality, Bold Discipleship, and Daring Justice. The Spirit calls us to be alert, to be
faithful and knowledgeable and truthful, our hearts and minds fully engaged in
this work even when chaos and disinformation have the upper hand. As we recall that first Christian Pentecost,
we are reminded of the Church’s calling to be the ongoing body of Christ in the
world, summoning our deepest hopes and inspiring us to reach beyond comfort and
propriety in Jesus’ name.
As we consider this calling, in light the 2nd
chapter of Acts, we also have cause to pause, and reflect on the damage that
can be done and has been done when the Church has abused its power. In much of
its life, even now in some parts of the world, the Church has enjoyed the
advantages of coercive power more than its responsibilities of service,
decimating the lives of Indigenous peoples, targeting people of colour, inciting
homophobia, diminishing opportunities for women, and encouraging the shunning
of those who believe differently from the norm.
As those entrusted with Christ’s mission in the world, we Christians
have a lot to answer for, and we pray for God’s own forgiveness as we seek a
new way forward.
At the risk of belabouring this point, the
shortfall between our calling to Christ’s own inclusiveness and our all-too-human
actions is as old as the Church itself. In today’s reading, Acts 2:5 claims that
“every nation under heaven”, or at least every nation with a Jewish connection,
was present at this day of Shavuot/Pentecost. Over the years I have just taken this as fact,
as there are a lot of the place names in the 2nd chapter of Acts. It seems like a pretty complete list, and who
am I to spot if anyone is missing?
Well, this map (https://visualunit.me/2020/05/25/the-nations-of-pentecost/
) places these geographic locations on a map, the places that, taken together,
supposedly constituted the “known world”
at that time and place. But it
wasn’t. In those days, within the Roman
empire there were understood to be three categories of people: there were Greeks/Romans,
there were educated Jews, and then there were “others”. Intellectually at least, there was a degree
of respect between the Jewish leaders and the Greek thinkers, but that respect
was not extended to that broad category of “others”, referred to by the Greek
word BARBAROI… or our English word, BARBARIANS.
The name Barbaroi was intended as an insult toward those who spoke
languages other than Greek and Latin; to those of higher education and greater
political power, the language of these outsiders sounded like blah-blah-blah,
or like a child playing with their lips, and they were summarily dismissed.
The author of the book of
Acts would have known full well there were others beyond the regions named in the
story of the first Christian Pentecost, people well beyond the place names
listed. But those people were, well, barbarians, whose existence didn’t
even warrant a mention. If these “barbarians” lived in Jerusalem or were
amongst the visitors for Shavuot, who cared?
They were just too far outside, too different, and, well, “not good
enough.” Sadly, things have changed
little in 2025.
Don’t get me wrong. I love
the way that the Holy Spirit entered the room on that first Christian Pentecost
and overcame the cultural and linguistic differences between Jesus’ Galilean
disciples, and visitors to Jerusalem. To
this day, Pentecost is a wonderful opportunity in the Church year to underline our
global connections as people of faith, and God’s desire that even the most
challenging differences be overcome. But
this possible exclusion of those regarded as not quite good enough, at that
first Christian Pentecost, reminds us how easily it is for us to replace Christ’s
call for inclusion with the easy, familiar ways of exclusion. Whether it’s
folks from the other side of the track, blue collar vs white collar, left vs right,
heteronormative vs queer, Protestant vs Catholic, Israeli vs Iranian and Palestinian,
boomers vs gen Z, we live with labels and isolation and judgment and violence…
and so, it would appear, did the earliest believers.
But let that be a point of inspiration to be
alive, aware, awake, yes, even “woke.” Today is a day to be renewed by the gift
of the Holy Spirit, a gift which opens our entire selves to the needs of the
world around us As we are lured into a
vortex of hopelessness by the newsfeeds of our very troubled world even as it
activates our compassion when life is lost, the Spirit tells us that true,
empowered engagement is hard, but necessary. As the living body of Christ in
the world, we are called to be open and vulnerable to the world, to learn what’s
going on, and to address it through hands and feet and voices carrying out transformative
acts of love. We have been called and
equipped for solidarity with the marginalized people Jesus spent his time with,
to tell the powerful to back off their harmful agendas just as Jesus did, to
risk our reputations in favour of the radical demands of Christ’s own
love. On this day of Pentecost, amidst
the holy swirl of words and colours and impressive displays of power, we are
called back to the power of love, which revitalizes our commitment to put love
into action every time we can. In the
beauty and boldness of God, Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit: we pray, come,
Lord Jesus, come Holy Spirit, maranatha! and Amen.
References:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70622038yxo
Bible Hub. https://biblehub.com/topical/g/galilean_accent.htm
Davis, D. Mark. https://leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com/2013/05/pentecost-in-contexts.html
https://europe.factsanddetails.com/article/entry-1087.html
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12012-pentecost
Patterson, Stephen J. The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's
Original Struggle Against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism. London: Oxford U
Press, 2018.
Tertin, Ben. https://bibleproject.com/articles/what-is-pentecost-and-why-is-it-important/
Walker, Peter. In the
Steps of Jesus. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006.
© 2025 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United
Church Pastoral Charge
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