Blessed with Power

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say.

Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.

Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.

And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.

The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.

One way of describing Pentecost is to say that the disciples of Jesus were blessed with power by the Holy Spirit. So I want us to think for a few minutes this morning about what it means for us to be blessed with the Spirit’s power. Pentecost wasn’t just something that happened a long time ago. The Spirit comes upon us too, maybe not as dramatically as in that upper room, but nonetheless really. What does that mean for us in today’s world?

Of course, our world is changing all the time and we are especially conscious of that today. This is the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend when we remember many loved ones and brave ones who have passed on, particularly those who died in military service. This is also the season of graduations which cause us to remember the past and think back to the way things used to be. That makes us aware of how much has changed. Today’s world is very different from when this year’s graduates were children or from when some of the men and women we honor tomorrow gave their lives serving their country in past wars. The world is always changing but the rapidity of change over the last half century is unprecedented.

In a book called Resident Aliens, Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon argue that the world really began to change in 1963. Some of us who were living then will recall that as the year President Kennedy was assassinated. That has become the symbol of many changes in our world. But the book suggests the most dramatic change took place that year in a quieter but more powerful way in Greenville, South Carolina.

On a warm evening in the spring of 1963, the Fox Theater in Greenville, South Carolina opened for the first time on a Sunday evening. Seven high school students made a pact that night. They would go to the Methodist Youth Fellowship at the Buncombe Street Church as they always did on Sunday night. They would be sure they were seen and then they would sneak out a side door and join John Wayne at the Fox. With that, the world changed dramatically.[1]

Now probably everyone under the age of forty, maybe even fifty, is wondering: “So what? What’s the big deal?” The big deal is this. There was a time in this country — and it lasted a very long while— when in certain ways the culture backed up what the church was teaching. The church taught that Sunday was a day of rest and a day for worship. So stores were closed on Sunday. Entertainment places were closed on Sunday. Taverns and bars closed early Saturday night and in some places were not open at all on Sunday. Liquor wasn’t sold on Sunday. About the only thing to do on Sunday was read the paper — and I remember my mother frowning on reading the comics because that might mean we weren’t taking the day seriously. Besides reading the paper, we could go to church which we did Sunday morning and again Sunday night.

That world has changed. It changed in Greenville in 1963 and it has changed everywhere. The secular society no longer props up the church. There are no more free passes for religious groups, no more free rides. The Fox Theater went head to head with the church over who provides today’s worldview. That night in 1963, Hauerwas and Willimon argue, the Fox Theater won the opening skirmish in an ongoing war.[2]

So when people talk about America being a Christian nation, that’s the world they are remembering. They remember the world before the Fox Theaters and the shopping malls and modern highways made going places and doing things not a Sunday exception but a Sunday rule. Now there is a lot more to do on Sundays than read the paper and go to church. Our culture is doing those things and not coming to church.

But my point isn’t so much church attendance but the world in which we find ourselves living as Christians. There was a time when American culture tended to reinforce certain Christian values. Now it no longer does. This means, if the Spirit gets hold of our lives, people will notice because we will be living differently than the majority culture around us.

We sometimes think the Holy Spirit has only to do with our inner spirituality or our private piety. But that’s not what happened at Pentecost. Back then everything was “wind and fire, loud talk, buzzing confusion, and public debate.”[3] The power of the Spirit was not private for those first Christians. The power of the Holy Spirit was public and if we are blessed with power, we will stand out in our very different world.

So what does this mean? Those first disciples of Jesus experienced power. A great sound like a rushing wind. Tongues like fire. They communicated in mysterious and powerful ways. And people who represented the whole Mediterranean world began to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. That was power. They called it the Holy Spirit but call it what we like, it was power, power unlike they had ever experienced before. The same power of the Holy Spirit is real today, even in our rapidly changing world.

This means a couple of things. First, it means God is still creating new people. Just think of old Peter trying to explain what was happening. Seven weeks before, when the going got tough, he denied even knowing Jesus. He didn’t do it once. He did it three times. We think of Peter as great and strong but when Jesus really needed him, Peter was the weakest of all. In the hours before Jesus was crucified, Peter couldn’t even stand up to a maid who accused him of being associated with Jesus. So Peter cursed and shouted, “Woman, I do not know him.” (Luke 22.57) And that’s really where we left Peter, weeping in the courtyard.

But just as back in Genesis the Spirit of God breathed life into the dust and created a human being (Genesis 2.7), so in Acts the Spirit breathed the power of forgiveness into a once weak disciple and lifted him from the dust of cowardice. The Spirit created a new man in old Peter and gave him the gift of bold speech so he could stand not just in the presence of a maid but in the presence of all and declare loudly that these things were happening by the power of Jesus Christ. God is still in the business of creating new people and it happens to us today when we open ourselves to the power of the Spirit.

Second, the Spirit’s power is the power to bring together. A lot of scholars have tried to explain what happened on Pentecost and how people from all over the world could apparently understand in their own language what Peter and the others were saying. Some say it was a miracle of hearing. Words were spoken and they were miraculously heard. Others say it was a miracle of speaking. Utterances were made and the sounds actually produced were in different languages. Some just say it was a miracle and don’t worry about the details. Others say that it’s a symbolic story meant to show that the gospel message did in fact find its way into the whole world with all its diversity of language and culture.

I don’t know what happened or how to explain it. But I do know the meaning of what happened. Pentecost reversed the Tower of Babel. Remember that story in the book of Genesis? Human beings became so proud of their accomplishments they decided to build a tower up to heaven so they could go where God was. But God tore down their tower and scrambled human language in order to hinder human pride from vaunting itself again. God knows nothing separates like the barrier of language. In Pentecost, Babel was reversed and the barrier of language was overcome. People were brought together in Christ. That’s the power of the Spirit.

Back in Jerusalem on that Pentecost day so long ago everyone was divided. There were Roman citizens and Jews and the two didn’t mix. There were a few rich and many poor. The two didn’t mix. Within the Jewish people there were Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, and the Am-ha-eretz — the “people of the land” who couldn’t keep many of the strict religious regulations and who were regarded with contempt. And all these, even though they were all Jews, didn’t mix very well. There were men and women and they didn’t mix much except when they had too. And there were children who were often despised and slaves who were hardly considered human. And none of these mixed very well. Nothing brought people together until the gospel of Jesus Christ. Then people began to hear of the love of God in their own language. That’s the Spirit’s power and it’s been happening every since.

The power of God brings people together and it is my belief that whenever we see division and separation, whether in the church or in the world, then that’s a sign that the Spirit is not present. So much divides us today. The Spirit blesses with power to bring people together.

My friends, if we live with the Spirit’s power not everyone will understand us. “These men are drunk.” That’s what they thought about old Peter and his friends one Pentecost day long ago. People said they had too much to drink.

People will say the same about us if we exhibit the Spirit’s power. Oh, they may not call us drunks but they’ll call us a fools. They’ll call us naive. They call us crazy. Or on the flip-side, they may not call us at all and dismiss us as irrelevant for believing that people can still be made new and still come together. Let’s not worry about what we are called. Christ calls us his and blesses us with power in the Holy Spirit. That’s all we need to remember.

[1] Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989) 15-16.

[2] Hauerwas and Willimon, 16.

[3] William H. Willimon, Acts, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1988) 33.