Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-june-19-2025
Acts 2:1-8 and 11-21
The Holy Spirit Comes at Pentecost
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in their own language. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? 11 We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”
13 Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”
Peter Addresses the Crowd
14 Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. 15 These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! 16 No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
17 “‘In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
18 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.
19 I will show wonders in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood and fire and billows of smoke.
20 The sun will be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.
21 And everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord will be saved.’
The coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost is obviously one of the most important events in the history of the church. It’s so important that the church devotes one Sunday of the year to commemorating it — it was actually the Sunday before last. The account of the coming of the Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles is a longer-than-usual passage for us to base a daily Reflection on, but It seems to me we need to read and think about it all together on one day. So when we’re thinking about the Pentecost story, I usually leave out the long list of languages the followers of Jesus were empowered to speak when the Spirit came upon them. It seems sufficient to say it was a lot of languages.
One aspect of the story that’s sometimes overlooked by Christian readers is that Pentecost was an established Hebrew holy day before the event we associate with it. Pentecost was the 50th day after the Passover. That means it would have been an occasion for observant Jews to come to Jerusalem from all over the region. That helps to explain the wide variety of languages mentioned in the text.
So, having said all that, the important question for us to ask is what the story means to us as 21st century followers of Jesus.
First of all, I think we’re meant to notice that when the church really was ignited in its ministry – when it really sprang to life as a movement – that happened because the followers of Jesus were acted upon by an outside force. It was the action of the Holy Spirit of God, not the result of human planning or action. In fact, as we said a couple of days ago thinking about the selection of Mathias to replace Judas Iscariot, when the apostles did things on their own accord it all came to nothing. But Luke (who compiled the Acts of the Apostles) wants us to understand that Pentecost was an “act of God.” The Spirit came, and then the disciples exploded into the world by its power.
American followers of Jesus are conditioned by our culture to believe that if we’re thoughtful and hard-working, we’ll become more and more virtuous people and the church will become more and more successful. But the story of the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost shows that any confidence we might have in our own initiative or hard work is misplaced. Anything the church might accomplish is really an accomplishment of God, who is at work in the world, even today, in the form of the Holy Spirit.
The officers of our church have been reading and thinking about a book by Presbyterian leader Joan Gray, in which she compares churches that operate like row boats — dependent on the efforts of their members – to churches that operate like sailboats — driven by the power of the Spirit. She points out that the ones that really change lives and affect the world are those that rely on the Spirit, not on themselves.
I think we’re also meant to notice that in sending the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, God was making a symbolic connection with the ways he had demonstrated his glory throughout history. Ever since he appeared to Moses in the burning bush, the symbol of God’s glory had been fire. When God led the people through the desert, it was in smoke and fire. And when God called the people to an assembly, he would come down onto the top of a mountain in the form of fire. The Hebrews even have a word for the glory of God. The word is shekinah, and it’s always represented as a holy fire.
Then on Pentecost, fire appeared again, but now in a new way. Now those tongues of fire were distributed on all the assembled believers. Not just on the leaders, but on all the followers of Jesus. I can’t help thinking that was meant as a sign – a sign that from now on, the glory of God would not be revealed by a few members of the inner circle. From that moment on, the glory of God would be revealed by the lives of all of his Son’s followers.
The gift of being able to speak in other languages seems like a terribly important aspect of the story. The phenomenon of ‘speaking in tongues’ seems to me to represent a misunderstanding of what happened on Pentecost. I can understand why the early church remembered it as an occasion of confused babbling – a whole bunch of people started excitedly speaking different languages at the same time. Of course it would sound like confused babbling.
But it seems to me that God was giving the church a new and important tool: the ability to tell the story of Jesus to people of other cultures. I’m skeptical that God ever intended to give believers a way to hold secret conversations with himself. As you might remember, even the apostle Paul admitted that he was skeptical about the value to the church of “speaking in tongues.”
Throughout history, the followers of Jesus have had a greater commitment than any other faith group to speaking to people in their own languages. That’s why the Christian Bible has been translated into almost every known language – and why the followers of Jesus have been the greatest movement for literacy in human history. And it all started with the coming of the Spirit on Pentecost, when God empowered his Son’s followers to tell the world about Jesus with the gift of languages.
I can’t help thinking of that for those of us in the church today, that probably means more than just translating the word into foreign languages. It probably also means telling the story of Jesus in the plain words of ordinary people, without a lot of ‘churchy,’ religious language that means something to us but nothing to the unchurched. We should be conscious that many of our ‘Christian words’ like redemption and fellowship don’t mean the same thing to people outside the church as they do to us.
I think we should also take a minute to think about the fact that those who observed the behavior of the disciples on the day of Pentecost misinterpreted their behavior as drunkenness. As we said when we thought about this story on Pentecost Sunday recently, it’s important to keep in mind that when the Spirit is at work in people, they might seem a little more disorderly than usual. Maybe that’s the Spirit’s way of breaking us out of ‘the way we’ve always done things.’
Even for those of us who don’t consider ourselves ‘Pentecostals,’ when you really dig into the story of Pentecost, there are a lot of important aspects of the story that still apply to the life of faith in the 21st century.
Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you for the continuing work of the Holy Spirit among us. We invite you to continue to work in our individual lives, and in our life together, so that we can show your glory to the world and tell everyone the story of Jesus in words they will understand. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
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