THE Story, OUR Story: Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire
The Day of Pentecost—Acts 2:1-47
Reality, and Then Some
As many of you know, I am a fan of technology. This wasn’t always the case. I used to be skeptical of the tools that people used to get things done more efficiently. And then, I received a diagnosis of ADHD. When you realize that your brain works a little differently than others, and that the world is designed for people who are considered “neurotypical,” it can quickly cause a sense of either inferiority or despair. It was about that time that I was interested in computers for more than just schoolwork. When I was a teenager, I had dabbled with computers a bit, and even an early version of something close to the internet. But it wasn’t until I went to college for the first time and realized that I’m going to need some help in order to make this happen that I looked for solutions to some problems I faced.
The only trouble is that with ADHD, decision-making is not always so straightforward. Decision-making for a person with ADHD can often be a convoluted sort of thing. And for me, it often looks like sampling many options for an extended period, and then finally deciding about what solution to use. In the meantime, things continue as they are. It’s often easier for me to spend lots of time testing tools and shopping for them than it is in using the tools to be productive. Recently, I found myself in a kind of similar situation. My illness back in March seemed to have taken a little of a spring from my step intellectually. It felt as though my brain were working a bit more sluggishly, and I had to put in significantly more effort to get the results that I had prior to being sick. And so, being the type of person I am, I went to look at the technology aisle, well, App Store, to see what might be available to give me a boost, to keep me productive, and to keep me moving in the right direction.
Another thing to know about people with ADHD is that focus on tasks is, well, let me put it this way, squirrel! But seriously, focusing can be a little difficult. And one of these days I must admit I got a bit distracted and started looking at the App Store. And I started coming across all this information about artificial intelligence and augmented reality and virtual reality. I must admit that I was skeptical about all of this stuff. I thought that an attempt to use something like virtual reality, or augmented reality, whatever that is, was an attempt to escape one’s life. It’s important to me, as a pastor, to help people face the challenges that they face in life. Merely putting them aside only prolongs suffering in my experience, and I wish to prevent that in others as well. And so, for the longest time, I was against these types of technology, because they simply aren’t real. We don’t use the word in the same way.
Virtual and Augmented Reality (AR)
Several years ago, on the series Star Trek: The Next Generation, there was an episode about a device that the crew would wear that would somehow enter their brain and cause them to become addicted to a game. Like many Star Trek episodes, this episode highlighted the dangers and the possibilities of technology. I cheered when I saw the episode end and the characters destroy the game. And then my mortification grew when I saw people on the news wearing these headsets that had screens on the inside, walking around in their own living room, bumping into things as they interacted with virtual objects that weren’t real. I thought to myself, “You know, we have medication and treatment facilities for that sort of thing.” Of course, I am talking about virtual reality. And today, the parent company of Facebook tried to create their own synthetic universe in which people could interact. Microsoft has done the same, and other technology companies have attempted to create these virtual realities. They don’t seem to be incredibly popular, except among video gamers. I think that has to do with the fact that physicality is so important to us as human beings. It’s important that we be able to touch and feel and interact with things.
Recently, technology companies have experimented again with this idea of adding something to the reality that we already experience. Today, if you go on to your Amazon app, which I bet some of you have on your phones, I do, there is this button that you can click to see the item in your room, if it’s a piece of furniture, or to visualize this item in your space. This is a technology called augmented reality, where things that don’t exist in our reality are projected or inserted into our everyday lives via the power of technology.
This augmented reality is much more appealing to us as it takes what we ourselves see and interact with in daily life and adds an element or two that doesn’t exist. It shows us possibility, things that might be, if we but click the “Buy Now” button or “Finance for Later” button. And Apple, one of the leading technological companies in the world, has recently created its own version of augmented reality, which is essentially a Macintosh computer that you wear on your face. It is called the Vision Pro. With it, you can interact with your spreadsheets, your photos, your word documents, and a good deal of software by using your body as a control, all while seeing and interacting with a reality that doesn’t quite match what other people see.
Pentecostal Power
By now, you’re probably thinking that Jason has squirreled his way to totally missing the context of the passage that was read this morning. That I perhaps have misunderstood the assignment that I have each week, which is to write a sermon about a specific passage. In reality, however, I have gone about this the long way, with firm intentions and convictions. This week I was attending a meeting in which communication and questions were the focus of my teaching time. I emphasized with my teachers the importance of understanding that the communication we perform with one another can only happen if we get to know the person with whom we are communicating. We must listen actively to what motivates and stimulates with that person’s mind. What goes on inside that person’s head controls how she or he will receive what we are saying, and the same goes for us. Therefore, the more we know about the speaker, the better we will understand them. And I realize something about myself is that I’m rarely self-revelatory. I am shy and introverted, believe it or not. And so, I have started intentionally including more information about myself so that you, the listener, might understand me better and, therefore, my ideas that I’m trying to share with you.
One could describe the disciples before the day of Pentecost in the same way. The disciples, after the death and resurrection of Jesus, by Jesus’ order, had secreted themselves, sequestered themselves, really, in the upper room. Learning from the risen Lord and remaining baffled at the way a new reality was quickly overtaking their existence. Never had humanity faced their future in such a way. The resurrected Christ had modeled for them these 40 days a new way of being human. But I can’t imagine it was easy to take. And I can’t imagine that the disciples were ready to take it to the streets and proclaim this new way of being.
– I think that is why Pentecost had to happen. For the disciples to step outside of their own reality and into the reality of heaven, that heaven that will one day come to earth, t took a miracle—literally. It took an intervention of God’s Holy Spirit, as seen in our text today, to make sense of what had occurred in Jesus. And then, perhaps even harder yet, to talk about what they have seen, heard, and experienced. The events that happened on the day of Pentecost were quite remarkable. Now filled with the Holy Spirit, the disciples could communicate the shocking truth that God had come in the flesh, that humanity, in all of its depravity and violence, had done their worst to God, had indeed killed him, but that God, being who he is, could not remain dead, and that God, in Jesus Christ, was raised to new life and proclaimed to be forever in the right, and that God now was ready to act in and through them to bring about this message to all they met.
Pentecostal Origins
In order to fully understand the events of the day of Pentecost, the in-breaking of the Holy Spirit, and the mission of the Church, we need to take a step back and look at the history of this holiday. Because Pentecost did not begin with Jesus Christ. In fact, Pentecost, or Shavuot, as it is called in Hebrew, is an ancient festival. It is a harvest festival that goes back to God’s own command in the Old Testament.
The festival of Pentecost for the people of Israel was to be a festival of thanksgiving. A festival that reminded them that all that they had received, they had received from God’s own hand. That they were mostly passive in this economy that God had set up. And for that, they should be thankful. This was one of the three obligatory festivals that the Jewish people were required to observe. And by this I mean this was one of the three pilgrimage festivals that required the Israelites to stop what they were doing in life, to halt from their workaday lives, and to travel, to take a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The other festivals are of equal importance. The Passover festival celebrated God’s deliverance from Egypt, and the festival of tabernacles or booths was a festival that reminded Israel of her past, of how she lived in hastily built dwellings while escaping, and yet God, all throughout the story of Israel, was at work providing.
Pentecostal Permutations
One thing that we know about human beings is that human beings like variety and like change, even though we resist change if we see it coming. But when we don’t see change coming, when it happens so gradually, it is welcome and keeps traditions alive. Now you might say, “Well, traditions, isn’t that how we do the same thing over and over because that’s the way we’ve always done it?” Well, actually, that’s not the way things happen. Traditions subtly evolve over the years.
Take recipes, for instance. I’ll bet some of you make recipes that have been in your family for generations. One thing I’m often proud to make is my mother’s stuffing recipe. Well, we called it filling, but some people don’t understand what that is. And explaining exactly the recipe is not my purpose this morning. The reason I bring it up, though, is because between my mother and I, I must admit that I have tweaked that recipe a bit. I have changed the ingredients ever so slightly and the proportions to make it a little more enjoyable for my palate.
In the same way, even sacred traditions evolve over time. The same is true for the festival of Pentecost. While maintaining the same observance, and ostensibly for the same reasons, the people of Israel associated the festival of Pentecost with the idea of a covenant. First, the festival was associated with the covenant that God made with Noah, that God would no longer flood the earth as divine punishment, and that humans and animals must live in a harmonious relationship.
Eventually, however, the festival of Pentecost became associated with God’s covenant with Moses. It is no understatement to say that this covenant undergirds the entire Old Testament. God judges the people of Israel based on how closely they have followed the stipulations and laws found in the Mosaic Law. The prophets praised or lampooned them for their behavior based on their faithfulness to the Mosaic Law.
And while for many of us in freedom-loving America, law is a necessary evil to restrain the worst parts of society, in Israel the opposite was true. The people celebrated the law as something that gave life, as something that allowed Israel to live in the land, that allowed God to dwell in her midst, to be Emmanuel.
Pentecostal Possibilities
And if the tradition would have stopped there, all would have been well. God’s people would continue to be thankful to God, to continue to celebrate the provision that God had given in the wilderness, that God had made a covenant with them, that God had chosen them from among all the peoples of the world to be God’s special possession, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. But the problem is that tradition continued to evolve. And over time, folks rose, thinking that they were the gatekeepers of that law, that they and their interpretation were superior to that of those that had gone before, that they must protect the law at all costs and work to ostracize those that thought differently.
It was this sort of thinking that led the religious authorities to do away with Jesus. Jesus represented all that the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the scribes, and other experts in the law resented. Jesus represented novelty, a new way of approaching the law, a new way of interpreting that law so that it gave life and not the observance of it. There’s a nuance there. For many folks, the rules and regulations had become an end to themselves. The importance of hedging around the law and protecting it surpassed the importance of the law’s author, surpassing even the love of God and neighbor. Means had transformed into the ends.
Corporal Copilot
On the day of Pentecost, God intervened once again to show to all that had come to Jerusalem this festival that their thinking had to change. That day, God used some unlikely vessels to show that God’s power can manifest in any way God chooses. God chooses the foolish things of the world to provoke, to contend with, to debate with the wise. And on the day of Pentecost, God used an imperfect vessel in the person named Peter and his fellows to go and preach to the thousands of people that had arrived in Jerusalem for this festival.
Peter preached, and people listened. Because Peter was no longer acting in his own power. Peter was no longer the stumbling, bumbling fool that only a month earlier had repeatedly denied ever even knowing Jesus Christ. And this after having been an intimate companion with Jesus for years of witnessing events like the transfiguration, the calming of the storm, the feeding of the 5,000. The miracles upon miracles that Jesus made manifest in his ministry. Peter threw it all away to protect himself. And yet God shows once again that God will use anyone to accomplish God’s purposes. As God establishes the church on the day of Pentecost through this imperfect vessel and 3,000 people come into the kingdom.
Friends, the Holy Spirit is there to do the same for us. Now, I don’t mean that the Holy Spirit will work to create in us the profile of a mega-church pastor. That we will be the agents of salvation for thousands of people in our own lives and ministry. But what I mean is that the Holy Spirit is for each and every one of us. The Holy Spirit is the gift of the new covenant. As Paul says, the Holy Spirit is the down payment on all the promises that God has made about the future.
And what is the role of the Holy Spirit in all of this? The Holy Spirit, at first, works in and through us to convict us of our need for grace. It is the Holy Spirit working through grace, what we Methodists call “prevenient grace,” the grace that comes even before we’re aware of it, that works to bring us into alignment with God and God’s purposes, to work in and through us, to create in us a new life, to cleanse us from our unrighteousness and sin, to bring us into conformity with the image of Jesus Christ, the image of the invisible God. To work in us the work of salvation, justification, sanctification, and eventually glorification. All of these deserve sermons of their own. But today, I just want to demonstrate that it is the Holy Spirit that is the agent of these transformations.
Realer Than Real
-The reality of these disciples underwent a permanent change on the day of Pentecost. Peter and John and the others could never look at the world the same way, because they now had Immanuel not merely with them as a presence, but in and working through them. The Holy Spirit had become the co-pilot by which all things have now become possible. The Holy Spirit, like wind in the sails, propelled the early church forward in mission to all the world. And it did so, I would argue, by creating an augmented reality, a virtual reality even. It changed the way the disciples viewed the world. It showed them possibilities that could be and yet were not in existence at that moment. It showed them the world that was to come if they would remain faithful. It showed them the world that they could help God make possible.
In the last book of the Narnia series, written by C.S. Lewis, the main characters encounter the lion Aslan for yet one more time. They are fighting against a false god who desires to destroy everything in Narnia. They even have deceived the people into believing that a pretender is really Aslan. And at the end, the real Aslan shows up, the real lion with power. But he does not intervene in how we would expect. Instead, he changes the way the main characters see the world. I know this sounds odd, but he shows them something realer than real. The reality that always is, yet we cannot see.
My friends, God wants to augment your reality this morning. God wants to take the virtual reality that we talk about on Sunday mornings and make it real in the world. And God can do this through us and the Holy Spirit cooperating. We have been called to be the hands and feet of Jesus, but we don’t operate in our own power. We operate with the power of the Holy Spirit, who comes to indwell us, inspire us, and be the wind in our sails. This power lifts us up on wings like eagles, preventing us from stumbling or growing weary, and renews us.
One day, God will come again. Jesus, in glory, will come again and forever change our reality. Our reality will be realer than real because God will be all in all. Until that day, let us work in the power of the Pentecostal Spirit to go about bringing into existence things that are not, things that should be, things that one day will be. Amen.