Sermon: The One With All the Languages

  

First Presbyterian Church

May 24, 2026, Pentecost A

Numbers11:24-30; Acts 2:1-21

 

The One with All the Languages

 

 

One of the things that sometimes needs to be set straight about Pentecost is that no, this is not the first time the Holy Spirit is invoked in scripture. Today's first reading provides one such counterexample, as a stressed-out Moses pleads for help and God invokes that Spirit to be bestowed upon seventy elders of the people of Israel so that they might share some of the burden of leadership. That Spirit's appearance is made manifest in an outburst of frenetic prophesying, one that spills over to include two men back in the camp, not numbered among those seventy. Joshua (in a typical fit of church leadership) wants to have those two men silenced and that unexpected outburst of Holy Spirit squelched, but Moses (in a typical fit of pastoral weariness) stuffs that idea, crying out that he wished everyone could prophesy. It's not how we typically expect to see the Spirit play out, to be sure, especially since this prophetic outburst is only a one-time thing, but it still serves to remind us that the Holy Spirit is not a new thing as the disciples show up for this Pentecost morning.

While the Holy Spirit isn't new in this case, there are certainly some distinctive features of this particular Spirit-event that are worth noting on this one day of the liturgical year when the Spirit comes to the forefront. The Ascension of Jesus got all of four words in the ancient creeds ("he ascended into heaven"), and in one case the Holy Spirit doesn't do a lot better. The Apostles' Creed, one of the oldest statements of faith in Christendom, has this to say on the subject:

 

I believe in the Holy Ghost...

 

That's it. Thankfully the Nicene Creed does a bit better, giving a whole paragraph to the subject. The church has some history of not really paying attention to this particular member of the Trinity, perhaps to its own harm; it is the Spirit most of all that is the most direct participant in the day-to-day life of the follower of Christ, and it is this Pentecost in-breaking of the Spirit that marks the ongoing truth of this presence and participation.

Since we last heard from this group, we know that they have indeed remained inJerusalem as they were instructed. Acts also mentions in an interesting aside that they elected one of their number to replace Judas, the traitor against Jesus whose grisly death is reported in an aside. And they have waited, probably wondering what exactly they were waiting for (as noted last week). Now they're about to find out.

The description itself lingers: "a sound like the rush of a violent wind"; "divided tongues, as of fire"; and then, the sound of all the languages.

Let's be clear; this group of followers is speaking languages they don't know, but that other peoples outside of Judea or Palestine do speak. Ecstatic utterances in tongues that require interpretation (what we commonly call "speaking in tongues") come later in Acts; this event is one of miraculous speech and hearing.

Those tongues matter because just outside their windows there is a crowd of folks gathered in Jerusalem for the festival of the harvest that was Pentecost in the Jewish tradition, a group ripe to hear something good each in their own language.

Have you had that experience of being in a crowd with people speaking any language but your own? The particular challenge of this was pressed home for me many years ago when I was in Quebec City for a conference back in my academic days. The conference itself was held in English but going out for dinner or frankly anything else meant being among French speakers. While some also spoke English well enough to understand me, that wasn't always the case. I'm horrible with languages, and French is one of my worst. At least in this case the worst that came of it was that I declined the sugar I very much wanted for my coffee.

These people were Jews from, as a Judean would have seen it, all over the world. The list of locations provided here literally denotes a whole range of nationalities from the east, north, west, and south of Jerusalem, a way of evoking that which we sometimes metaphorically call "the four corners" of the world. Before these followers of Jesus get sent out into the world, the world has come to them. And because of this outburst of the Holy Spirit, the world at the windows is able to hear good news, each in their own language.

This is not always a thing the church or the world has taken to heart. The Western world in particular has a particular imperial history of forcing their own languages upon those peoples whom they encounter, or frequently whom they conquer. On the North American frontier, those seeking to drive out or subjugate the Native peoples made a very specific and fixed point of pushing to eradicate the languages those so-called "savages" spoke. An Indian, in the vernacular of the time, could only be tolerated if every trace of "Indian-ness" was driven out of them, and it was presumed that one of the surest ways to do so was to take away their language, especially in the "Indian" schools that appeared on those frontiers. (I first learned of these schools while down in Lawrence, KS, where one such school was eventually changed into the current Haskell Indian Nations University, there were two such schools in Illinois in the late 19th century). The students at such schools were forbidden to speak their own language, being forced to speak English, or possibly French in Canadian schools. This, of course, was in addition to numerous other oppressions visited upon them, quite literally as a means of separating them from their families and their peoples for good.

What happens in today's scripture is the complete and total opposite of that act of emotional violence. Those seekers who came to Jerusalem, thanks to the working of the Holy Spirit, were welcomed in their own languages. They weren't stripped of who they were, weren't denied their own humanity and worth, in order to hear the gospel. One could even say that this Holy Spirit outbreak was for these listeners, the ones who heard the commotion of that sound like a violent wind and wondered what was going on, as much as it was for these followers of Jesus, or maybe even more so.

We don't really know how it worked from here forward, as the believers (including possibly those who became believers on this day) were scattered from Jerusalem into, well, all the world. There were certainly going to be language barriers to be faced as these followers of Christ spread further and further out from Judea. But these followers knew from experience that the Holy Spirit would find a way for them to communicate with those waiting to hear the gospel.

Do we actually believe that? It can be a scary thing to find ourselves in a world where, more and more, it seems like most folks out there aren't speaking our "language," whether literally or more figuratively. While Pentecost can mean an awful lot of different things in the life of the church, sometimes it can be hard to remember that the Holy Spirit has experience with helping Christ's followers find the right language to speak, if we will listen and submit to that work. It might be disruptive, and it might take us out of our comfort zones, but it has been done, and it can be done.

At the same time, the Holy Spirit also has that experience of preparing those who listen, those who seek to hear, those who call upon the name of the Lord, to be able to hear that word in their own language and to be ready to respond.

For all the languages, and the Spirit's ability to speak them, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #289, On Pentecost They Gathered; #291, Spirit, Spirit of Gentleness; #280, Come, O Spirit, Dwell Among Us

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sermon: Now What?

First Presbyterian Church

May 24, 2020, Easter 7A

Acts1:1-14

 

Now What?

 

The waiting is the hardest part

Every day you see one more card

You take it on faith; you take it to the heart

The waiting is the hardest part

 

I can't possibly tell you how much fun it was for this novice pastor when Scripture and circumstance came together in such a fashion that I was finally able to quote a Tom Petty song lyric in a sermon given in that singer's hometown of Gainesville, Florida.

Waiting is one of those things that is easy to overlook unless you're in the middle of it. For example, accounts of D-Day focus on the crossing of the English Channel, the fierce battles to hold the beach at Normandy and finally to move inland against ferocious enemy fire. Less often recalled are the weeks and months of planning and preparation and, yes, waiting, for weather to be better, for the Channel to be crossable. Yet without the patience to endure that time of waiting and preparation – had the invasion been launched against an impassable crossing or impenetrable weather, D-Day would have come to naught (and who knows how different history would look?).

No matter our eagerness, no matter our desperation (or what seems like desperation), no matter what, there are times when we simply must wait.

This is where the followers of Jesus find themselves at the end of today's reading from the book of Acts. A lot has happened in these few verses, where the author Luke has filled in a few details that he didn't include in his first account of the Ascension, at the end of his gospel (including that Jesus spent forty days with the disciples, not just one). The disciples ask a question (one that demonstrates that they, after all this time, really don't get it), Jesus brushes it off, offers up the promise of verse 8 that also includes a charge that will change their lives forever (if they haven't already been so changed), and is lifted up to heaven. Some angels (we think?) chastise the disciples for staring up into the sky (which seems unfair to me; it's not every day you see something like this!) and promise that one day Jesus will return the same way they've just seen him depart.

With those words ringing in their ears, the followers make the short trip back into Jerusalem, return to the "room upstairs" where they have been staying (maybe the same "upper room" where they had that last supper where Jesus broke the bread and shared the cup and gave them that new commandment about doing in remembrance of him, but we don’t know for sure), and there they waited.

Waiting for…what? It's entirely possible, maybe even likely, they didn't know what they were waiting for.

Jesus had told them to wait, way back in verse 4. He told them to wait for "the promise of the Father." In the next verse he tells them that they will be "baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." (This is an echo of a promise from the end of the gospel account, Luke 24:47, in which Jesus says that repentance and forgiveness of sin is to be "proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem") A couple of verses down back in Acts, just before he is lifted up, he makes that big promise that "you will receive power…and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." And finally there was that angelic promise that Jesus would return one day just the way he had left.

Yet it's quite likely, if the disciples were honest with themselves, that they had no idea what any of those things meant. So, not much to do but follow Jesus's orders, and wait.

The eleven disciples aren't alone at this point. Luke observes that "certain women" were joining them, including Jesus's mother Mary, who hasn't shown up in Luke's story since the trip to Jerusalem back in chapter 4 of the gospel, where twelve-year-old Jesus got separated from the family and took up residence as the Temple's youngest visiting scholar. We can guess that the "certain women" probably included at least the same women who had shown up at certain points in the gospel narrative, such as Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, an unknown woman named Joanna, and others who were mentioned in Luke 23-24 as coming to the tomb to prepare his body with spices only to find the tomb empty. Also, Jesus's brothers are now included in the company.             

And…they wait.

Biblical scholar Beverly Gaventa makes a wonderful point about verse 14 in its original Greek. The verb for the first part of the sentence actually has a root meaning of "persist"; read this way the first part of the sentence tells us that "these were all persisting together."[i] Persisting together. Now that's an image, made all the more powerful with the addition of the words "to prayer." Persisting together to prayer.

Prayer's never a bad idea, of course, but perhaps in a time of "nothing to do but wait" it's all the more powerful a recourse. I suspect, though, that we're not talking about any old kind of prayer.

There is the kind of prayer that is familiar from your average church service, like this one – spoken out loud, directed toward God, with some statement of praise or petition at its core. We speak the Lord's Prayer together, or there's an opening Prayer of the Day or a Prayer for Illumination before the scripture is read. In Prayers of the People there is a space for prayer that does at least outwardly consist of silence, in which we are all invited to lift up prayers of intercession. Those are all good and needful prayers, but I suspect that's not necessarily the prayer this little company of Jesus's followers was most in need of praying in this time.  

Several years ago the best-selling author Anne Lamont authored a book that developed the idea that most prayers can be boiled down to one of three essential prayers, which were encapsulated in the book's title: Help Thanks Wow.

That's not a bad summary of prayer, and one could argue that the Lord's Prayer actually summarizes all three of those facets quite nicely. Still, though, I'm going to suggest there's something slightly different at play in the followers' persisting together in prayer during this waiting time, and maybe that might need to be a large part of our prayer in our own current waiting time. How's this for a prayer:

Now what?

Yes, Anne Lamont could probably argue it's a kind of "help" prayer, but I think there's something different at play. It's not a prayer about getting help with some specific thing. In fact, it isn't necessarily a prayer where we ask for much of anything at all.

It's not a prayer about getting back to normal or returning to anything, not about restoring or regaining or re-anything at all. The primary principle of this prayer is to wait for that promised baptizing with the Holy Spirit (whatever that means), for that power (whatever that means). Somehow, we trust that there is something wrapped up in Jesus's words that we don't understand or grasp in any way, but we trust, somehow, that whatever is behind it really is the Lord's doing.

Now what? We wait. We persist together. We pray. We can't say for sure exactly what we wait for, or what we pray for. But we wait, persist together, pray. And what happens?

To be continued.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #264, At the Name of Jesus; #---, When they saw their Teacher lifted; #260, Alleluia! Sing to Jesus

 

 

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[i] Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Acts (Abingdon New Testament Commentaries Series, Abingdon Press, 2003), 68.

 

Sermon: You Had Me Until That Resurrection Bit

First Presbyterian Church

May 10, 2026, Easter 6A

Acts17:16-34

 

You Had Me Until That Resurrection Bit

 

 

Paul found himself in Athens as today's reading begins, and it wasn't exactly his idea. First he had been run out of Thessalonica on a rail, then when he and his partners seemed to be making headway in Beroea, some of his opponents in Thessalonica found out and traveled there to stir up opposition and (hopefully) violence against Paul as they had in their own town. The newly-hatched community of believers in Beroea got Paul out of town fast, while his partners Silas and Timothy stayed behind to help get everything back in order. Ultimately Paul was deposited in Athens, more or less with the instruction to sit tight and stay out of trouble. As you can imagine, Paul was not the type who had even the slightest inclination to stay out of trouble.

Athens did have a synagogue, so Paul went there first, according to his usual pattern. His usual pattern of getting in trouble, though, got interrupted when some of the regulars in the marketplace got wind of what he was up to. Athens had what might be called an active public debate scene, and Athenians of various religious or philosophical systems (including some Epicureans and Stoics, as our author notes) jumped into the intellectual fray. Finally it was decided by the locals that this babbler of foreign deities might at least have something different to say, so he was hauled off to the ancient hill of debate known as the Areopagus.

At one time being hauled off to the Areopagus could be a matter of life or death, but by this time that no longer appears to have been the case. At any rate Paul was granted the opportunity to explain himself before the council there, and this speech became one of his most famous, even if it was one of his least typical.

What stands out about this speech is the degree to which Paul adapted his message to the intellectual and philosophical background of his hearers. He begins by acknowledging the plethora of idols offered up by the city, perhaps with tongue somewhat in cheek. By seizing upon one such idol – the one with the unprepossessing label "to an unknown god" – Paul forms a quick connection with his hearers, and from there proceeds through Athenian thought to approach the idea of a god unlike those the Athenians tended to idolize (and here that word really is being used literally). He quotes from their own literature; the phrase "in him we live and move and have our being" is taken from the ancient poet Aratus (although it was requoted many times in their literature), and the following "we too are his offspring" also appears in Greek literature frequently. And if we are the offspring of this god, it makes no sense to think of this god being reducible to wood or stone, does it?

Things seem to be going pretty well, initially. Paul actually identifies with his audience about as much as possible and certainly shows respect for their own intellectual and philosophical traditions. Still, there's only so far you can go in "accounting for the hope that is within you" before you end up having to say something that your interlocutor will disagree with, and Paul is now to that point.

First there is this notion of repentance and judgment, which wasn't really a part of most belief systems among the Athenians, and probably brought about some grumbling on the part of his audience. But that wasn't the worst of it, not by a long shot. Who's going to be the one who carries out this judgment in righteousness? No less than "a man who he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance by raising him from the dead." This is what broke up the meeting.

Some, as our author tells us, scoffed. Scoffing can take many forms; outright out-loud mockery, or a subtler but more dismissive "pfft" and walking away, or even just an incredulous facial expression. Whatever it was, that element of the audience was gone, intellectually if not physically.

It's important to understand something here. It isn't merely the idea of resurrection as a thing itself that underscores all the mockery. It isn't just about the reaction "bodies don't rise from the dead!"; there is, as would be the case with any good audience steeped in Greek philosophical traditions, an equal if not greater reaction "why would you want a body to rise from the dead?", or perhaps more by the far more succinct expression "oh, gross!" Greek thought (or at least some corners of it) had no particular problem with the idea of living beyond death, but frankly one of the good parts of such a post-mortem life was being free from the physical body. Disembodied spirit was the ideal.

We should be honest here; we're not always free of such an idea. After all, what is reflected in a saying like "shuffle off this mortal coil" besides the very idea of being rid of this broken-down old body? And if we're honest about it, it's not hard to be sympathetic to the idea. After the various breakings-down my body has experienced in the past decade-plus I can understand wanting to be rid of it, and I'm guessing some of you can too.

Paul goes into more detail on this in some of his epistles when he speaks of how "we will not all die, but we will all be changed" in writing to the Corinthians. But here, the event dissolves over this notion that a large part of the audience just can't accept. A large part, but not all; some were curious to hear more, and even a few followed, including one of the Areopagus regulars named Dionysius and a woman named Damaris. Sounds like a mixed result, I suppose, but at least they didn't chase him out of town.

But again, there comes that point when our testimony has to tell the whole story, even the parts that seem wild and fantastical and unbelievable to some of those with whom we share. As we make our way through this season of Easter, that one thing – the whole God-raised-him-from-the-dead business that so offended some of Paul's audience at the Acropolis – is still too much of a hurdle for many moderns to get over. But as Paul put it, again writing to the Corinthians, "if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain." It's hard to make any kind of good news out of a resurrection-less gospel.

And, even in this time with death a far more immediate companion than we normally acknowledge, our hope is still in the assurance that death did not have the last word for Jesus and will not have the last word on us.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #244, This Joyful Eastertide; #251, Christ Has Arisen, Alleluia; #485, We Know that Christ Is Raised