The Voice

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

May 23, 2010: Pentecost

The Voice

Acts 2:1-13 

What a story!

It starts out so calmly, the disciples gathered in a home,

all together in one room

 together to observe the Festival of Weeks,

 the day we now call Pentecost,

the day that marked fifty days following the Passover.

Ten days earlier the disciples had watched in stunned silence

as the resurrected Jesus ascended,

was “lifted up” into heaven

after having having spent 40 days with them,

40 days “speaking of the kingdom of God”

and just as important,

telling them to wait patiently for what was to happen,

telling them to wait patiently for the time

when they would receive power by the Holy Spirit.

They heard their Lord, but they didn’t understand;

they walked through each day as though it was a dream,

seeing the Risen Lord, hearing him,

sharing food with him,

but yet…

Following his ascension, they were lost,

not sure what to do or where to go.

The days crawled by.

The most they could manage to do was choose Matthias

to replace Judas as the twelfth disciple.

At least when the day came to mark the

Festival of Weeks, they knew they had something to do.

Thank God for festivals and rituals.

And so they gathered once again in Jerusalem,

all of them still exhausted by the events of the past 50 days.

Each of them a jumble of fear, uncertainty,

passion, desire, impatience.

Each of them trying so hard to remain

attentive to Jesus’ teachings,

yet each of them finding it so difficult to focus.

And then suddenly the scene comes alive,

comes alive in such a wild way we have trouble picturing it:

First, down from heaven came a

 “sound like the rush of a violent wind”

the sound filling the house.

Then “divided tongues,

as if of fire,

appeared,

appeared out of nowhere.

Not fire, Luke is careful to say,

but as if springing from fire,

as if created by fire.

And then each tongue came to rest

on each of the disciples as they sat wide-eyed in amazement.

Just when they thought they had seen it all,

this happens!

What did they feel?

What were they thinking?
Did they even have time to react?

We don’t know.

What we do know is that they all began to talk.

From even the least talkative gushed a torrent of words.

And Luke is again very careful, very precise,

to tell us that they were not “speaking in tongues”,

that phrase we have heard that suggests that each person

was speaking some sort of divinely-inspired gibberish,
glossolalia, a Latin word that mean “babbling”.

No, they were speaking very clearly,

very distinctly --

languages: languages from other parts of the world.

These men who probably knew no other language

beyond their native Aramaic,

were suddenly speaking the language of the Parthians,

the language of the Medes,

the Egyptians and the Cappadocians,

languages from countries far distant,

languages of people and cultures unfamiliar

 to a group of men whose world

was an 80-mile stretch between Jerusalem to the south

and the Sea of Galilee to the north. 

Imagine if suddenly from out of our choir

came words spoken in perfect Spanish, French,

German, Russian,

Mandarin, Swahili.

each choir member speaking a different language,

all of them talking together.

We’d be amazed, and completely baffled,

wondering what was happening!

The disciples were speaking languages of the world,

from nations far distant from Jerusalem,

from nations that knew nothing of the Lord God,

or the Messiah Jesus Christ.

The men chattered away

as though they’d spoken the languages all their lives.

To the ears of those around them

who were unfamiliar with the languages,

they were talking so much gibberish,

babbling as though they were drunk.

How long did they go on talking?
How long did the tongues remain atop them?

Were the tongues visible only to the disciples?

We have far more questions than we have answers. 

But here’s what we do know,

here’s what this passage teaches us:

That on that day the Holy Spirit came upon each person,

the Holy Spirit filled each person,
just as Jesus had promised:

“I will not leave you orphaned,” he said to them

as they gathered for their final meal.

“I will ask the Father

and he will give you another Advocate,

the Spirit,

to be with you forever.

And the Spirit will teach you everything

and remind you of all that I have said to you.”

(John 14:16ff)

All those gathered in that room

were filled with the Holy Spirit.

Given the Spirit both to empower and enable them.

Empower them by gracing them with courage,

with strength, with energy,

the Spirit filling them and in the process

driving out every last trace of

fear, hesitancy, and exhaustion.

And enabling them:

giving them the ability, the words,

even the language skills to take the good news

out into the world, every part of the world,

every corner.

In gracing Peter, James, John, Matthias

and the others with language skills,

do you see what God did?         

God removed the disciples’ inability

to speak across the dividing line of language.

He tore down the barriers and boundaries

of nations and cultures.

                                   

If you have ever traveled in another country

without knowing the language,

you know how lost you feel.

Without knowing the language

you can never truly know another people,

their culture, how they live their lives.

We have all seen cartoons of the tourist referred to as

“The Ugly American”, (Lederer & Burdick)

the person from New York or Ohio or Texas or Colorado

barking at a waiter in a café
in Paris, Rome, Rio de Janiero, Tokyo,
“Why don’t you speak American so I can understand?”

When you know the language of another people,

you can listen to them, talk with them,

 learn from them;

 you can appreciate culture, lifestyles,

 their food – everything,

 in a way you cannot hope to without knowing the language.

                 
After my junior year in college

my older sister and I spent the summer

traveling around Europe.

Between the two of us, we were able to manage France and Italy,

with a passable knowledge of those languages,

but we knew no German as we traveled

through Austria and Germany.

Most of the people we encountered in those countries

spoke passable English so we got along fine,

but we felt like we only skimmed the surface

as we traveled through those countries;

we felt like we were never able to get
beyond a glimpse through a tour-bus window.

God has no interest in the lines on maps

we have drawn,

redrawn,

and drawn yet again

throughout history.

God wants us to live in community,

God wants us to be in communal relationship with one another,

without regard to nation or language or culture.

God wants us all to come together

in peace, reconciliation and harmony.

Now we may not find ourselves immersed in

the instant language course

the disciples found themselves in 2000 years ago,

but we too have been empowered and enabled

just as they were

to break through barriers, boundaries and borders

to reach out in love, kindness, mercy and justice

to all God’s children

without regard for where they live,

what they look like,

or what language they speak.

We have been empowered and enabled by God’s Holy Spirit,

just as those disciples were on the first Pentecost.

Everyone of us filled with the Spirit,

Everyone of us a spiritual person.

The Spirit empowers and enables us to do what God calls us to do,
but only if we give the Spirit room to work within us;

only if we are attentive to the Spirit,

only if we are attentive to that voice
that is always talking to us,

leading us, guiding us.

Every one of us is a spiritual person,

all of us spiritual by definition.

Now you may be thinking

“I’m not a spiritual person,

but John Smith/Jean Jones – there’s a spiritual person.”

The only difference between us

and someone we might refer to as “spiritual”

is that that person is purposfully attentive to the Spirit,

listens to the Spirit,

opens himself or herself to the guidance and call of the Spirit.

The difference between us and a “spiritual” person

is that the “spiritual” person has hung up the cellphone,

turned off the television,

unplugged the earbuds,

logged off Facebook,

stopped Tweeting,

and opened his or her ears, eyes,

heart and mind to the voice of God
that speaks constantly to us through the Spirit.

The spiritual person is not someone

with a tongue of flame hovering above,

or a dove descending from the heavens.

He or she is simply someone who is more interested

in listening to God,

than in listening to the noise that fills our lives.

Open yourself to the Spirit,

open yourself to the voice that is calling, speaking

to you, to each of us ,

calling us to build community,

community rich in the diversity that only God could create.

a community alive with the Spirit.

That’s just what the disciples did after that first Pentecost:

Before we finish chapter two, the community of disciples

had grown from a handful to more than 3,000,

adding not just Israelites, but Samaritans,

Romans, Greeks, Parthians, Medes,

Egyptians, Libyans: any and all who came,

any and all who came in response to the voice

that called them, they voice they attended to.

Every one of us is a spiritual person,

every one of us filled with the Holy Spirit,

just as Jesus promised we would be.

The Spirit enabling and empowering us

to do such extraordinary things,

things we couldn’t do without the Spirit.

things like loving, welcoming,

accepting, forgiving.

                                                                       

All we have to do is give the Spirit room

all we have to do is pay attention;

all we have to do is listen…. listen

for even now the voice is speaking.

Can you hear it?
Can you hear it?

Amen