265 That's Fire!

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “That’s Fire!”, originally shared on May 24, 2023. It was the 265^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Have you ever heard someone say, “that’s fire!” to say that something is really fantastic? The birthday of the Christian Church was fire! Except it wasn’t, at least not in the way most people think of it. Today, we’re going to find out why.

   When someone says that he’s going to die and then rise from the dead to live forever, and he says that no will take his life but that he will give it and then take it back again, and then that happens, you’d think that nothing in this weird world could ever approach that for weirdness. Fifty days after Jesus rose from the dead, he changed the world. Again. It was the Day of Pentecost, the birthday of the Church.

   Last Sunday was my birthday. I turned 75. Birthdays are a big deal, especially that one, though some have suggested that it’s our mothers who are the ones who should be celebrated on our birthdays, since WE didn’t do anything to get born. 😊    And, in a way, that’s who we are celebrating this coming Sunday. We are celebrating God’s giving birth to the Christian Church.

   The Day of Pentecost is the last Sunday in the Easter season.

   The word “Pentecost” comes from the Greek word for “fiftieth”. The Day of Pentecost described in the Bible was on the Jewish festival of Shavuot, held on the fiftieth day from the first day of Passover. Then, it celebrated the offering of the first fruits of the winter wheat harvest at the Temple in Jerusalem. This was Herod’s Temple and the massive Temple complex covered 35 acres. People from all over the world came for this celebration and also to see the building, a wonder of the world at that time. The crowds were massive, with some estimating crowds of 250,000 people!

   The disciples were hiding in a house in Jerusalem. And then this happened in Acts 2:1-4,

2 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ² 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. ³ Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

   It’s interesting to note that in both the Hebrew language in which what we call the Old Testament was written and the Koine Greek language in which the New Testament was written, there are two words, “ruach” in Hebrew and “pneuma” (from which we get our words “pneumonia” and “pneumatic”) in Greek, have the same three meanings for both words: wind, breath, and spirit.

   We see it within the Gospel lesson for this coming Sunday, in John 20:22-23, speaking of Jesus,

²² When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³ If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

   It was the gift of the Holy Spirit in a sort of “mini-Pentecost” in his breath.

   On the day of Pentecost, the sound of the wind came and the breath of God that brought life from clay to make human beings was present, and the Holy Spirit, “filled the entire house where they were sitting.”

   It was fire!

   Tongues of fire rested on each of the disciples.

   Why didn’t their hair catch on fire?

   I remember when one of the member families in a church I served lived in a house on the edge of open country when a wildfire came to their neighborhood one howling windy night. The fire department arrived to fight the fire and recommended that everyone on their cul-de-sac leave. They decided to stay and fight the fire with their garden hoses for as long as they could.

   Some were on the roof, and some were on the ground, watching for embers and extinguishing them with their garden hoses.

   At some point, the fire ran up the side of a palm tree and when it reached the dry top the tree exploded. Embers blew everywhere around the area and one of them landed on the head of a neighbor who was also on the roof of his house.

   He apparently used a significant amount of hair spray and had a lot of blown-dried hair on the top of his head because when his hair started burning, he didn’t feel it right away.

   So, our member and his sons yelled at him, “Your hair is on fire!” but it was so windy he couldn’t hear them. So they continued yelling, “Your hair’s on fire!” and he didn’t hear them. But a firefighter standing on the ground heard them, saw the guy with his hair on fire, and turned his fire hose on the guy and knocked him off the roof!

   Why weren’t the disciples running around in a panic when they saw tongues of fire on each other?

   Because it was holy fire. God was present in that holy fire.

   Remember when Moses encountered the burning bush in the wilderness, in Exodus 3:2-6?

² There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. ³ Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up.” ⁴ When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” ⁵ Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” ⁶ He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

   The tongues of fire that didn’t consume the disciples was the presence of God. Look what happened next, “⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”

   They left their refuge and went out to where the people were. They began their ministries with nothing but the Holy Spirit because it was all they needed.

   So, what had just happened?

   Remember the Tower of Babel?

   After the Flood, people began to repopulate the earth, but they didn’t spread out. The all had the same language, and they were all concentrated in one place. This homogeneity and concentration led them to be full of themselves. The same hubris that does us in again and again.

   They decided that, since they knew how to make strong bricks and mortar, they could build a tower tall enough to let people get into heaven without God. And how did that work out? We see in Genesis 11:8-9,

 ⁸ So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. ⁹ Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

   So, what does that have to do with the Day of Pentecost? That Pentecost story continues in Acts 2:5-8,

⁵ Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶ And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷ Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸ And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?

   The consequence of the attempted building of the Tower of Babel is reversed. People from all over the world come together and hear the same Gospel message being proclaimed in their own language.

   This isn’t speaking in tongues. This isn’t people speaking a language that they haven’t studied. It’s something totally different. This is more like the Star Trek simultaneous translator, where the disciples spoke in their language, but God made it so that every other person present heard the same message about the good news of Jesus Christ in their language.

   Last week, churches heard about how Christ prayed that all his faithful people might be one. We are like spokes on a wheel with Christ as the hub of the wheel. The farther away we get from Christ, the farther we get from one another. The closer we get to Christ the closer we get to one another until, at the center, we are all one in Jesus Christ.

   We see, on this last Sunday in the Easter season, another example of oneness under God’s grace and by God’s doing, in Jesus Christ!

   I would guess that there are many languages spoken among the members of our churches. English? Spanish? Chinese? Tagalog? Vietnamese? Korean? Armenian? Persian? Norwegian?

   And yet, we all understand one another at the deepest level through our common relationship with the one true living God in the Holy Spirit.

   I’ve been trying to learn Mandarin after serving a church in Monterey Park for 10 months recently, and I want to help build bridges at a time of global tensions and to help support the growing numbers of Christians who speak Mandarin, the most spoken language in the world. But it’s hard for me to not just speak but to think in Mandarin, because it’s not my native language.

   My grandmother told me that after her family emigrated from Norway, they lived in a part of Wisconsin where there were many Norwegian people and her family spoke Norwegian at home. Eventually, she remembered , they decided that they would switch to English because they were in America now.

   But, she told me, her mother, my great grandmother, always prayed in Norwegian because she wasn’t sure that God understood the new language as well as he knew Norwegian! 😊

   We speak many languages today because, like the first disciples, we want to reach the world with the one language that unites everybody: the presence of God in the language of the Holy Spirit.

   Have you every worshipped in a language you didn’t understand, or at least didn’t understand well? You knew what was going on, though, even if you didn’t understand a word, because the same Holy Spirit speaks to us all.

   Our message, the message of the Day of Pentecost, is that in our broken world, filled with economic uncertainty, the war in Ukraine, threats of world war, rising homelessness, fear of crime, environmental calamities, gun violence, and a global pandemic, God’s answer is Jesus.

   In a culture that is fragmented, where we often find it impossible to speak about how to resolve these issues without soon shouting at each other, God’s answer is Jesus.

   The closer we get to Jesus, the closer we get to one another, until we are all one in Jesus.

   How does the Day of Pentecost story end? Peter speaks to the gathered crowd and shares the good news of Jesus. And this happens in Acts 2:37-42,

³⁷ Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” ³⁸ Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹ For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” ⁴⁰ And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” ⁴¹ So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. ⁴² They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

   The way we number our years in the Western world is built around the coming of Jesus. We live in the year 2023 A.D., “Anno Domini” in Latin, “the Year of Our Lord” in English. Jesus was born, fully God and fully human being.

   The Day of Pentecost, the Birthday of the Christian Church through the coming of the Holy Spirit, that we will celebrate this Sunday comes on the fiftieth day after Easter in the Christian Church. The Holy Spirit continues to call, gather, and enlighten the whole Christian Church on earth. We are equipped and sent into the world with everything we need to be the church. All the Church needs to be the Church is the Holy Spirit.

   I saw a story online recently about a professor who said that he wanted to create a nice cozy atmosphere in his classroom with a fireplace video, so he hooked it up. But when the video appeared on the five large video screens on the walls, he said that it looked like he was teaching in hell! 😊

   That’s the destructive kind of fire. The fire of the Holy Spirit is the fire that does not consume but instead brings life.

   The Day of Pentecost is measured from the resurrection of Jesus, the most important day in human history.

   Human beings had rejected God and brought evil into the world. We broke the relationship with God that we had been given by God. Jesus paid the price on the cross to restore that relationship for all who repent and believe and are baptized. The resurrection showed that Jesus is God and that he could reconcile human beings to God by his death. And his resurrection means that we too will rise. Our eternal life began in our baptism through the faith that came as God’s gift.

   Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:17-20,

¹⁷ If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. ¹⁸ Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. ¹⁹ If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

²⁰ But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.

   Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! And because he is risen, we too shall rise to newness of life now and to life everlasting!

   May this coming Sunday, the Day of Pentecost in the year of Our Lord 2023, be a celebration of the Holy Spirit and a recommittal of your Christian Community to the sharing of the good news of Jesus Christ.

   Open your heart to the same Holy Spirit that brought us into being as the Church. Be formed and be guided and be defined by it every day.

   May we seek to understand one another and to encourage one another in the common language of the Holy Spirit within us. And may it be a day of renewal in our love for God and for the world. May our lives be fire!