311 Setting Fire to The Rain

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Setting Fire to The Rain” originally shared on May 15, 2024. It was the 311^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Adele had a hit song with “Set Fire to the Rain” about a toxic moment in a relationship. Today, we’re going to find out why those words are also an excellent way to describe the restoration of a relationship on the Day of Pentecost.

   Adele Laurie Blue Adkins, known throughout the world as “Adele”, is a popular singer who has had many international hits.

   One of them, “Set Fire to the Rain”, is about an argument with her boyfriend. She says that she went outside to smoke a cigarette so that her boyfriend couldn’t see how angry she was. (She later said that smoking was ruining her health, and that it was hard on her voice, so she gave up smoking for good.) Her boyfriend said that she wouldn’t be able to light that cigarette in the rain, but she did it. “Set Fire to the Rain” was about her mood.

   This coming Sunday, churches all over the world will be celebrating the Day of Pentecost, the birthday of the Church. We’ll hear about it, from Acts 2:1-21, and it’s kind of a weird story.

   Because, when someone says that he’s going to die and then rise from the dead to live forever, and he says that no one 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.

   Yet, fifty days after Jesus rose from the dead, he changed the world. Again. It was the Day of Pentecost, the birthday of the Church.

   I have a birthday coming up. Birthdays are times for celebration, though some have suggested that it’s our mothers who are the ones who should be celebrated on our birthdays, not us, since WE didn’t do anything to get born. 😊

   And, in a way, that’s what we are celebrating this coming Sunday. We are celebrating God’s giving birth to the Christian Church. We are celebrating the water of baptism and the fire of the Holy Spirit. We didn’t do anything to be made a new creation, members of the Body of Christ, to be born again. That was all made possible by Jesus’ death on the cross, validated by his Resurrection. Everything we celebrate this coming Sunday will be in relation to the Resurrection.

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

   The word “Pentecost” comes from the Greek word for “fiftieth”.

   The Day of Pentecost described in the New Testament in Acts 2:1-21 was on the Jewish festival of Shavuot, held on the fiftieth day after the first day of Passover, the festival that Jesus was celebrating when he had his last supper with his disciples before he gave his life.

   The Day of Pentecost 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 that 250,000 people gathered in Jerusalem from many nations!

   The disciples were there, hiding in a house, afraid that what had happened to Jesus could also happen to them. 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.

   Languages are hard to learn. Some say that Artificial Intelligence will soon make that unnecessary.

   I’ve been trying to learn Mandarin, and it’s very hard. I preach regularly at a Mandarin-speaking church where I submit my sermon in English and the pastor translates it for the congregation. We preach together, a few sentences at a time, back and forth.

   My wife, Rev. Sally Welch, said this week that the pastor and I should flip the script and I should preach in Mandarin. I said that that would be a very short sermon. 😊

   The Bible wasn’t written in either Mandarin or in English, though.

   It was written in Hebrew and Greek.

   It’s interesting to note that in both the Hebrew language in which what we call the Old Testament was written and in the Koine Greek language in which what we call the New Testament was written, there are two words that have the same three meanings.

   “Ruach” in Hebrew and “pneuma” in Greek (from which we get our English words “pneumonia” and “pneumatic”) both have the same three meanings: wind, breath, and spirit.

   So, when the Bible says that “there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind”, it’s easy to figure out what was going on. “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.”

   The gathered disciples received the Holy Spirit, and three thousand people gathered together from many countries became Christians in that one day.

   The Holy Spirit is what makes the Church!

   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.”

   And there was fire!

   Tongues of fire rested on each of the disciples as a sign of the transformational presence of the Holy Spirit. Why didn’t their hair catch on fire?

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

   Because it was 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’ hair on the Day of Pentecost was the presence of God.

   The Holy Spirit had blown the disciples out of the room where they were hiding and into the places where the people were. The disciples began speaking to them. The disciples began their ministries with nothing but the Holy Spirit because that was all they needed. The Holy Spirit is all that we need.

   So, what had just happened?

   Remember Noah and the Ark? After the Flood, people began to repopulate the earth, but they didn’t spread out. They 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.

   Remember the Tower of Babel? These same people believed 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 consequences of the attempted building of the Tower of Babel are reversed on the Day of Pentecost. People from all over the world came together and they heard the same Gospel message being proclaimed in their own languages.

   This isn’t speaking in tongues. It’s not people speaking a language that they haven’t studied.

   This is more like the A.I. systems that are said to be coming that will enable everyone on the planet to understand everyone else in real time without studying languages. Or, like the Star Trek simultaneous translator where everyone in the universe can understand everyone else with a machine.

   On the Day of Pentecost, the disciples spoke in their own language, but God made it so that every other person present that day from many nations heard the same message about the good news of Jesus Christ in their own language at once.

   Last week, churches heard about how Jesus prayed that all his faithful people might be one. We are like spokes on a wheel with Jesus 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.

   This coming Sunday, the last Sunday in the Easter season, we will see another example of oneness by God’s grace in Jesus Christ!

   This coming Sunday, 2,000 years after the Day of Pentecost, Christians will worship in every language in every country in the world, and they will all be one.

   Have you ever worshipped at a church 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. We all understand one another at the deepest level through our common relationship with the one true living God in the Holy Spirit. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. And the closer we get to Jesus, the closer we get to one another. Our languages and cultures are means to share that relationship.

   Language is important to every culture. We are concerned when our young people begin to lose their native language. It’s been said of immigrants in America that the third generation tries to remember what the second generation tries to forget.  We want to preserve who we are.

   Today, Christians speak many languages because, like the first disciples, we both want to preserve the language of our hearts, and we want to reach the world with the one language that unites everybody: the presence of God in the language of the Holy Spirit. That same Holy Spirit speaks directly to every culture and in every language, and at every time, and binds us together in the one common true faith.

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

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

   The Day of Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, is measured 50 days from the resurrection of Jesus.

   The first books I bought to help me understand a little of the Mandarin language were from the Tien Dao Christian Media Association store in El Monte. “Tien” can mean “heaven” and “dao” can mean “the way”. So, Tien Dao can mean “Heaven’s Way”.

   One of my favorite books in high school was the Tao Te Ching, which can mean “Classic of the Way and Virtue”, by Lao Tzu. It is the foundational work for Taoism, one of the classic Chinese philosophies, or religions. Its purpose, as I understand it, is to reveal the way to ideal existence, which people can realize by using their free will to bring themselves into harmony with their natural condition in the Dao. I liked it for its esotericism and its wisdom.

   Most religions have traditions of wisdom within them, including Christianity. In some religions, this wisdom is everything. In Christianity, it’s the least important thing.

   The way, in Christianity is not an idea, but a person. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

   Christianity is from God, who created everything in perfect harmony with God and with all of Creation, who has been revealed to us from outside of ourselves.

   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.

   The way to restore the harmony for which we human beings were created is not through our own effort. Harmony will only come fully as a gift from God at the end of history. Meanwhile, we receive it as a gift and live our imperfect lives in response to that gift by God’s grace, given on the cross, in order to make the world more like God made it to be.

   When John the Baptist described the coming Messiah, Jesus, he said, in Matthew 3:11,

11 “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

   In our baptism, our separation from God is overcome by water and the word and, as Martin Luther says, “The Spirit is poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, as we read in Titus 3:4-8a,

4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. 6 This Spirit he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. 8 The saying is sure.

   On the Day of Pentecost, God set fire to the rain.

   Holy Fire, the Holy Spirit, was added to the rain, the water of Holy Baptism. And the Church, the Body of Jesus Christ, came into being.

   May we seek to understand one another in this global Church and to encourage one another in the common language of the Holy Spirit within us. And may our celebration of the Day of Pentecost be a day of renewal in our love for God and our love for the world.