“Fire!” - Pastor Jacqueline Hines
June 5, 2022
Welcome to Pentecost! Pentecost means it has
been about fifty days after Resurrection Sunday, fifty days after Easter. “Pente” is Latin for fifty. Welcome to Pentecost! The first celebration
of Pentecost was thousands of years ago. Then it was called the Feast of Weeks.
Farmers waited seven weeks for the seeds they planted to come up for harvest.
When the plants were ready to be picked, it was time to celebrate. Pentecost is
a celebration of the early harvest. There would soon be another harvest, but
the early harvest was to be celebrated. It was a reminder that we plant the
seeds, we water the seeds, but it is God that miraculously makes the seeds
grow!
Just like us this morning, worshippers were gathered together on
the day of Pentecost to celebrate with a feast and fellowship and with the word
of God. They would warmly welcome each other and kiss each other on each cheek
for they were God’s children. They were brothers and sisters. Who were they
back then? Verse 5 tells us they were devout Jews, religious people, praying
people. Verse 5 also says they were
from every people under Heaven. Pentecost was one of three feasts that required
Jews by law to meet together in Jerusalem. That’s about every quarter. Even if
they were far away, they were supposed to try to get to Jerusalem. They were to
come together during the first feast, the Feast of Passover to celebrate the
death angel passing over them as they were delivered from slavery. The second
was the Feast
of Tabernacles to celebrate the God who was with them in the
wilderness, and who was worthy of their worship. Even today, tabernacles or small booths are
built by our Jewish brothers and sisters in various places. They are symbols of
God dwelling with them. They met for the
third feast, during Pentecost to celebrate the wheat harvest.
Pilgrims came to these feasts from near and far to worship, to
give thanks, to love on God and to love on one other. They had all kinds of backgrounds, all kinds
of jobs, all kinds of hobbies and interests. Still, they managed to be TOGETHER
and join in with the local devout Galilean worshippers. What a wonderful thing
to be together in the light of the many ways humans have of being dismissive
and divided. How God must have been pleased to see the children looking and
acting like a loving family! There is a
reason God calls us to be together. Without that calling, each of us would be
more inclined to wander in our own way.
As they sat there together, suddenly something happened. It
reminds me of a time when I gathered with about five clergy women in the 90’s
when there weren’t as many of us in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference. We
were talking about what it was like to be in ministry. There were ups and
downs, there were hopes and dreams, there were joys and there were sorrows.
SUDDENLY, the Holy Spirit touched each of us. Every one of us went from smiling
and laughing to gently weeping as the Holy Spirit enabled us to face the depths
of
the pain of our isolation and to feel God’s healing presence. My
head hung in my lap, and for the life of me, I could not lift it. The love of
God constrained me. It happened suddenly to all of us. Like a refreshing spring
shower, it was over before we knew it. We resumed our sunny smiles and laughter
as if too shocked and shaken to acknowledge that we had been touched because we
were shackled by a heavy burden, ‘neath a load of guilt and shame, some ours,
some others. God knew.
On the day of Pentecost devout pilgrims from many different
regions that spoke many different languages were taken off guard, suddenly.
They heard a sound like a mighty wind. It was loud but not necessarily pushing
like strong winds do. The wind was rushing. God was in a hurry. The sense of
urgency got everyone’s attention. There were questions about what exactly was
going on.
The crowd of pilgrims was surprised, not that the local Galileans
were praising God, but that they were praising God, not only in their own
Galilean language but in all the languages of the pilgrims that had come from a
distance. The Parthians, Medes and Elamites were Iranians; the residents of
Mesopotamia were from what we call Iraq today. Judea was deep in the south of
Israel. Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia were in Turkey. All
these pilgrims had to have traveled between 75-400 miles away to Jerusalem
depending on how far they were from the border. It was a shock to hear the
local Galileans speaking in all those languages.
Have you ever talked to someone on the phone and been surprised
when they did not look like what you imagined when you listened to their
voice? I was working in the Baltimore
City Community College’s math and English tutoring lab. It was crowded and a
Chinese student volunteered to tutor a math student while she was waiting for
me to help her with her English assignment. In the conversation I was saddened
that this student had come from China where she had a degree as a dental
technician, but had to start at the bottom in order to practice in the United
States. I was
shocked when she said she spoke Spanish. It was a surprise!
The crowd of Pilgrim spectators was very surprised by what they
heard. The crowd was rubber necking trying to figure out what was happening.
They could have seen the
tongues of fire described in verse 3, “Divided
tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.” There was no
doubt that they all heard
their language spoken by those they did not expect would speak their
language.
The dramatic message that day was that God has something to say
that is urgent and worthy of our praise. It will set the world on fire with a
love that heals and transforms until we can see each other and love each other.
When Peter realized there was so much interest in God being
praised in their own language, he talked to them and 3,000 people committed to
Jesus and a movement was born. We call it the Church. It is powerful, it is
dynamic. In fact the word for the power of the Holy Spirit is dunamis which is the root of the word
“dynamite” that causes an explosion and forces new pathways into existence.
Just like a car that we fire up to start it, we don’t need to be
fired up as dramatically as they were on that day of Pentecost. We just need to
keep adding fuel.
God is in a hurry to bless us, to fill us with the power of love
until suddenly and urgently, we weep healing tears, or until we give God the praise
that is due a great God, until we shock the world and speak a language that
those looking at us from a distance can understand and appreciate, until God is
glorified.
We can keep our tanks full. Together, let’s keep praying about
everything, practicing the good we preach, and praising God from whom all
blessings flow, for where there is praise for God, there is power.
God has something urgent to say that sets the world on fire with
love for God and love for people. Welcome to Pentecost! Amen.
