Who Has Your Back?

Pastor and author John Ortberg tells the story of an evening when he was walking with some friends in Newport Beach, California. As they walked they passed one of the local bars just as a fight spilled out onto the street, like a scene from the old west. As they watched, three men proceeded to beat up a single opponent, who was already bleeding quite freely.

Well, they realized that they had to do something, even though they didn’t have a lot of experience in that sort of thing; in fact, Ortberg writes that breaking up drunken brawls was not a strong area of spiritual passion or competence for any of them. In spite of that, they went over to speak prophetically to the aggressors, feeling pretty certain that once they intervened, they might easily become the next victims.

But as they began to warn the men to break it up, suddenly the thugs looked up with fear in their eyes, let their victim go and turned to walk away. At that point he realized that the men had actually been looking over his shoulder, so he turned around and saw what he describes as one of the biggest men he had ever seen. Ortberg writes, “He stood 6 foot 7 and weighed about 250 pounds or so, with perhaps 2 percent body fat. If Hercules had married Xena, the warrior princess, this could have been their child.” He goes on to say, “We called him ‘Mongo’, but not to his face.” And Mongo didn’t say a word. He just stood there with muscles bulging, looking as if he hoped they would try to take him on. He was a bouncer at the bar, and this was “an area of massive, breathtaking competence for him,” Ortberg writes. “Breaking up fights was [Mongo’s] spiritual gift.”

And in that moment when he realized what had happened, John Ortberg’s attitude was transformed. He was released from anxiety and fear. He was filled with boldness and confidence. “You’d better not let us catch you hanging around here again!” he called out after the retreating thugs. And why? Because he realized that he was not alone. Mongo had his back. Someone was standing beside him who was more than capable of dealing with the situation.

And isn’t this what happened at Pentecost when the promised Holy Spirit came in power? We read in Acts chapter 2 that on that day, Peter “stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd…” (Acts 2: 14).

From a sermon by David Swinney, The Promise of Pentecost, 6/2/2010