In the film version of Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” the action starts with a cold October wind blowing through a Midwestern town. Let’s look at the theater film preview of this film and give you an idea of what I’m talking about. The “October People” had come with their carnival that promised the fulfillment of everyone’s deepest desires. The wind offered the sense of danger, a sense that something was about to change this town and not necessarily for the good.
A little known Johnny Depp film called “Chocolat” began in a village where a sour-faced aristocrat ordered the local priest around and, together, they emphasized sin and penance to the exclusion of the joy of the Lord. One day, in the middle of mass, a wind begins to blow. It gutters the candles, makes the worshippers uncomfortable, and the aristocrat rushes to the door of the church and bolts the doors against the wind. The reason for the wind quickly becomes clear. Two newcomers have come to town to open their “chocolaterie” and they offer a fresh joy of life and new energy for the frightened, subdued town. But in the light of today’s text, I find it ironic that the first doors shut against the newcomers and their refreshing wind was the church.
I also supposed everyone has seen “The Wizard of Oz.” We all know that virtually the entire movie is a dream sequence because of Dorothy being injured in a cyclone, a storm wind. Did you know that they actually built a miniatures set of the Gale farm and destroyed it for the movie, but took out some of the scenes because the cyclone effects were perceived as too frightening? Nevertheless, the beautiful color adventure through the Land of Oz wouldn’t have occurred if Dorothy hadn’t experienced the frightening cyclone. And, since she actually finds out about herself, her courage, her love for others, and her appreciation of home, it is reasonable to suggest that she discovered a certain amount of maturity after weathering the storm.
So, I have suggested three movies which began with a wind sweeping through the lives of the characters. In the first two illustrations, towns were changed; in the last, an individual was changed. It seems safe to say that wind is a powerful metaphor for sweeping away the familiar, the comfortable, and the predictable in order to bring some sort of transformation, be it destructive or be it productive. We also have a wind, a storm wind to be specific, in today’s text, the familiar account of the Day of Pentecost from Acts 2:1-21. [Read the text.]
Most English translations (including the one I just read) merely translate this verse as the Day of Pentecost coming or arriving. That’s what happened, of course, but it misses one of the neat ideas in the verb. The verb is συμπληρο͡υσθαι and it has within it the word for filling up. In other words, there is a built-in connotation that the Day of Pentecost arrived in fullness, the most appropriate time. And I’m really thankful that the Bible uses this verb in verse 1 because it reminds me, right off the bat, that believers who want to function with God-given power have to wait until God’s timing comes about. We can certainly create a lot of confusion and frustration if we get ahead of God.
Forgive me for using a baseball illustration, but the Cubs are playing the Rangers in interleague play right now and this one comes to mind. Some years ago, during W’s time in charge of the Rangers if I’m not mistaken, the Rangers brought up a phenomenal rookie pitching sensation right out of high school. The team was so bad that they didn’t season the kid properly in the minors. They knew he’d be big box office so they brought him up and started him right away. Well, that brought about good news and bad news. The good news was that he won his first start, a sell-out in Arlington Stadium, and did okay in his second start, but it went downhill from there. He finished that season with a losing record and things got even worse during the next season. He pitched portions of five seasons in the major leagues, never having a winning record, and he ended up with the predictable arm injury in the midst of even those five seasons. What happened? He was thrust into trying to do too much before he was physically ready and before he was emotionally ready.
God doesn’t hang His people out to dry like that. God’s timing, whenever we don’t run ahead of God, is perfect and gives us time to be prepared and to be open to God’s Presence and Power. Those little detours and delays that we experience in our lives all serve God’s purpose, God’s timing.
The next thing I notice about this great day of Pentecost is that there is a unity. The phrase used here could just as easily be translated, everyone was the “same” as well as everyone was together. The word used here is the prefix in our English words “homogenous” and “homogenized.” Now, what it doesn’t mean is that all of us believers look and act exactly the same. But it does suggest that there is an inherent agreement on our mission and the direction we’re moving to meet it. One of the early church fathers, Tertullian to be exact, described the church in this way: “We are a body, knit together by the bond of piety, by unity of discipline, and by the contract of hope.”
Since Tertullian used the term, “knit,” it probably wouldn’t be wrong to remind you that there are two basic stitches put together in a myriad of combinations. To knit isn’t the same as to perl, but you can’t get the unity of the work without having both. God knits together different people with different gifts, talents, tastes, and ideas to create a beautiful fabric of spiritual power. But it won’t happen if we don’t keep looking to the Maker for the pattern. And that’s exactly what the first century church was doing on the Day of Pentecost.
Next, notice that they were in the same place. In today’s world of telecommunications, telecommuting, and even distributed companies, we sometimes discount the value of being in the same place. In fact, I loved working in publishing where I had writers and artists all over the world. It was exciting to get different perspectives from all over the world. But there were various conferences that I would fly to, both in the U.S. and outside of it, where I would be able to meet face-to-face with these people and it was much more satisfying to brainstorm and dream with people in person than over the web or over the phone. Go-to-Meeting and various teleconferencing approaches are useful, but I found as a supervisor that it was occasionally necessary to take my staff off-site, get them all in the same room, and have some terrific give-and-take with them.
In churches, there is always a real danger of the worship team spoon-feeding the congregation and the pastor being the only teacher. There is a real danger of one human perspective becoming dominant instead of letting God speak through the entire congregation. This is one reason why it’s vital for us to meet together. You need to be praying as Pastor Johnny is preaching, sifting both logically and prayerfully through whatever I’m sharing. Yes, even when the service is over, we can still worship if you challenge me or share another insight with me as a result of your prayerful consideration of the text. But that’s simply not going to happen if you say, “I can worship just as well somewhere else.” You may not think you need the congregation, but we need each other.
And I’m NOT just preaching here. I’ve lived this issue. There have been several times when I wasn’t pasturing when I was attending churches where I was frustrated with the pastor’s pulpit and teaching ministry. I’m sure a lot of it was my own ego because I was certain that I could offer better preaching or teaching that he was doing, but I reached a point where I was tempted to blow off church because “I wasn’t getting anything out of it.” And that’s when God set me straight. I wasn’t SUPPOSED to be attending church just because I was getting something out of it. I was SUPPOSED to be attending church to both bless and be blessed by others. Rarely did I attend church where I didn’t see someone who ministered to me or to whom I ministered. And that wouldn’t have happened if I had “mailed in” my church attendance. I also found that whenever I was bored with or disgusted with another pastor’s sermon, it helped to pray for that pastor and sometimes, that prayer opened my eyes to something I hadn’t seen in the passage, even though he didn’t touch on it.
I also want to emphasis that the Bible doesn’t use the generic term for wind here. The generic term for wind that is usually used in the New Testament is πνευμα from which we get our words “pneumonia” (breathing problem) and “pneumatic” (air-powered). The usual word is the same word for “spirit.” This one isn’t. This is the wind that is usually associated with a storm -- ͗άφνω. I like its use here because it suggests noise, confusion, unsettling danger, and power, as well as something we cannot manage or control. Its use here reminds me that God’s work is not always controlled and organized, it isn’t always neat or well-planned. Yes, I know that Paul ordered the Corinthians to do things in decency and in order and I know that we need to work at doing that, but I need to warn you that not everything God plans will fit neatly into our abilities, our understanding, and our comfort zone.
If I had been one of those people in the room and heard that storm wind, I don’t think I would have felt calm about it. I would have been running for the shelter as surely as I did a couple of times when I lived in Louisville. We don’t always feel in control when God is at work in our lives. It isn’t always easy to let go and let God have His way. It’s interesting that one of the earliest non-canonical books from the early church, the Didache 9:4; 10:5 described the church as extended to the ends of the earth and being gathered together by God from the four winds. It is powerful to think of God choosing the storm wind metaphor as God prepared His people to transform the whole earth.
Next, we have the idea of the cloven tongues. At least, that’s the way we usually see this phrase translated. When I was young, that really used to bother me. I’d watched all those old westerns where the Native Americans would say, “White man speak with forked tongue.” I didn’t like the idea of cloven tongues because that would imply that the Spirit and spiritual people were speaking with forked tongues. For a while, I was thinking that it might be a way of describing the way fiery tongues would look with multiple flames.
It wasn’t until I was looking at the Greek text that I realized that the verb Διαμεριζόμεναι doesn’t have to mean “divided in two.” It can mean to be divided between. If I were dealing from a deck of cards like those naval games and that Roman game we play after church sometimes, I wouldn’t be cutting the cards in two. I’d be dividing the cards between us. In the same way, these “tongues” or “languages” were divided among the people at prayer, the people of God who were willing to serve at Pentecost.
Now, that’s exciting to me. Do you know why it’s exciting to me? It’s exciting because I know what happened later in the chapter. Every person HEARD in their own language. God divided up the languages so that everyone in that room had a chance to influence someone for Jesus in their own language. And guess what? Even if God doesn’t give us a foreign language to speak miraculously, God has provided for each of us here to have a chance to influence someone for Jesus. There is someone that we can reach for Jesus that no one else can. Whether we can reach them because of our friendship, our family ties, our common interests, our common education, or our racial, cultural, linguistic heritage, there are people we can reach specifically because God has arranged that they can hear in their own language (their own interests, their own comfort) through us.
And last but not least in this section, the tongues were described as being tongues as of fire. This is the word from which we get our words “pyromaniac,” “pyrotechnics,” or “funeral pyre.”
We are all certainly aware of the destructive nature of fire, how fire consumes the dross from the harvest and weeds, as well as destroys impurities when metal ore is heated. But fire is a terrific metaphor for God’s work because it has a lot of constructive functions, as well as that destructive function. The Bible pictures God as a refining fire because fire: destroys impurities, cauterizes bleeding, transforms (cooking, melting), [Click] strengthens (tempering), sterilizes (killing bacteria), warms, enlightens, protects (staving off wild animals), but under many circumstances simply destroys. God’s refining fire can remove those elements of our lives that need to be removed and strengthen those elements of our lives that need to be strengthened. We can be transformed.
But not everyone was happy. Though some people were amazed that they were being spoken to in their own language, others tried to deal with the church’s new demonstrated power in the same way they deal with the church’s power today—they ridiculed it. They said the disciples were drunk. Just take note of the way humanity is. Whenever something inexplicable happens, humanity tries to explain it away with a hypothesis of natural causes, even when the natural causes don’t make sense.
In this case, the crowd accuses the church of being drunk. I find it interesting that Peter doesn’t deny the possibility of the church having had strong wine. He doesn’t emphasize any ascetic idea of being teetotalers here. He merely says that it is unlikely because most people don’t drink early in the morning. That’s generally true. Usually, the only people who drink in the morning and say that it must be afternoon somewhere in the world are those who have a serious drinking problem.
What I really like about Peter’s answer is that he didn’t take the bait. He didn’t defend himself and his brothers with a lot of detail and distraction. He merely said that it was unlikely and moved forward to the main thrust. Peter wanted everyone to understand that this event was the fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy. In the second chapter of Joel, the Old Testament prophet had stated that God was going to turn religion upside-down.
Where you would normally expect the parents to be the dispensers of guidance from God and wisdom to live by, Joel’s vision had the children, offspring, the sons and daughters providing the prophecy. As in Asian culture, Near Eastern culture favored the elderly as being wise, experienced, and worthy of respect. Yet, Joel’s prophecy showed the young men having the visions that unfolded the will of God for the people. And, even though it’s usually the young people who have the dreams and hopes for a brighter future, Joel’s prophecy turned things upside-down so that God wasn’t even through with the old people. Even old people had hopes and dreams for the future. And while Judaism usually wanted me of substance, learning, and respect to be the leaders of synagogues and congregations, this prophecy speaks of slaves sharing in a leadership role.
It’s almost like Peter knew where the criticism was going to go next and he immediately deflected it with Joel’s prophecy. Once the church was proven not to be a bunch of mid-morning drunks, the next accusation was likely to be that they didn’t have the proper authority from the religious figures, the right training, or hadn’t accomplished enough. Yet, when God opted to do something different, God chose the untrained, the untried, and the unaccepted to spearhead the spiritual revolution. And it’s still that way today. In the second century, a church father described Christians as a “third race” and as a “new race.” (cf. J.N.D. Kelley, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 190) The truth is, if we really expect to have power, we need God to help us turn things upside-down.
A mighty wind DOES turn things upside-down. A mighty wind can transform an environment with both refreshing, necessary, life-giving rain or destructive force. I wonder what we are.
When I began this message, I was thinking about wind and storm metaphors. As I did so, I remembered an old song by “The Doors.” I hadn’t heard the song enough to remember the lyrics, but I remembered the title “Riders on the Storm.” I wondered if it might be relevant to what we were considering today. So, I looked up the lyrics. Wow! Was I disappointed?! The chorus went, “Riders on the storm, Riders on the storm, Into this house we’re born, Into this world we’re thrown, Like a dog without a bone, An actor out alone, Riders on the storm.” Why was I disappointed? Here was the imagery of a group riding on the storm, but this very group is helpless, this very group perceives no resources to change anything, the entire situation is hopeless.
Well, God didn’t call the early church to respond to that mighty storm wind with helplessness and God doesn’t expect us to be dogs without bones and actors performing alone, either. God was turning things upside-down for a reason. And that reason is seen in verse 21. All of these different languages, all of this excitement and confusion that caused some to believe the church members were drunk, and all of Peter’s appeal to the upside-down nature of God’s congregation was for one purpose: “That everyone who calls on the the name of the LORD will be saved.”
Everyone of us has contacts, advantages, opportunities, gifts, and talents given to us by God. How are we using them to share the gospel? Until we actually are using them to share the gospel, we won’t be the church God wants us to be.
