“The Best Birthday Gift Ever”

Acts 2:1-21

Don’t you just love a good celebration? Ah, I think everybody does. Well the Jews had a whopper! It was called the Festival of Weeks! And it occurred fifty days after Passover. Jerusalem was the place to be for the Festival of Weeks. People came from all over the world. Young, old, rich, poor, men and women.

The Old Testament tells us exactly how the Festival of Weeks was to be celebrated. In Leviticus 23 and Deuteronomy 16, it explains that this was the day each person was to bring to God a special gift in proportion to the blessing the Lord had given.

All daily work was to be set aside. The people were to gather and worship and rejoice before the Lord. Each and everyone was invited. No one was to be excluded.

Listen, the following are invited: You, your sons and daughters, your man servants and maid servants, the Levites in your towns, the aliens, the fatherless and the widows living among you.

What a guest list! Not just the head of the house – but everybody. Relatives, slaves, and servants; those who have differing theological positions; immigrants and foreigners; orphans and widows; those who live in the margins; the homeless.

If invitations were sent out it wouldn’t be for the purpose of excluding but simply to inform. None were to be excluded to God's party. Each one was invited regardless of religion, race, gender, status or age.

All the barriers that divide us throughout the year were to come down on that day of celebration.

The day was in commemoration of the day the Law was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai – you remember – the Ten Commandments. What an electrifying time to be in Jerusalem! The city was buzzing with all kinds of culture and languages and excitement in the air.

But on this particular holiday, not everybody’s celebrating – Jesus’ disciples were quietly indoors. Outside was all the excitement and the disciples were indoors behind closed doors. Of course, who could blame them.

It had been quite the roller coaster ride.  Not two months earlier, they had been riding high with Jesus – triumphantly entering Jerusalem.  Later that week they tumbled back to earth as Jesus was crucified – running this way and that like scared rabbits – their hopes and dreams dashed.

They were overwhelmed with joy three days later as they experienced the resurrected Christ in their midst. And then just ten days ago – he had left them alone once again as he ascended into Heaven.

Now the faithful were gathered in the Upper Room, 120 of them. Just prior to his ascension, Jesus had told them to go into Jerusalem and not to leave the city until they had received the gift of which he had spoken to them earlier, the gift of the Holy Spirit.

So they did. They were gathered there to wait, not sure what was going to happen next. Not sure how they could go on. And not quite sure what this gift Jesus spoke about was all about

Yes, they had HEARD something about this Holy Spirit. During their meal with Jesus on the night before his crucifixion, he had told them that it was necessary for him to leave them so that he might send them another COMFORTER, another one who would walk beside them, one who would ENCOURAGE them, one who would EXHORT them, who would GUIDE them, and reveal all TRUTH to them.

Of course, they weren’t sure what Jesus was talking about, but that wasn’t unusual.

And now they were waiting, and in the waiting, God was preparing to do a mighty thing; a miraculous thing. God could have done anything to make the Holy Sprit real in the disciples lives that day – but what he did was to grant the disciples the ability to … communicate.

I think to understand what is happening here it’s helpful to go back thousands of years. Back to a time when there where no "other" languages – we read about it in our text from Genesis. The people of the earth all spoke one language. And in pride they decided to build a tower to God. "Let us build a siege tower to heaven and storm the citadels of the Almighty," they said.

Ridiculous as this was, they went about the attempt and started to build a tower. Their attempt was so puny that God is described as having to descend to even get a look at it.

Of course, the project would never succeed, but as long as the people were working on it they would never truly turn to God. Instead of trusting God to descend to them they would always be trying to ascend to God.

So God confused their language. Suddenly there were other languages. One worker asked for a brick and everyone looked at him funny until he lost his patience. Another asked for some tar and was tossed a brick which hit him on the side of the head.

The formerly cooperative effort collapsed into a confusing babble of languages. And the peoples of the world scatted, as God had intended.

If you think about it, God didn't need to go to all that trouble. People seem to babble on enough without God's help. Even when we are supposed to be speaking the same language we often seem to be speaking different languages.

Parents often speak English to their English speaking children and yet the children don't seem to understand. The English speaking children try to communicate with their English speaking parents and they might as well be speaking Russian! Can I get an AMEN!

The church uses the common language to tell people that God loves them and wants them to love one another, yet often many just they don't get it.

Of all the things God could have done, God chose to give these early Christians the ability to communicate with the world. That is significant! God could have performed signs and wonders. God could have orchestrated mass healings and resurrections. But God chose to make communication happen.

And what a communication that was! Those who were there tell us that they suddenly heard a sound. A sound like blowing. Wind blowing and gathering momentum until it became a mighty wind.

Then fire, they tell us. Tongues of fire falling and reaching and touching each and every person in the room. Each one became filled. Filled with the Holy Spirit.

Then they began to speak. They found the words to say. They found the courage to speak words. They no longer whispered only among themselves. They opened the doors. They walked out of their safe space and took the risk of going into the crowd gathered outside.

And they began to speak to those who had not seen the fire nor heard the wind. Speaking to strangers the good news of Jesus. And as the crowd listened, they were amazed.

People from all over the world who had come to Jerusalem for the festival were surprised to hear someone speaking their own language so far from home.

Parthinians stuck their heads around the corner expecting to see other Parthinians, and Libyans looked around for other Libyans.

But what they saw instead were a bunch of Galileans, rural types from northern Israel dressed in the equivalent of first-century overalls, all of them going on and on about God's mighty acts like a bunch of PhDs in Middle-Eastern languages.

Not everyone understood what the disciples were saying, though. Some witnesses were skeptical and declared, “these babbling men are drunk!”

Well, goofy Peter quickly steps up and debunks them of that notion. “Oh no,” he says. “These men are not drunk; hey, it’s only… let’s see… 9:00 in the morning! No, these babblers aren’t pickled, they’re prophets! Like Joel. Remember Joel, the prophet? What he said about the last days? How everybody would prophesy, and all who call on the name of the Lord would be saved? Well, this is it, folks. These are the last days, and these guys are prophesying.” 

On that first Pentecost, when God blows in with fire, Jesus’ followers are transformed from a clutch of scared, like-minded folks hiding out from a baffling world, to an absurd collection of human candles set on fire to share what they know with the disbelieving and baffled world.

And when they open their mouths to say to each other, ‘Hey! Watch out! Your head’s on fire!”’ what comes out instead are weird words, strange languages… gibberish to some, salvation to others.

And the Holy Spirit was exactly as advertised. It proved to be a COMFORTER, an ENCOURAGER, an EXHORTER and a purveyor of TRUTH.

Look what happened to Peter. To say the least, this big fisherman had always been a brash fellow. He had been brash enough to leave his fishing business, to drop his livelihood when Jesus had said to him and his brother, "Come follow me and I will make you fishers of people."

He had been brash enough to try things that were beyond human comprehension like healing sick people and walking on water. He had been brash enough to take a sword to the servant of the High Priest in Gethsemane despite being tremendously outnumbered.

But brashness has its limitations. Peter was also COWARDLY...just cowardly enough to deny that he had ever KNOWN Jesus when confronted by a little servant girl. Yes, that fisherman was brash...but not brash enough in himself to do what he did on Pentecost.

Here it was just seven weeks after Peter had turned tail and run, just seven weeks after Jesus' enemies had murdered him, just seven weeks after Peter and the others locked themselves in that Upper Room after the crucifixion for fear that they TOO would be arrested and killed.

And now, all of a sudden, here was this same Peter standing up in the center of the city where the life of his Lord had been taken, proclaiming to all who would listen the message of a risen Savior.

Peter was a changed man. The Holy Spirit had come upon him to give him comfort in the place of his fear, to give him encouragement in place of his questions, to give him the truth in place of his silence. Peter had the fire...or perhaps it would be better said, the fire had HIM.

Peter was guided by the Spirit as he preached that morning. After all, he was a fisherman, not an orator. Truth be known, Peter had no business being up there in front of ANY folks, much less all those. But he WAS. And DID HE COME THROUGH! 3000 converts they say that day!

He probably did not understand what was happening or how it was happening. I doubt that any of them did. The folks who heard him did not, especially when they heard the message of the disciples in the languages of their own homelands.

That kind of power is beyond human comprehension. But, understand it or not, the power...the fire...was THERE that day, and the fire has continued to empower the church through almost 2,000 years.

Today is Pentecost – known as the “Birthday of the Church” and as a birthday present God continues to give us what he gave to the disciples 2000 years ago – the Gift of the Holy Spirit.

Today as we celebrate probably the third most important event in the history of the church (after Easter and Christmas), we too have access to the Holy Spirit in our lives. 

It can comfort us, it can encourage us, it can challenge us and it can inspire us. 

We all need that in our lives and God has given us access to it.  All we need to do is be open to its power.

The church and more importantly, each of us are blessed with the love of God expressed in the teachings of Jesus and made real by the power of the Holy Spirit. May we be attentive to all three.

Amen.