Pentecost Sunday - June 8, 2003
By The Rev. Benjamin J. Newland
- Acts 2:1-11
- Psalm 104:25-32
- 1 Corinthians 12:4-13
- John 20:19-23
Many of you know Misha, the large, fluffy, white dog who lives in my house. Many of you have in fact met Misha, as he is often here at church on Wednesdays in his role as unpaid youth assistant. For those of you who haven’t met Misha yet, you should know that he is one of the most gentle, laid-back dogs you are likely to meet. Now, there are many, many good reasons to own a dog, but for people in my line of work, one of the best reasons is that dogs invariably provide interesting sermon material at least twice a year. It’s June now, so Misha was getting due to provide a nice sermon anecdote. A week ago Friday he delivered in fine style.
On the last Friday of nearly every month the Cathedral Young Adult Group gathers for food, fellowship, and the occasional adult beverage, at the home of one of our members. We call this monthly meeting the Shabbat gathering, as Shabbat is Hebrew for Sabbath, and Friday evening is the start of the Hebrew Sabbath, and while we’re there we try to break as few of God’s Commandments as possible. The May Shabbat took place at my house, and Misha was in attendance.
So there we were, sitting out on my front porch, enjoying the pleasant breeze, discussing matters of great importance and relevance, and sipping from elegant glasses of intoxicating liquids. My front porch is not large, and there were at least eight of us out there, which is two more people than available chairs. Misha was roaming around the yard, inspecting his territory and doing other doggie things. It was very civilized, very pleasant, and very calm.
Then Misha came around the corner of the house, pacing slowly towards the porch steps as if to rejoin us in our conversational discourse. My chair was facing the steps and the approaching dog, and I noticed that Misha had one of his well worn stuffed animals in his mouth. Being somewhat familiar with Misha and his habits, it took me only a moment to realize that Misha’s stuffed animals were all inside the house, where he hadn’t been for at least an hour. Since I was sitting at the far end of the porch from the steps and the dog, I calmly asked Curtis, who was standing on the steps, if he wouldn’t mind removing the dead rodent from Misha’s mouth before allowing him up the steps.
My attempt to preserve the civilized atmosphere failed utterly. Everyone looked toward the dog, and upon seeing the rather large rodent he was carrying, began to jump up and yell. Now, as I said, Misha is a very gentle dog, and all the jumping and yelling frightened him, so he bolted up the steps, dropped the rodent in question in the precise center of the porch, and hid behind me. Meanwhile, everyone is still yelling and jumping, and if you are willing to pay me more than they have, I’ll tell you which of the strong, brave, young men of the Young Adult Group were standing on their chairs in an effort to get away from the fearsome beast.
This was only the second animal that Misha has ever brought me, the first being a mouse, who he presented to me by giving me this utterly baffled look while a frantically lashing mouse tail protruded from between his puppy lips. Now I don’t want to insult my own dog, but let’s just say that Misha possesses neither the brains nor the killer instinct of a Border Collie. The mouse he brought me a couple years ago wasn’t dead, and while I had never seen a possum up close and personal, I had heard about their famous trick of playing dead. Not wanting a spontaneous reincarnation to further unnerve the chair climbers, I picked up the possum by its long, rat-like tail, tossed it onto the lawn, and went inside to wash my hands and confine Misha to his stuffed animals.
Things calmed down a bit for awhile, all of us speculating on the relative deadness of the still motionless possum. Sure enough, ten minutes later, the possum raised his head, looked around, and calmly sauntered off into the darkness. “It’s risen from the dead! It’s the Jesus Possum!” cried one of the chair climbers, thus breaking the first commandment and our Shabbat prohibition on commandment breaking. Another suggested that the possum represented only Lazarus, raised from the dead by Jesus, and thus avoided blasphemy by a narrow margin.
This is a great story, full of suspense and terror, cowardly onlookers and a brave possum handler, all the classic elements of fine storytelling. Yet by now surely you’re wondering how this story has anything at all to do with Pentecost, or the scripture lessons read today. Have faith, like the man said, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Including using a possum story to shed light on the coming of the Holy Spirit.
In the first eleven verses of the second chapter of Acts, we get the central reading for Pentecost. The word Pentecost means literally, the fiftieth day. The Jews call this fiftieth day after Passover Shavuot, a festival in which they gather in Jerusalem, which is why so many Jews from so many places are standing outside the house the disciples had holed up in. Then in comes this rush of wind, banging open shutters and knocking over lamps. Tongues of fire spring up, licking at each of them, and they are possessed by the Holy Spirit, driven up out of their seats and out onto the street proclaiming with wild abandon the deeds they had seen done by God in the last few years of their lives.
There are Jews gathered around from all over the known world: Jews from nations far and near, Jews from well-known parts of other nations; Jews from groups of people we still recognize today, Jews from groups of people extinct before Jesus was born; Jews from places that today we call Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq. And all of these different people from all of these different places share in common their Jewish faith, but they do not share in common their native language.
But when the disciples start to speak, each person gathered hears the words in their own tongue. This is the real miracle of Pentecost, not that the disciples could speak in all these different languages, but that the gathered diversity of people could hear in all these different languages. The Pentecost miracle is not a miracle of the tongue, it is a miracle of the ear. The Pentecost miracle is not the empowerment of one disciple to speak, it is the empowerment of a whole community to hear. There are not enough disciples present to speak all the different languages necessary, so they speak the language they have. The crowd gathered can hear them, they ask, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?” And how can they tell that these disciples are Galileans? By their accents perhaps?
The real function of the Pentecost miracle is not the vaunting of an individual, which Paul argues against in First Corinthians. It is the communal charge that John speaks of in the Gospel. The real function of the Pentecost miracle is the proclamation, in words that can be understood by all, of the wonders that God has done in our lives.
You know, sitting on my front porch that Friday night with eight of my good friends, I was having a fine time. It was a good party, very civilized and orderly, with witty banter (and some less-witty banter) and pleasing refreshments. And then into the midst of this civilized, orderly party, is dropped a dead-seeming possum, and none of us who were there will remember that party as anything other than the possum Shabbat.
I think Pentecost must have been just a little bit like that. The disciples are gathered together. It’s been fifty days since Jesus rose from the grave and they’ve all had at least a bit of time to come to grips with that. Most likely they are in town for the Shavuot festivities, having a nice, pleasant chat in a comfortable house. And then into the midst of this civilized, orderly party, is dropped the Holy Spirit, and none of them who were there will remember that day as anything other than Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Pentecost is a great day for Baptism because we bring out some of the best Holy Spirit symbols: the Paschal flame and copious amounts of water. And even though we do our best to civilize baptism with white linen towels and silver pouring shells, inevitably sleeves get wet, and babies cry when we pour the water into their eyes. I don’t think the Holy Spirit is particularly impressed by our civilizing and ordering of baptism. I’m sure it doesn’t get in the way, the Spirit of God is not going to be put off by a little Anglican propriety.
Yet this Pentecost, when we invoke the Holy Spirit in the words of the Baptismal Covenant, I’d like to see people jump up as if a dead-seeming possum had just been dropped at their feet. I’d like to see people who looked like they were blown upright by a violent wind, and who spoke as if fire was in their breath. I’d like us to remember this Pentecost, not as a civilized, orderly church service, but as the Pentecost where the Holy Spirit was dropped in our midst like a fireball, and all of us gathered here were exploded out of our seats and into the streets, amazed and astonished, yelling in our own languages about God’s deeds of power. AMEN.