Vicar’s sermon Pentecost 2024 Acts 2

The other day I and a couple of friends met up for coffee. The three of us headed from church, crossed the road and we were on our way towards Clarendons when, as we were talking, all of a sudden we were no longer three but two. Just on the corner, by Barclays bank, Rowan had been stopped by a total stranger who had recognised the jade pendant he was wearing as coming from New Zealand. A fellow Kiwi it seems had homed in on something familiar and a conversation was started.
‘You’re not from these parts’ we might say to someone with a different accent before hopefully making them feel welcome and at home in Barney! We might be on holiday abroad and yet somehow isn’t it strange that it is the English speakers that stand out to us when we’re in the supermarket or the café?
Some people don’t have any problem at all meeting new people, talking with strangers. Others ‘know what they like and like what they know’ – the thought of foreign travel or attempting to communicate in another language is so far out of their comfort zone as to be impossible: ‘it takes all sorts’ I guess.
Perhaps you can see where this is going on Pentecost, but what has stood out for me this week as I have read this morning’s account of the Spirit’s outpouring, is not so much the wind and fire but the response of all those people from around the known world. The Galilean disciples spoke in languages hitherto unknown to them….and then people gathered. The great crowd that would go on to hear Peter’s sermon wasn’t stood outside the upper room waiting for something to happen. No, it gathered as people recognised themselves, something familiar, in the disciple’s speech.
That ‘recognition’ or connection sits at the heart of the first chapter of one of the best books on the Holy Spirit I have: The Go-Between God by Bishop John V Taylor. Put to one side the miraculous ‘speaking in tongues’ if you can. What is happening here?
What’s happening is that Jesus’ instructions given on Ascension Day are beginning to be carried out. The rest of the Book of Acts will chart the church’s progress but Jesus had said ‘You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all Judaea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth’ and here it begins, the gospel starts to reach over barriers of culture and language and begins to embrace all people.
We take it for granted. Some of us know the story of how Pope Gregory sent Augustine to evangelise southern England. We know too of the Irish saints, crossing the Irish sea, establishing monastic communities and bringing the faith to Northeast England – but this missionary movement begins here on the first Pentecost after the resurrection (I say ‘after the resurrection because, let us remember, Pentecost is a Jewish Feast and there had been many Pentecosts before this). The people of God are enabled to turn outwards and the gospel must be translated into new languages, new terms used to express its truth and new formulations fashioned to help others understand.
Yes, the people from all over the place were surprised when they heard their own languages being spoken…but the greater surprise was felt by the disciples as they too were shaken and stirred into new ways of thinking and communicating this day.
Language is important. I am not a natural linguist, I struggle, but you will know that any attempt to speak another person’s language is welcomed by them, even if you get the grammar wrong and the pronunciation is so ‘English’. The attempt itself recognises that the person you are speaking to has their own integrity, their own way of being, their own culture and that these things matter to you enough to make an effort. Google translate can only go so far.
So often in the Book of Acts God gives the people of God a shove: and maybe that’s what the Feast of Pentecost might be subtitled ‘the Feast of the Holy shove in the back’. The Holy Spirit will force the people of God out of Jerusalem after the death of Stephen; the Holy Spirit will shift Philip along the road to meet the Ethiopian Eunuch; The Holy Spirit will fall upon the gentiles in such a way that the church will suffer conniptions and the apostle Peter will get into trouble with head office in Jerusalem so determined is God to reach out to all people. All these things might sound strange, but my point is not the strangeness, it is rather that God forces the issue with disciples whose natural tendency may well have been to huddle together, feel good about being special to God and forget that there was whole world out there that God had been wanting to bless for centuries. God’s action and initiative here was necessary to overcome the inertia bred into the disciples who all knew the privilege of their Judaism but, until Jesus’ ministry, had no model for working out the responsibilities that accompanied their privilege .
There’s a breadth, an inclusiveness in the work of the Spirit of God. The Spirit is always reaching further and further out into the world, the Spirit reaches deeper into our lives and the Spirit calls us up higher as He encourages us to grow into the fulness of Christ’s likeness. God’s purpose is that the whole of creation ( as Psalm 104 reminded us) be gathered up within his life and love. Here, on the Day of Pentecost the works of God are declared to Jewish people from across the known world. But soon the boundaries around Judaism will have to fall. Why? Because God’s intent right from when he called Abram has been to bless all the nations of the world. Look out for that word ‘all’ over the coming weeks: again and again we take it for granted but, as some of us have studied in our bible series on Romans, it’s important. ‘All have fallen short of the glory of God’…’the righteousness of God has been made known through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.’ No one is left out here. All are included, which is why the prophecy quoted in the longer version of our reading is important: it’s a prophecy of inclusion –I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. 18Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. When Peter quotes this prophecy, he relates it to the disciples’ experience of God’s Spirit but points to it being fulfilled in the lives of those who respond from the crowd in front of him. Something new is happening here!
And so this ‘recognition’ takes place as the people gather at the sound of their own languages and as the disciples are shoved out of the front door of their home and forced into conversation with those who look different, sound different and probably think differently to them.
How does this work for us? Nationally, the Church of England has taken huge strides to become more inclusive, to grow younger, to become more ethnically diverse so that those beyond the faith can see and hear their own languages in our conversation and proclamation. This is a hard work but it is a reflection of this Pentecostal mission – to be so transformed as a community that we can speak to the whole world. There is always the danger of appearing ‘right on’, and ‘trendy Vicars’ are cringeworthy, but genuine attempts to remove barriers to the voices of people of colour being heard, disability or different ability overcome or recognised – these things all help our mission. They must not be undertaken out of ‘tokenism’, but rather, the Spirit that inspires them is the Spirit that says that each and every person can reflect the image of God made new in Jesus, and a diverse community is a miraculous thing that can bear a powerful witness in a divided world.
The leadership of our church is changing: no longer exclusively white, male and university educated. We will struggle with this. We will get it wrong. We will fail to understand one another at times because diversity brings huge challenges (look at how divided we are as a country). But the Spirit’s vision is huge. It is of a worldwide community of disciples not just an English sect so we must be pushed ever outward in order for our faith and reliance upon Jesus to deepen. This, to me, is what the Spirit did at Pentecost and continues to do, enabling the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God to be known within an ever-widening fellowship of the Holy Spirit that now embraces those of us here in this place. And note again that the characteristic of the Spirit in that famous prayer we call ‘the grace’ is fellowship or communion – meeting, truly connecting with one another. That meeting is what Pentecost enables. Thanks be to God.