Sermon preached at Christ Church
Greenwich, Connecticut
June 9, 2019 / Whitsunday
Acts 2:1-21
John 14:8-17, 25-27
Have you ever been traveling in a foreign country, and – having fumbled with phrasebooks and struggled your way through simple requests – a perfect stranger approaches you and says, with perfect clarity, “Excuse me, but do you speak English?” It is a beautiful sentence, and an instant relief.
I remember being on the streets of Rome, which, with my very limited Italian, I had been navigating in a basically mute capacity, when a couple approached me and said, “Excuse me, but do you speak English?” They were attractive, and American, and since this was before cheap international data plans, they were also hopeful that together we could decode their map. Standing together, we became an island of good humor and the Protestant work ethic, allies and friends in a foreign land.
This is the experience of Pentecost.
We hear in the great story of the day that the apostles were together in one place, when they were filled by the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, “as the Spirit gave them ability.” There are certain varieties of Protestants who are perhaps overly optimistic in their reading of this story, and who fancy that they themselves are “speaking in tongues,” when what they are doing is really speaking gibberish. That is not what it means to “speak in tongues.” Those within earshot of the apostles that day were “amazed and astonished,” because each one heard them speaking in his own language. The apostles spoke in tongues that others could understand, telling of “God’s deeds of power.” It was by the operation of the Holy Spirit not only that some were empowered to speak, but also that others were empowered to hear.
Perhaps I should pause, and say something about the Holy Spirit, since we seldom really hear or talk about the Holy Spirit, and I think that the very word “spirit” tends to obfuscate our thinking.
The Holy Spirit is the very substance of God, working in the world in all times and in all places. Our Lord says to his disciples, as we heard this morning, “I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.”[1] And that is just what happens as the disciples are gathered together, and tongues of fire appear among them. We might remember that at the very beginning of the book of Genesis, the story of creation is articulated in this way: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”[2] The movement of the presence of God in creation is anterior to light itself, and the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, is the power of God to make things happen.
When infants and converts to the faith are baptized in the Episcopal Church, they are marked with the sign of the cross, and the minister tells them: “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” Just as Christ promised the Holy Spirit to his disciples, so too are we promised that God the Holy Spirit will be with us as baptized members of the Christian family.
A few years ago, the essayist Nicole Cliffe wrote a piece about how she was roused out of her happy atheism: one day, all alone in a room of her house, she heard herself say out loud, “Be with me.” She found it embarrassing, and she brushed it off. That was the preamble. Some days later, she writes,
I was surfing the Internet and came across John Ortberg’s… obituary for philosopher Dallas Willard. John’s daughters are dear friends, and I have always had a wonderful relationship with their parents, who struck me as sweetly deluded in their… faith, so I clicked on the article.
Somebody once asked Dallas if he believed in total depravity.
“I believe in sufficient depravity,” he responded immediately.
What’s that?
“I believe that every human being is sufficiently depraved that when we get to heaven, no one will be able to say, ‘I merited this.’ ”
A few minutes into reading the piece, I burst into tears.[3]
Why did she burst into tears? Because she heard a story that had never made sense to her before, a story of the overwhelming love of God made known in the person of Jesus Christ. Because the Holy Spirit was with her, and opened her ears to the Good News of the risen Christ, to the reality that her value was not finally dependent on her bank account, or her résumé, but on the love of God, poured out on the Cross. It was as if a stranger had walked up to her in a foreign country, a place where she didn’t speak the language, and asked, “Excuse me, but do you speak English?” She had the experience of Pentecost, and like those who heard the apostles, she was amazed and astonished and perplexed. Given her crying, she could have been mistaken for being drunk on white wine. But she was a woman changed by the Holy Spirit.
St Paul writes that, “no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.”[4]That’s why we wear red on Pentecost, because of the tongues of fire that alighted on the disciples, and why Pentecost is considered the birthday of the church. Pentecost marks the day when the disciples began to spread the word, and when people were able to hear the story and be amazed. Their lives were changed, and they were empowered to share the love of God in ways that changed the lives of their friends and neighbors as well. I wonder how the Holy Spirit is at work in your life.
If you have come through the doors of the church today, if a single thing in this sermon, or this service, has made sense, that is not primarily a reflection of the skill of the preacher. It is in the power of the Holy Spirit to open our ears to the Gospel, to enable us to hear the Good News, each of us in our own language, this day and forever.
AMEN.
[1] John 14:25
[2] Gen 1:1-2
[3] Nicole Cliffe, “How God Messed Up My Happy Atheist Life,” Christianity Today, May 20, 2016,https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/june/nicole-cliffe-how-god-messed-up-my-happy-atheist-life.html
[4] 1 Cor 12:3