And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance (Acts 2:2-4).
Today’s Lesson for the Epistle recounts the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles, and it is a good illustration of the two big problems with miracles—the first of which is seeing, or at least perceiving, God’s miracles at all.
We might think that noticing the descent of the Holy Ghost would be a “no-brainer”—especially since his arrival was accompanied by the miraculous signs of a mighty wind, of tongues of fire, and of speaking understandably in unknown languages. And yet, when we read a little ahead in the Acts, we find that a number of bystanders, despite all this commotion, mocked the Spirit-filled Apostles and said, “These men are full of new wine” (2:13). Thus, while all the evidence of a miracle was before them, they chose to see only drunkards and fools.
The second big problem with miracles, then, even if we have been given the grace to perceive them, is making sense out of them. Apparently, even those who did recognize that something big had happened that day still needed help to understand it. Peter preached the first sermon of the New Covenant Church that morning, also recorded in Acts, to explain how the Father in heaven, together with His Eternal Son, the ascended Lord Jesus Christ, had sent God the Holy Ghost, the Living Power of God, to make the Church alive, and through this new life to continue Christ’s work of salvation until his Second Coming to judge the world.
So, after two thousand years of recounting these historical events, do we see the miracle? It wasn’t the wind, the fire, or the languages: these were only the outward signs of it. It wasn’t simply the coming of the Holy Ghost, since the Lord and Giver of life had worked in creation, had spoken through the Prophets of the Old Testament, and had publicly confirmed the identity and mission of Jesus Christ after his baptism in Jordan, descending upon him in the Sign of a dove.
What changed, what was new and different on that Pentecost morning, was that the Holy Ghost put the New Testament into full operation. The one sacrifice of Jesus Christ, offered on Ascension Day, when he took his sacrifice of himself to his Father’s throne, was now applied to all those who believed, personally, by the Living Grace of God. Just as God had breathed the Holy Ghost into the clay of Adam, making him a living soul; so, now, God breathed the Holy Ghost into the clay of the sons of the second Adam, making them the living Body of Christ, to live forever.
Nothing that the Apostles or disciples did caused this to happen. They could no more make themselves into the Church than the clay could have made itself into Adam. Nothing they decided for themselves compelled God to perform this mighty act, any more than Lazarus in the tomb could have decided to raise himself from the dead. God, of his own pure will, chose them and by his grace brought them to belief, set them apart from the rest of the world, joined their lives to the life of his Son, and made their calling visible by making them the Church, the “household” or “family” of God, through the indwelling Holy Ghost.
That was the miracle: the Church, the Bride of Christ, is made one flesh with her Lord; and her life continues today, in us, through Jesus Christ, and by the personal participation of the Holy Ghost forever. And when we see this miracle in its gracious splendor, we can begin, by the Holy Ghost alive within us, to understand it, and to understand the wind, the fire, and the tongues.
“Wind” and “breath” are the biblical symbols of the work of God the Holy Ghost. The wind is powerful. It can move ships across the seas. It can crush entire cities, as we are forced to admit when we make our plans for the tornado season. But we normally never see the wind, only its effects, and those people and things caught up in it. The breath of life is also invisible, except on a winter’s morning; but we recognize immediately the drastic results of an absence of breath, and we call it “death.”
The Church, then, is alive with the breath of God, and caught up in his power; and this is the only Church there will ever be, since no one but God can command wind or breath. The Holy Ghost himself is the power of the Church to work, to preach, and to pray; and while we cannot see him, we can see the results of his presence, and we can see the results of his absence.
“Fire” is the biblical sign of cleansing, but the fire of Pentecost does not consume those upon whom it lights. This unusual circumstance forces us to think back to Moses and the Burning Bush, which also was not consumed by divine fire. The “fire” was the personal presence of God, and a promise of this fire of the Pentecost, when the abiding presence of God the Holy Ghost would cleanse and illuminate the Church as the Body of Christ. More even than this, the fire of God on Pentecost teaches that the Church is not an abstract idea or plan for mankind to implement as it chooses. The Church is God’s personal work for salvation’s sake, and we have no promise of any other divine work of salvation.
The “tongues” are a communication of the Gospel in their own languages to the people gathered that day by God’s grace from a long list of mostly unpronounceable nations, comprising the boundaries of the then-known world. This was language, and not “babble,” since this sign is the first phase of the undoing of the Tower of Babel. Where once the sinful pride of mankind had led to the confusion of tongues and the destruction of human unity; now God provides the Gospel, the proper language of man, consisting of “the wonderful works of God” (Acts 2:11). This sign of Babel-fallen, fallen before the kingdom of God, is an announcement that the door of salvation is open to all men, not as isolated individuals, but as members of one another in Jesus Christ. This sign offers us, not mystic isolation or a private piety, but communion in Jesus Christ with the Father and the Holy Ghost.
The events of Pentecost are a practical course in discerning and interpreting miracles. We learn that the miracles of God are not ours to command, but his doing for his purposes. We see the Church alive today, despite the wear and tear of twenty centuries of human folly, and still the same Church of the Apostles and the disciples in Jesus Christ, indwelt by the Holy Ghost. We discover that, while we may belong to the Church, the Church belongs to God, and she remains his one promised means of spiritual power; of life-giving grace; of his personal presence; and of an eternal union of God, shared with a redeemed and obedient mankind.
We see the Church, then; we see the grace and gifts of the Pentecost; and we see God the Holy Ghost at work wherever and whenever we see God Almighty loved, obeyed, worshipped, and given the priority above all else that is. What we see on all other occasions is not Christianity at all, but rather the pagan myth of Narcissus-the man who fell in love with himself and drowned trying to embrace his own reflection in a pool. Psychologists call a pathological self-love “narcissism” because of this myth, and there is a great deal of narcissism that masquerades today as Christianity.
The preacher who diverts attention from Jesus Christ, so that he can gather a cult of followers for himself is a pagan narcissist and not a Christian. The person who blithely claims “the gifts of the Holy Ghost” as his or her own private powers, not for the revelation of the kingdom of God, but for the assertion of his or her own opinions and reputation, is a pagan narcissist and not a Christian. After all, no prophet of the Scriptures ever seeks the burden of that gift and calling, down to our Lord Himself, who sweat blood that the cup might be taken away (Luke 22:42-44). And, lastly, no congregation that trades the worship of God as taught in the Scriptures for entertainment and self-promotion, no matter how large it grows, is anything more than a congregation of pagan narcissists, drowning in a perverted self-love.
But there is a greater love, an eternal love, available this morning and every morning since the Pentecost: the love of God Himself at work in us. When that divine love does its proper work, and we are moved to worship, witness, and love, we can be certain, beyond a shadow of doubt, that we are Christ’s, and that in Jesus Christ we are the Father’s beloved and true children by adoption and grace. The more we put God first in everything that we say, think, or do, the more we will feel and live that love, and the more we will have daily the miraculous signs that the Living Power of God Almighty has descended upon us in ways that only began with the rushing wind, the tongues of fire, and the perfect language of the wonderful works of God. What comes next will only be more wonderful still; more wonderful than we can imagine right now, at this point in our walk in Christ, at this moment of the life we share in God the Holy Ghost.
And so we pray, first of all this morning, Let that gift of love continue in us and let us all continue in that gift of life.