Reclaiming the Gift of Pentecost

Acts 2:1-21                                                  Rev. Todd B. Freeman

Bethany Presbyterian Church, Dallas                                    May 30, 2004

Today is the day in the life of the Christian Church when we celebrate Pentecost. When you hear that word, Pentecost, what comes to your mind? For many, they think of Pentecostal. The same is often true when folks hear the word evangelism; they think of evangelical. In many previous sermons I have tried to reclaim that word, evangelism, for those of us who do not consider ourselves evangelical, from a theological perspective, but do believe in sharing the good news of God’s transforming and inclusive love. I hope to do the same this morning for the word Pentecost.

It was only about 100 years ago that a religious movement began, which now claims over 300 million adherents worldwide. To put that into perspective, there are only 2.6 million Presbyterians (PCUSA) in this country today.

It began as a sudden outburst of new and dramatic spiritual experience, enabling those who received it, mostly socially disadvantaged and marginalized, to claim that God was doing a new thing in and through them, that God’s Spirit was being poured out in a fresh way, reviving the celebration and power of the first apostles on the day of Pentecost.

The movement was, of course, Pentecostalism, which continues to spread at an enormous rate. Pentecostalism has flourished where mainstream churches have been perceived as spiritually dry and socially and culturally oppressive. But Pentecostalism has also come into the mainstream churches, including our own denomination, through the charismatic movement. The Presbyterian Church in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and throughout most of Central America, for instance, is much more charismatic and evangelical than here in the United States.

Pentecostalism, with it’s exuberant singing and dancing in the aisles, let alone it’s propensity to speak in tongues, traces its biblical roots to the goings-on in this story found in the second chapter in Acts.

What I want to do this morning, rather than comment further on the contemporary scene, is to look again at Acts 2 and reflect on what Luke, it’s author, is telling us. Modern readers forget something that is crucial for proper biblical interpretation: Luke hasn’t told the story in our terms, in terms of people who were gasping for some highly emotional experience of God and suddenly got more than they bargained for.

The way his story is told highlights two things which neither Pentecostalism nor its detractors have really recognized. Luke saw Pentecost as the day of fulfillment and renewal for the two great Jewish institutions: the Law and the Temple.

Biblical scholars have often pointed out that Luke tells the story of Pentecost in such a way as to awaken echoes of the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai to Moses. Let me explain.

Long before it was a Christian celebration, Pentecost was a Jewish holiday, held fifty days after Passover. (Christian Pentecost is held 50 days after Easter.) It was the feast that celebrated the giving of the Law, which according to the book of Exodus occurred 50 days (which is what the word pentecost means) after the Israelites crossed the Red Sea.

Reflecting Moses’ assent up the mountain and coming down with the stone tablets, the book of Acts records Jesus’ ascension up into heaven and the sending down of the Holy Spirit to be the new way of life for God’s redeemed people. This story represents the fulfillment of the Torah, the Law.

But there is of course a major difference. The original law was written on tablets of stone; the new law, the law of the Spirit, is written on human hearts. As Christians, we believe the Spirit of God does indeed dwell within each of us, transforming and empowering us to love God, our neighbors, our enemies, and ourselves. Pentecost, then, fulfills the Law.

The second point is not so well known: Luke is also telling this story so as to echo stories about the Temple. Let me explain this part.

When Solomon, David’s son, built the Temple and dedicated it, scripture says it was filled with the cloud that hid God’s presence. The priests couldn’t stand there, because God’s glory filled the whole house. One of the most famous moments in subsequent Temple history came when the prophet Isaiah saw the Lord, Yahweh, in the Temple; the foundations of the thresholds shook and the house was filled with smoke.

Much later, however, the Temple was completely destroyed by the Babylonians. Ezekiel’s vision of the future restored Temple climaxes in the glory of the Lord returning to the house, sweeping in from the east with the sound of many waters, illuminating all the earth with God’s glory.

Many, many first-century Jews, though continuing to worship in the rebuilt Jerusalem Temple, were lamenting the fact that this still hadn’t happened. The Temple seemed a place of memory and imagination rather than the vivid reality spoken of by the prophets.

But now Luke, telling the story of the day of Pentecost, tells it in terms that would awaken these old stories of God filling the Temple with God’s glorious presence. The rushing of a violent wind filled the house where the apostles were sitting, and flaming tongues of fire came to rest on each of them.

Pentecost wasn’t just the fulfilling and renewing of the Torah. It was the fulfilling and renewing of the Temple. Only it is the apostles who are constituted as the new, true Temple; not now a building of stone, wood and bricks, but as a community of living, breathing, worshipping human beings.

For most first-century Jews, the Law wasn’t just a set of instructions. It was the personal self-revelation of the all-holy and all-wise God. They believed that when your studied the Law you were in the very presence of God. The Law was a heavenly reality made known on earth; it was one of the places where, and the means by which, heaven and earth were bound together.

In the same way, the Temple wasn’t just a big building where you went to say your prayers and sing hymns. They believed that when you went to the Temple you were also in the very presence of God. The Temple was the geographical location where heaven and earth met and overlapped.

We will never understand early Christianity, let along grapple with its meaning for today, until we learn how to think of heaven and earth not as separated by a great gulf, but as interlocking, overlapping spheres of reality.

For the Jew this connection was focused on the Torah and Temple, the two places where heaven and earth, God’s sphere and our sphere, came together. For the early Christians, Torah and Temple had come together in Jesus Christ himself, as the gospels tell us in a hundred different ways; and now, by the Holy Spirit, Torah and Temple came together in the persons and community of the surprised early Christians themselves.

The Bible records this transition in the understanding of the encounter of the presence of God from being physically present in the Jerusalem Temple, to being physically present in the person of Jesus Christ, to being present in individuals – you and me. This is the difference between the Old and New Testaments. This was the primary difference between Judaism and Christianity.

What Luke is saying, is that with Pentecost the one true and living God, the creator of heaven and earth, now lives not only among us, but also within us. This was a theological advancement greater than any other in human history!

That is what the Apostle Paul means when he declares that each of us is a living temple of God, upon our hearts the law of love has been written.

This is what we need to remind ourselves of each and every Sunday as we gather as a community of faith. Every time we worship, and in our daily lives, we need to pray for a fresh outpouring of the Spirit, a fresh renewal of the heart, and fresh revealing of the wind and fire of God’s glory.

And what we will do here in just a moment, as we do each month as we celebrate the sacrament of The Lord’s Supper, is either to invoke the Living God, to enact once more the sacrament of God’s love, the joining of heavenly food with earthly food, the recognition of the divine presence of God among and within us, or it is a waste of time!

I pray that it will be the former; that God will pour out upon us and upon God’s whole creation the Spirit of God’s presence and power. I pray that not only this sanctuary, but each of us as living human beings, will be cleansed and restored as Temples, places where God lives, which God transforms by the renewal of our hearts. And yes, sometimes that process takes a long time, even a lifetime.

And I pray that others will be drawn to this transformed community of faith as you and I, in our own diverse ways, tell them about the presence of God in our lives and in the life of this congregation.

Amen.

Resource: New Law, New Temple, New World, a sermon by

Dr. N.T. Wright, Westminster Abbey, June 8, 2003