Sermon for Pentecost Day 2007
Click here to download the mp3.
“This business of tongues–’languages’, literally–is about how a universal language comes into the midst of human history and experience. It is the good news of Jesus Christ, which is a language that will allow everyone everywhere to be united as if they spoke one language.
“Then there’s the wind and the earthquake and the flame and the fire and all that stuff. Technically we call it ‘theophonic’ stuff–that is revealing, appearing, the manifestation of God.
“The feast of Pentecost, fifty days after Passover…had begun as and continued to be in many ways an agrarian feast. It celebrated the first wheat harvest. It was a time to thank God for God’s providence and graciousness in feeding the people bread. But by Jesus’ time, that theme had been supplanted by the giving of the Law on Sinai. Charlton Heston, with the two stone tablets.
“And that giving of the Law was surrounded by(guess what?) wind and earthquake and fire. So what Luke wants us to understand is not the, “Oh wow! Whoa!” but to say, “Aha!” Just as that event in the Old Testament, just as that event of the giving of the Law to the children of Israel who had made their escape from bondage in Egypt constituted them as God’s people, so this event is a new creation. A new Israel is brought into being. But this time, God’s people won’t be these twelve tribes, but the whole world.”