What’s So Funny?
Acts 2:1-21
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’ All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: ‘Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
“In the last days it will be, God declares,
that 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.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
It’s Pentecost! It’s the church’s birthday. It’s the day when the Holy Spirit was gifted to us in a fiery rush of wind! But I’ll be honest with you, Church. I have a tough time with this stuff. I can’t imagine you’re surprised that your minister who’s theologically obsessed with the small, quiet moments of the Bible, your minster who’s obsessed with the humble humanity of Jesus has trouble with this bombastic, kind of fire and brimstone kind of language. So I’m going to take this exciting, miraculous, over-the-top passage and make it boring. Just kidding. But I do think there’s something to be said for kind of de-mystifying Bible passages like this. I think living in such a time as we do—a time of logic and science, technological advancement, I think it can sometimes be hard to be moved by some of this almost unbelievable language. We live in a time, after all, where a phrase like “a rush of violent wind” makes us think of a devastating hurricane before it makes us think of the Holy Spirit.
I think it’s actually really important to demystify passages like this one—because while this verse sounds totally out of this world and fantastic, it’s really about something very simple. It’s about togetherness and unity. It’s about solidarity and community. It’s about people coming together and understanding each other thanks to the power of the Holy Spirit. This is what the Holy Spirit does. It brings people together. It does not exclude or divide. But there’s a funny push and pull here—while there is surely something universal here, in that we all can experience the Holy Spirit, we’re also all wired differently, and we will all experience the Holy Spirit differently. Some will experience it through prayer, some through activism, some through service to others. Some experience it in the singing of a favorite hymn, some will experience it alone on a mountaintop or sitting in the sand in front of an incomprehensibly vast ocean. The beauty of experiencing the Holy Spirit is that none of these ways of experiencing are wrong. Whatever way one experiences the Holy Spirit is totally real and completely authentic. This concept doesn’t translate well in today’s world, though. We say we value individuality and creativity in this country, and yet we seem to think of things in terms of black or white, right or wrong. One of my favorite classical theologians, Fredrich Schleiermacher says “…religion makes everything holy and valuable, even unholiness and commonness itself, everything it comprehends and does not comprehend, that does or does not lie within the system of its own thoughts and is or is not in agreement with its peculiar manner of action; religion is the only sworn enemy of…one-sidedness.” Or, I would add, it at least should be.
A couple weeks ago, I talked about how the Bible is big enough and strong enough for it to touch people in infinite different ways, for people to find wildly different meanings in the same verses. Well, the Holy Spirit is this way too. It is so big and so incomprehensible, there’s no right or wrong way to experience it. There’s no way that is too small or too common. While we all may experience the Holy Spirit in different ways, some big, some small, what holds true for all of us, what is universal here, is that we can all experience it. No one is excluded for any reason. Period. But there seems to be a lack of understanding in today’s world. It seems, sometimes, that if someone doesn’t feel the Holy Spirit exactly the way we do, or if someone doesn’t pray or worship the way we do, that they’re doing it wrong, when there truly is no wrong (unless your way of worshipping harms other people). There’s just not enough understanding between different types of people.
“Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” Let’s dig into this verse. It’s crucial here that we don’t confuse this with speaking in tongues. Speaking in tongues is speaking in some kind of unknown, divine language. It’s also something that we UCC folks, especially many of us reserved New Englanders just cannot comprehend—being so moved by something to throw all caution and inhibition to the wind and engage in this kind of ecstatic behavior… it’s a lot more than we Puritans can deal with. So I have good news for you! This means exactly what it says—that people were speaking in one another’s native tongues. They weren’t speaking anything incomprehensible. They were speaking in a way in which everyone could understand one another. And that is just so beautiful to me. Especially because these days, doesn’t it sometimes feel like even those who speak the same languages aren’t understanding each other?
I find it so interesting that these folks moved by the Holy Spirit to miraculously speak in other people’s native languages were mocked, and thought of as drunk. If I’m being totally honest, I could understand thinking that if someone was speaking in tongues, if someone was speaking something that sounded like complete nonsense—but in what world is it not beautiful and miraculous to speak in a new language so that you and a stranger, a foreigner, can understand each other? I couldn’t help but think of the song “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?” made popular by Elvis Costello when I was reading this passage, especially when Peter gets, understandably, a little defensive: “…these are not drunk as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning!” But truly, what is so funny about this? What’s so funny about people being moved to communicate with one another? What’s so funny about people making an effort to truly understand their neighbor? What is so funny about understanding?
Well Church, mocking like this isn’t anything new, and it’s also not anything that’s gone away. Prophets have long been reviled and scoffed at. We’ve talked about this before—prophets are not popular. In the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis, this a part that I preached on a year or so ago—right before Joseph, who is his father’s favorite for his prophetic dreams and powers, is thrown into a pit by his brothers and left to die, as his brothers see him coming they sneer at him, “here comes this dreamer” as if it’s bad to be a dreamer, as if it’s bad to speak the truth. Because Church, that’s what being a prophet is—it’s speaking truth. This is something else we can demystify about this passage.
“…God declares,
that 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.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.”
Powerful, over-the-top imagery here, right? Because of verses like this, when we think of prophets, we think of mystics, we think of fortune-tellers, we think of psychics, we think of magical people who can see into the future. But prophets are truth-tellers. Prophets are people who, often guided by the Holy Spirit, see this world for what it is, and they’re called to make truths known. Sometimes of these truths are obvious and beautiful, but sometimes the truths prophets are called to proclaim are difficult. More often than not, they’re not what people want to hear. And so people become suspicious of prophets, when prophets want nothing more than to proclaim the truth and make the world a better place. Prophets see difficult truths, they bring wrongs to light, and then they see a hope for the future by figuring out how to right those wrongs.
Like Joseph being sneered at as some starry-eyed dreamer, and like the nonbelievers in today’s passage mocking those touched by the Holy Spirit as drunk, I think today, we hear of modern-day prophets and activists who are fighting for nothing but a livable planet or basic human rights for all those mocked as too “woke,” or as a “social justice warrior,” or as some idealistic hippie. We mock those who say things we don’t want to hear, even when it’s the truth. We mock those who challenge us to face difficult truths.
I’m thinking about modern day prophets; I’m thinking about the young climate activist Greta Thunberg who was mocked as needing anger management because of her passion for this planet and her calls to treat this planet with care so that all can live comfortably without increasing fear of destruction brought on by climate change. I’m thinking of Martin Luther King Jr., who, as we talked about back on MLK Sunday, was strongly disliked in his day—only a third of Americans approved of his fight for civil rights. I wonder if this is why it’s so hard to really fight for change—I wonder if our fear of being mocked or reviled holds us back from experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit to see and speak the truth. These days, being a prophet is not glamorous. It’s risky and you kind of have to have a thick skin to be one. But this this Pentecost passage—this is a preview of what can be.
See, my theology tells us not to sit around and wait to die to experience the Kingdom of Heaven. My theology tells us to work to make the Kingdom of God present in the here and now. This moment of the Holy Spirit gifting people with the knowledge and ability to speak and communicate in different languages—this is a preview of the Kingdom of God. We can work towards a world in which we can all understand each other. We can work towards a world in which there are no borders or languages dividing us.
We will all get to this place on different paths. We will all be called by the Holy Spirit in different ways. But it takes creativity, and it takes a letting go. It takes humility in knowing that we need some guidance and some help to find our path to the Holy Spirit, to find our path to better understanding of our neighbors and strangers around us. But no matter how we get there, there is one thing to be certain of—no one is excluded. Young men shall see visions, old men will dream dreams, men and women alike will prophesy. No one is denied the love or the power of the Holy Spirit.
So I ask—what was so funny to the non-believers in this passage when all these people were gifted with the Holy Spirit; when all these people were gifted the gift of communication, of understanding, of truth-telling. I wonder if they were afraid of what the prophets would tell them. I wonder if they were afraid of the truth. So they became insecure and tried to discredit them by accusing them of drunkenness at 9 in the morning. So I guess the message I’m trying to convey this morning is pay no mind to what the insecure bullies try to say when you speak difficult truths in this world. Because I truly can’t fathom what is so funny about understanding one another. Amen.
