Day of Pentecost 2023

Acts 2.1-21

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful people and kindle in us the fire of your love.

Fifty days after Easter Sunday, on this 50^th and final day of the long Easter season, the church celebrates the day of Pentecost (the name comes from the Greek word for fifty). Pentecost recalls the day when a group of Jesus’ followers, waiting in Jerusalem, were filled with the Holy Spirit. This gift of the Holy Spirit is God’s power at work in the lives of ordinary people.

Ordinary, however, is hardly the word that comes to mind in the account of the Spirit’s arrival in today’s reading from the second chapter of Acts. It’s filled with vivid detail: wind rocking the house; tongues like flames of fire resting on each of the disciples, the strange speech in a chorus of world languages—to say nothing of the over-the-top joy that led to Peter’s disclaimer about the disciples’ behavior: “These men are not drunk as you suppose. It’s only 9:00 o’clock in the morning.” Wind, fire, speech, joy. The verses that Peter then quotes from the Old Testament prophet Joel as he tries to explain to the crowds what it all means are also vivid with talk of blood, fire, and billowing smoke. It’s strange, fantastic, and a little bit frightening. Whatever the work of the Holy Spirit means, in today’s reading from Acts, ordinary is maybe not the first word that comes to mind.

Yet all these vivid images of the extraordinary work of God are turned toward the lives of ordinary people. In the Old Testament, the people of Israel knew about the outpouring of God’s Spirit on particular people at particular places and times: the occasional charismatic leader, for example, a prophet or king anointed with power by the Holy Spirit. The coronation of King Charles included a private and hidden moment of anointing that was described as, “the most solemn element” in that service. Throughout the service, connections were made between the Holy Spirit and anointing. The gospel reading was from Luke, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me” for the task of announcing good news to the poor, proclaiming release for prisoners, setting broken victims go free. During the anointing, the choir sang an anthem by Handel: “Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anointed King Solomon.” And there was a prayer for Christ’s “holy Anointing [to] pour down upon your Head and Heart the blessing of the Holy Spirit, and prosper the work of your Hands.” It was all very grand, worth getting up for early that morning as a particular person was anointed by the Spirit for a particular life and work. Extraordinary.

But now, Peter says in his sermon at Pentecost, the gift of the Spirit is given to a wide range of people, ordinary people: sons and daughters, servants and handmaids, the young and old together. “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.” Now, not just particular people for particular tasks but ordinary people in their ordinary lives—“all flesh.” Because after the vivid and extraordinary events of Pentecost have come and gone, Jesus’ disciples remain completely ordinary. In the next chapter in Acts, Peter and John encounter a man outside the Temple, a man unable to walk his entire life. The story begins in Acts 3 and continues through Acts 4. Peter speaks; the man is healed; the crowds are stunned. It’s a remarkable series of events. But Peter and John aren’t themselves remarkable. Just the opposite. Acts says that when the crowd saw the boldness of Peter and John, they were amazed because they realized these two disciples “were uneducated and ordinary men.” ‘Ordinary men,’ Acts calls them. Yet through the work of the Holy Spirit, ordinary people are transformed by God. In and through them, the extraordinary life of Jesus is known.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful people and kindle in us the fire of your love.

And while the gift of the Holy Spirit transforms the disciples, it doesn’t change the world into which they are sent. That remains the same. I suppose that’s obvious: that Jesus’ followers are sent into the world as it is and not as it’s meant to be. But sometimes it’s good to be reminded of the obvious to appreciate it in fresh ways. The late Peter Gomes, one-time chaplain at Harvard, notes that the gift of the Spirit did not change the world the early Christians were sent to. “Think of that,” he says. “The Romans still ran the show; the Greeks were difficult; life was ‘brutish, nasty, and short.’” After the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, none of those facts were changed or mitigated, Gomes notes. How true is this for us, too? Is it even possible to list all the ways our world is fragile, broken, angry, anxious, and afraid. And not just the world but also our lives. In this unchanged world, a line from Ecclesiastes comes to mind. “There is nothing new under the sun.”

What is new, however, and what the gift of the Holy Spirit renews, is the disciples’ lives and their imagination. Gomes says, “The Spirit empowered them, enabled them, to live as changed people in an unchanged world.” To live as changed people in an unchanged world. This is the calling of Christians, our calling: changed people in an unchanged world. This would not have been possible for Jesus’ followers on their own, but only with the power of Christ in them, the power of the Holy Spirit. This is a gift of God and the extraordinary work of God in the lives of Jesus’ ordinary followers. This is the power of the Holy Spirit that we celebrate today: the power that gives us grace to remember and trust the faithful love of God; the power to imagine how we can be God’s people and make Christ known through word and deed; the power and strength to persevere in the works God has given us to do even when it is difficult. “Anyone can be a Christian in a Christian world,” Gomes says. “But in case you hadn’t noticed, this is not a Christian world. This is a fallen world, a secular world, a sordid world…and it happens to be the only world you and I have.” Yet this is the world the Father sent the Son to out of love, a world where we are born anew by the Holy Spirit. This is what Pentecost celebrates: the extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit transforming the lives of ordinary people. To be a Christian is to be a changed person in the middle of an unchanged world.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful people and kindle in us the fire of your love.

Now life in the Spirit may, at times, be as dramatic as today’s reading from Acts. But it doesn’t need to be; in fact, it often isn’t. JI Packer has said, “The Holy Spirit’s main ministry is not to give us thrills but to create in us Christlike character.” Not to give us thrills but to create in us Christlike character is the main work of the Spirit. The Spirit leads us to Jesus, keeps us alive in him, and alert to his presence among us. The Holy Spirit is at work in us, the catechism of the Book of Common Prayer says, whenever we “confess Jesus as Lord and are brought into love and harmony with God, with ourselves, with our neighbors.”

When we leave here this morning, the world won’t have changed, and it may not be what we want it to be. But through the Holy Spirit, we are being made into the people that God wants us to be. And as our lives witness to Jesus, as the fruit of the Spirit is known through us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is nothing dramatic in any of that but it is all so important; spiritual thrills are no substitute for kindness, generosity, peace and more all filled with God’s power. And as God prospers the work of our hands, just maybe the people around us will wonder, as they did with Jesus’ followers in the book of Acts, how such extraordinary things, such uncommon things, can be lived out by ordinary, common people like us: sons and daughters, servants and handmaids, young and the old together.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful people and kindle in us the fire of your love.