Thought for Today
Acts 2:1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 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. 3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Greta reminded me this morning that yesterday I forgot to mention during the Announcements in Worship that next Sunday is Pentecost Sunday. So, for all of you who will be worshiping at First Parish Church, remember to wear something red. Beyond a few ties with red in them, I own few articles of clothing in red. However, I get to ‘cheat’ a little bit in that Pentecost Sunday is one of the few occasions I wear my red stole.
If you are curious about why we wear red, read Acts 2:3 above. It is to commemorate those ‘tongues, as of fire.” I have to admit that every time I read that verse, I am reminded of a scene from the 1989 television mini-series Lonesome Dove. That series is based on a Larry McMurtry book of the same title. In the television adaptation, during a cattle drive from Texas to Montana, lightning strikes the horns of a longhorn cow, and the lightning dances from the horns of one cow to the next and throughout the entire herd. It is a very dramatic event. I have no idea of the accuracy of such a thing, but it seems like a Pentecost-type idea.
What happened on that Pentecost Day so long ago? Was there literally some sort of atmospheric discharge? Was the “sound like the rush of a violent wind” the prelude to an electrical discharge equalizing the potential difference between the sky and the earth?
Maybe even more puzzling for many of us in the Reformed Tradition, what did Luke mean in verse 4 about the disciples beginning “to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability?” Some time this week, read chapter 2 in Acts. Take in the entire story and try to imagine being there. Luke is careful to give us a great deal of specific information about the crowd, “2:5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem.” Luke tells us, “2:6 And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.”
That first Christian Pentecost Sunday seems to have been different from the modern phenomenon of ‘speaking in tongues’ where the language uttered is unknown to both the speaker and the audience. That first Christian Pentecost Sunday seems to me more a statement, a confirmation of the universality of the gospel message. Each member of that diverse crowd, “2:9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11 "Cretans and Arabs” heard the message delivered in their native tongue. Certainly Peter was not simultaneously speaking so many different languages!
Maybe an even larger question for each of us as we read Acts 2 and think about the event this week would be, “How does this event factor in our lives today as we deal with ‘wars and rumors of wars,’ with civil unrest on our college campuses, with AI and all the other complexities of our modern world?” In a larger sense, “How does anything in a book cobbled together hundreds and thousands of years ago apply to our modern world?”
The answer for Christians is, “How does everything in that Book not apply to our modern world?” Our Bible is the inspired, revealed word of our Creator God. The Bible is not a history book, not a chemistry text, not a physics manual. It is not a commentary on technology or even on psychology. It is a book on our relationship with the Creator of all Creation. We will not gain insight into why the northern lights were seen these last few days in so many unusual areas; we will not understand coronal mass ejections or any other technology from the Bible . . . at least not beyond gaining insight in the sense of “that’s the way God designed it!”
Pentecost, our other liturgical holidays, our scriptures are all important because they aid us in understanding God and God’s love for Creation. We don’t need to understand the physics of it all, we just need to understand John 3:16 and the immensity of God’s love.
Stay safe, bask in the love of God, trust God,
Pastor Ray