Tell Out My Soul

Acts 2:1-21 Thoughts on Pentecost day

Pentecost is such a special day, it marks the establishment of the Christian church and the outreach of Jesus’ mission after his death and resurrection. If there is a day on which we should feel especially fired up and passionate about our faith, it’s Pentecost. And what a day it was! 

Luke says in the reading from Acts that Jews, “from every nation under heaven” were gathering in Jerusalem at the time for the Pentecost feast. At the time of Jesus, Pentecost was a major Jewish harvest party—also called Shavu’ot, or the Feast of Weeks—and this happened 50 days after Passover. This festival brought thousands of pilgrims to Jerusalem to celebrate.

So the Apostles were in the upper room where they were staying, and with them were also Jesus’ brothers, Mary and other women. It was an ordinary gathering, but then something astonishing happened, there came a rushing wind, like a hurricane, and the Holy Spirit descended on them, like tongues of fire. We’ve seen lots of images of what Pentecost may have looked like, with these glowing fiery lights descending onto the Apostles heads, and their faces full of rapture.

The apostles were transformed. Gone was the fear and the doubt and in came courage and conviction. They went straight outside, right away, into the street, pushed along by a wave of emotion. Talking excitedly, preaching and proclaiming the word of God. The people in the street had no idea what was going on, they thought that the apostles had been partying, that would be an easy explanation. And they poked fun at the apostles. But Peter insisted that they weren’t drunk; how on earth could they be drunk at nine in the morning. What on earth could have happened to them?

The apostles’ hearts and minds were flooded with the power of the Holy Spirit and they couldn’t wait to tell everyone the message of God’s love and salvation, they were exploding with it. And it all came pouring out of them. The Holy Spirit, the prime motivator, was working at a hundred percent that day. 

By itself, the Pentecost story may look quite bizarre. But if we look at this story through the eyes of its author, it becomes more clear. Luke, the author of Acts, is a historian, so he’s telling us what happened in the context of the big historical picture. He’s reflecting Old Testament themes. The rushing wind and divine brilliant fire is an echo of what happened in the past. When Moses delivered his people from slavery, they traveled to Mt Sinai and it was there that a fire blazed on the mountain and a storm happened. The ten commandments were handed down. Later on when the tabernacle was built in the same place, God appeared in a column of fire. When Israel built the permanent temple, fire appeared as God’s “dwelling glory.”

Fire signals God’s presence and marks the space as his dwelling place. Fire is a tangible sign that God’s presence has settled in his temple, in the middle of his people’s community life. It is the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity who appears on the scene each time.

So when Luke describes God’s fire resting on the Apostles and Mary, he’s saying that, in this case, God’s temple is made up of people and God is dwelling within them. God lives inside the community of Jesus’ followers. At Pentecost the temple is not a building but a dwelling made out of each one of them.

God’s fire shines with power and harms nobody, and it ignites a cosmic revolution, the Christian Church. The people who make up this living temple behave as Jesus would want them to behave, responding to fear and oppression with love, peacefully teaching others to love and bless one another. Pentecost heralds the start of a new world view. 

It is impossible to deny that there is a decline in Christian values that we can see happening today, and an antagonism towards Christian faith in our own society. And it is easy to note the similarity between the world at the time of Pentecost and our own situation now; it feels as though Christians are starting from square one again… there exists a need to reignite the fire of Pentecost in our modern world. There is a need to make space for God, so that the Spirit can come rushing in. 

This passion for God is sorely needed today, here, now, in this beleaguered time. Where is God? we ask ourselves when we look at the state of the world, and also our own society. But God is here, has always been here and will be here for evermore. God is everywhere, out there, in here, in every raindrop, in every sunrise…  in the cry of every newborn baby. But what appears to be missing in the world around us, and especially in the modern urbanised world, is the space for God in human consciousness, there is no room for an awareness or an acknowledgement of God. 

In many ways the awareness of God is being squeezed out of the very fabric of modern human existence. There appears to be no room for the notion of a God that brought us into being and who cares for each one of us so intensely, and who took on human form to share in our experience. In so many people’s lives, there is no room for a God, who, after he ascended, sent down the Holy Spirit to be our guide, comfort and inspiration. 

Since the dawn of the human experience people have felt the presence of God, even in their earliest imaginings and searchings. The world of the spirit was real and present, and their earthly world was presided over by a powerful force. As early as 100,000 years ago there is evidence that early humans practiced burial rituals that showed an awareness of life after death. They buried loved ones with their belongings, so it’s apparent that a form of spirituality formed part of their beliefs and culture. Aboriginal Dreamtime stories show complex awareness of the spiritual nature of the universe and its creation. A spiritual agency was always a part of the human social fabric and culture. 

I imagine that Christian awareness reached its peak in Europe with the creation of Gothic cathedrals. Living in the middle ages in England or France, you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing them towering up, their spires reaching up to the skies. The rhythms of life revolved around the Christian liturgical calendar and the festivals and ceremonies that marked the passage of time. 

I began to ask myself when did people in the West start pushing God aside, out of their daily consciousness, when did God stop being a part of their life? And when did people begin to not see God in everything around them? How often do we speak the name of God when we’re out talking to others? God is not spoken of, or taught about in schools, not referred to in conversations. Even saying “God bless you” when someone sneezes, even though it’s just a superstition. In the Middle Ages, people believed that when you sneezed, your spirit left your body for a second. So people would say “God bless you” to ward off any evil spirit that could sneak in when you were temporarily out of your body. I can’t remember the last time I heard someone say that. I don’t think anyone says “bless you” anymore. 

When did it become strange or inappropriate to speak about Jesus openly to others, even in a simple phrase like “thank you Jesus” if something good happens to us? Sadly, most of the time when we hear the name of Jesus in public, it’s when someone’s cursing. Nowadays, saying the name of Jesus is avoided for fear of “offending” people. When did talking about God become offensive?

Christianity was a hard-won faith built on the strength and courage of martyrs. Over the centuries it became a world religion, the notion of a belief in God and Jesus as his son became the norm, and the accepted world view in western society. It informed our system of laws and culture, and how we related to each other. And here we find ourselves, 2000 years after Pentecost; things have changed.

In the last Australian census, 44% of people identified as Christian, dropping from 52% in 2016. What a change from 1911 when the first census was taken… when 96% of Australians listed Christianity as their religion. The figures are showing a marked and steady decline. No longer is the language of Christian teaching understood, or natural in a secularised world. 

So how do we be Christian in this environment and how do we make space for God? This is the challenge to us, to shift things aside and say, here Lord, I’ve saved a place for you. Pentecost is a good time to think about this and to let the Holy Spirit motivate and move us. This is exactly the situation that requires the inspiration, wisdom, understanding, and most of all, passion, that are the special gifts of the Holy Spirit, and that were poured out at Pentecost. The apostles went out talking and preaching, going on and on about Jesus, to everyone they saw. Eventually they got into trouble for it; I guess they offended a lot of people too.

In this day and age, I don’t think our situation is going to be helped by literally following the example of the apostles at Pentecost… you know, by rushing out excitedly into the streets and praising God loudly and emotionally. Somehow, I don’t think that’s the answer. But the spirit does work in many ways.

We may be inspired to find the solution in an important event that happened in 1969 and the example set by the astronauts on the Apollo 11 mission, those three amazing men who made space for God. At a time when the attention of the whole world was on them, they talked about God. The Apollo 11 mission was the first mission to put men on the moon and at that time NASA had a policy forbidding astronauts to use references from the Bible or mentioning God during public transmissions from space. And there was a reason for this clamp down.

What happened was that, the year before, when the Apollo 8 mission entered lunar orbit, one of the astronauts read from Genesis. This sparked a lawsuit against NASA by a militant atheist named Madalyn Murray O’Hair. While the case was dismissed at the time, NASA was still a little touchy about the whole “referring to God in space issue”. So the following year, the three Apollo 11 astronauts were told to not talk about God, to not read from the Bible or anything like that, in case NASA was sued again. 

But they didn’t count on Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon. He stuck to his faith. Before he and Neil Armstrong left the lunar module to step onto the moon, he grabbed his opportunity. He radioed to Mission Control saying, “Houston. This is Eagle, the LM Pilot speaking. I would like to request a few moments of silence. I would like to invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever he may be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his own individual way.”

For Aldrin, that meant observing the Lord’s Supper. Aldrin was an elder in his Presbyterian Church and had received permission from his pastor to take bread and wine with him to space and give himself Communion, which he did.

And then just before the module was due to splash down in the Pacific Ocean, they had a TV broadcast and during the broadcast, Buzz read from Psalm 8:3-4: “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou has ordained; what is man that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him?” 

It turns out Aldrin’s religious faith was not unusual. In fact, 29 of the 32 astronauts who were involved with the Apollo program were Christian, with a high proportion of them serving as church leaders in their congregations.

When those three courageous astronauts went to the moon, they put God into the picture, they saw mother earth shining like a blue jewel in the blackness of space, they orbited the moon and stood on its surface. We can only imagine the awe and wonder that they felt. How could they not make space for God during this incredible experience?

As Christians in a modern world, we face the challenge of keeping God in the picture, and bringing God to the awareness of a public that is estranged from its creator, just like Buzz Aldrin did. It’s a daunting prospect, particularly when many elements in our own society either ignore Christian values, or at worse, vocally oppose Christianity.  

But it is such an imperative now, more than ever, as we witness the decline of Christian spirituality in our society. It’s the same challenge the apostles faced at Pentecost. When the spirit moves us to express our wonder and love for God, then it’s incumbent on us as followers of Jesus to say “yes” to the Holy Spirit and allow the Spirit to use us as God’s special vehicles, to keep his name alive in a world that often seems bereft of his presence. Jesus suffered and died for us… how can we keep silent and deny him? The time has come again for us, as followers of Jesus, to return his immense love and make some space for God in the world. 

Amen.