So you may have noticed a few weeks ago that I actually really love talking about the Holy Spirit. It’s the Person of the Trinity that I wish we would talk about more as Lutherans, so I love that Pentecost is a day when we really get to celebrate the work of the Holy Spirit! And, one of the things that I love about the story of Pentecost is the imagery. “Something appeared to them that seemed like tongues of fire; these separated and came and rest on the head of each one. They were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as she enabled them” (Acts 2: 3-4). I mean, can you imagine witnessing this! Tongues of fire and all of these languages being spoken.
I’ve had several truly incredible experiences of worshiping in a language other than English, including going with my friend to a Japanese Christian church when I was in high school and worshipping in Arabic with the people in the Holy Land on my trips there. It was amazing to feel how my body still connected with the different parts of the worship service, even if I couldn’t understand the language that was being spoken around me. I could still feel that a powerful worship service was happening, and it always reminds me of our story from Acts today.
But, our story doesn’t end there: “Now there were devout people living in Jerusalem from every nation under heaven, and at this sound they all assembled. But they were bewildered to hear their native languages being spoken” (Acts 2: 5-6). God, through the Holy Spirit here, is expanding what it means to be a part of the kindom of God. In this inclusion of all languages, it isn’t a forcing of all to learn Greek, or Aramaic, or Hebrew. But it is an expansion to truly include all people and languages within the scope of who is included in God’s kindom. This is going to set the tone for how the disciples are sent out into the world, because it theoretically wipes away the debate about who should be included and who should be excluded.
It is this reading, coupled with the writings of Paul in 1 Corinthians, that help us to see that unity in the Spirit does not mean that we are all the same. Instead, the Spirit equips different languages and gives us different gifts for the sake of the common good, for the sake of the world. The Spirit, as a Person of the Trinity, draws us into the relationality of God and ultimately draws us back to the communal nature to which we have been called. Because with all of these different gifts, it requires us to be in relationship with one another. To set aside the idea that we can do everything on our own or that we have to be perfect at everything. Instead, it serves as a reminder that our gifts are not for our own sake, but for the sake of the world (1 Corinthians 12:7), and that we are going to have to rely on one another.
In the past, I taught soccer camps with one of my pastors at church and we would have the kids draw outlines of their bodies, which we would then fill in with different Scripture lessons throughout the camp. This 1 Corinthians reading was one of them because it helps us to see not just what it means to be a part of a soccer team, but also what it means to be a part of the body of Christ. To be one member of a body, that isn’t more important than any other member, but still plays an important role. A body that was breathed into by the Holy Spirit to give us life and breath and meaning, just as the Holy Spirit does the same to the church.
When I talk about the Holy Spirit breathing life into the church here, I am talking about our individual congregation, the ELCA as a whole, and the larger Christian church. We’ve talked about the role that the Holy Spirit plays in our worship, but our congregation is just one member of the whole body of the larger church. It means that despite our differences in theology or our expressions of worship, we are still united in Christ with the whole Christians tradition, grounded in Christ’s death and resurrection. For better or for worse. I’m sure that at Pentecost when all of the languages were being spoken, it was both a beautiful and confusing time. That is what we get to live into too because today’s Scripture highlights that the diversity in the body isn’t an accident but is an intentional act of God’s creation. But even that doesn’t always make it easy.
Because we live in this diversity, I want to highlight that we, nor do other denominations, have a monopoly on the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit didn’t just come to the Lutherans or the Methodists or the Pentecostals, but the Spirit came to all people. This is the reality of the church’s history too because at this point in Acts we weren’t seeing all of these divisions yet. But this also means today that we should be learning from others how they understand the Spirit to be working in the world and in their lives, and I think it calls us as Lutherans to become more comfortable talking about the Spirit, knowing that it isn’t just for those people over there.
And, with the sending of the Spirit as a part of our church’s history, I want to remind us for a moment that despite how we often talk about it in the church, Pentecost isn’t the Spirit’s “big activity” as if nothing else before that mattered. Yes, we get to celebrate that at Pentecost the Spirit poured out on all people, and it is often called the birthday of the church, but we cannot forget that this is the same Spirit who was and has always been active in creation, the one who breathed over the waters and the one who gives us breath still today. And, it is the same Spirit that was poured out onto select people in the time of the prophets, those who were chosen to be in relationship with God and speak on behalf of God to their communities. The prophets who were often shunned in the process and probably didn’t want that role in the first place. But, I say all of this to remind us that we get to celebrate Pentecost for what it is and the ways that the Spirit sent the disciples into the world and continues to send us out now, and we get to honor the rich history of all the Spirit did before Pentecost too. So as we hear all of these stories about the work of the Holy Spirit, may we continue to trust that the Spirit is leading us and guiding still today, just as at Pentecost when the disciples were stirred into action, and just as the Spirit has been doing since creation. And, may we listen for how the Spirit is sending us out and moving us forward, as we go out with Christ’s peace, having received the Holy Spirit.