+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I’ve always been interested in language, as those of you who’ve been subjected to my little Greek and Latin lessons over the years will know all too well. In my undergraduate work I focused a great deal on the philosophy of language, and my thesis was on the subject of the metaphysical nature of proper nouns, so if you’re really a glutton for punishment, I could dig out a copy of that paper for you. I suppose this interest probably stems from a desire to understand and be understood in a more general sense, which is a human impulse I suspect most of us share. Our inability to do so has led to all manner of suffering, which is probably why the author of our Old Testament lesson from Genesis, the story of the Tower of Babel, was keen on trying to explain how sin led to the confusion of tongues–the beginning of a vicious cycle of misunderstanding.
How appropriate, then, that the miracle of the first Pentecost was the Holy Spirit’s provision of understanding. “And they were amazed and wondered, saying, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?’”
Note well, that this was not just a miracle to show the power of God, though this was a secondary benefit. The primary concern (if I might be so bold as to speculate regarding the intentions of God) was with the communication of salutary knowledge. You might not have noticed that, because our lesson concludes after Peter’s explanation of the miracle but before he proceeds to the content of his sermon. I understand why they did this, because it would have been an extra long reading, but I think we’d be remiss to just skip over it. So, picking up at verse 22, Peter continues:
Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know — this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. But God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.For David says concerning him,
`I saw the Lord always before me,
for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken;
therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced;
moreover my flesh will dwell in hope.
For thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades,
nor let thy Holy One see corruption.
Thou hast made known to me the ways of life;
thou wilt make me full of gladness with thy presence.’
Brethren, I may say to you confidently of the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants upon his throne, he foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which you see and hear. For David did not ascend into the heavens; but he himself says, `The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, till I make thy enemies a stool for thy feet.’ Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.
And what came of this brief sermon which the crowd miraculously heard in their own languages? We are told that over three thousand were immediately baptized and that those new converts devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching, to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers.
I bring all this up, because I worry sometimes that we might have a misguided understanding of the action of the Holy Spirit. We might think of the Spirit as the provider of what increasingly folks these days refer to as “vibes.” We might think of him as a force rather than as a person and as merely an affective stirring of one’s soul rather than as the one who prepares us for and then provides us with wisdom and knowledge leading to a saving faith. But the church has always held and scripture has always supported the latter proposition rather than the former. It’s worth noting that while the New Testament seems to talk about two different sorts of activities we might call “speaking in tongues”–both the clear communication of the Gospel we see in Acts and a more ecstatic sort of experience called “glossolalia” practiced in some of Paul’s churches–the former is the first and I’d argue normative thing, and the latter is carefully regulated by the Apostle, lest the “vibes” get in the way of edification and sound doctrine. We’ll leave discussion of whether this latter experience still happens in some times and places today for another time–that is a complicated question, I don’t know precisely what I think about it myself, and it’s probably not as relevant to most of you as the general point, which is that the “m.o.” of the Spirit, while he absolutely comforts and encourages us, is typically less extreme and ecstatic and more in the realm of the gentle confirmation of the deposit of faith into which we’ve been brought.
I believe all this is really important, though, because sometimes we might be tempted to put the cart of “religious experience” before the horse of simple faithfulness and the acquisition of foundational Christian knowledge. There is a person very dear to me whom I often think about with some concern along these lines.(She is not a member of this parish, but I’ll still avoid any identifying details, because who knows who might be watching the livestream!) I hasten to add that she is a faithful, practicing Christian; I’m not worried about her immortal soul, just her continued growth as a believer. She’s very aesthetically inclined, and while I worry sometimes that she might have made art and idol, she reads a great deal of material that are good in themselves–particularly, poetry and prose pertaining to the more mystical tradition within Christianity. I don’t consider myself a mystic of any description, though I do value the contributions of that stream of Christian practice. There is one important caveat, however, a caveat I’ve shared with this person, though I’m not sure I did so in a way the Holy Spirit might have made as clear as he did Peter’s Pentecost sermon. That caveat is as follows– The mystics have often shared experiences and ideas which might challenge our ordinary understanding of Christianity, sometimes even creeping up to the edge of heterodoxy. They have earned the right to do so, because they’ve spent decades in intense ascetical practice within monastic communities (even those who live as solitaries do so after years in community and return to those communities for prayer and Mass). Those of us who have not done so (and I am among that number) must be extremely careful about how we integrate those insights into our own spiritual lives. When in doubt, it’s safer to just say one’s prayers and read one’s bible and maybe supplement that with a good middle-of-the-road devotional or work of theology.
There is nothing in the world wrong with being an ordinary faithful, prayerful Christian, because that seems to be what the Holy Spirit effected on the first Pentecost. Yes, no doubt there was the miracle mediated by Peter and the eleven. But perhaps the greater miracle was the three thousand baptized that day, and who knows how many hundreds of thousands whose lives they touched afterward, in their simple faithfulness in devoting themselves to the Apostles’ teaching, to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers.
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.