Pentecost is a noun. It's a good
noun, strong,
clear with reference to its
identity, able to stand up in
any room and say what it is.
That's what nouns are to be.
That's what can give you
definitions. Pentecost, an early
harvest festival celebrated in
the ancient Near East, among
many peoples including the Jews.
Pentecost, an early harvest
festival transformed into a
celebration of the revelation of
the law, given at Sinai. That's
a definition. Pentecost, the
birthday of the church.
Pentecost, a festival celebrated
50 days after Easter or with
Israel seven weeks and one day
after Passover. Pentecost, the
last day of the liturgical year
and the beginning of ordinary
time. Pentecost, the last Sunday
of Easter. Pentecost is a noun,
clear-eyed, level-gazed, good
noun. But when you make it an
adjective, it gets anxious and
nervous and uncertain. It stands
on one foot, stands on the other
foot. It wants to be a good
adjective, runs around looking
for a noun to modify, but
doesn't know which noun and
doesn't know how to modify it.
For instance, you just make the
adjective, just say the
adjective and we don't know what
we're talking about. Pentecostal
is the adjective.
Now, we don't admit, we don't
know, but we use the word and
assume we know. Did you know
that my roommate is Pentecostal?
She said, really?
Now, really is a way of us
acting like you know. What does
that mean?
Well, I know, at least I've
heard that she's Pentecostal,
but she's doing well in her
classes. Really?
How's your church doing? Well, I
really don't know. I've only
been there a year and we have a
pretty heavy Pentecostal
element. Really?
The church is growing. You know,
on Sunday morning, they have a
regular formal traditional
service, but on Sunday evening,
they have a Pentecostal service.
Really?
What does that mean? When I was
on the West Coast to lecture at
another seminary, just before I
was to deliver my first lecture,
one of the students stood up and
said, before you speak, I need
to know if you're
a Pentecostal. I don't know
where the dean was. The student
just said that to me.
I was taken aback and so I said,
do you mean do I belong to the
Pentecostal church? And he said,
no, I mean, are you Pentecostal?
I said, are you asking if I am
charismatic? He said, I'm asking
you if you're a Pentecostal. I
said, do you want to know if I
speak in tongues? He said, I
want to know if you're a
Pentecostal. I said, I don't
know what your question is. And
he said, obviously you're not
Pentecostal. And he left.
In spite of the fact that the
church doesn't know what the
adjective means, the church
insists that it stay an
adjective. The church is
unwilling for the word simply to
be announced to enter a date and
a place, the time in the history
of the church, refuses for it to
be simply a memory, an item,
something back there. The church
insists it is an adjective. It
describes the church. It is not
just a memory, it's a hope. It
is Pentecostal.
Now this has been embarrassing
sometimes because people in the
church, different groups in the
church have, with sincere
motive, I'm sure most of the
cases, sought to implement that
term by saying, let us
reproduce, let us imitate, the
Pentecost of Acts 2. Now that's
embarrassing and tragic because
you don't imitate an event from
another time and place because
events that are meaningful are
geared to the time and place in
people and needs and
circumstance in which they
occur. And to take that
uncritically to another time and
place is stupid among other
things.
I have a sincere motive.
Sometimes it's been embarrassing
because people have tried quite
sincerely to manufacture the
enthusiasm and achievement of
the day of Pentecost which Luke
describes. And you don't
manufacture enthusiasm and
achievement. You know and I know
and we all know that Pentecost
was a gift of God. It was not
generated. It was a gift of God.
It was at the initiative of the
Holy Spirit that there was
Pentecost. In spite of this, the
church still insists that
somehow that is the right way to
speak of the church. In the
renewal of its life and witness,
in times especially of faltering
evangelism, let's recover by
reading, praying, asking,
thinking, reflecting again on
Pentecost so that it not just be
a memory, but it be a hope,
something that might occur
again.
And that's what I'd like for us
to do. Think about Acts 2,
Pentecost.
After a rather chaste and very
brief, surprisingly brief
description of the unusual
extraordinary phenomena of that
day when they were all gathered
together, Luke goes into, first
of all, a rather lengthy
description of the audience, a
lengthy description of the
people who are there. They are
Jews from every nation. It's a
large crowd. In addition, there
are visitors. In addition, there
are converts to Judaism from
every nation they have come.
They have come to Jerusalem for
Luke. That's really, really
important. They've come to
Jerusalem. They've come for the
festival that celebrates the
revelation of God to Israel.
Now, that's very important
because no festivals or
celebrations live very long if
they are nothing but recalling
the past. What keeps them alive
is that there is in the bosom of
every memory some hope that
maybe it will be true again. And
so they come with a yearning,
with a seeking, with an asking
to Jerusalem. Now, what's
striking about the story, it
seems to me, first of all, is
that Luke describes the
listeners before he describes
the preacher or the sermon. Luke
starts the story at the ear of
the listener, not at the mouth
of the preacher. Luke begins
with the appetite and then gives
the bread. He doesn't take the
bread and throw it at the head
of the people who are listening.
He doesn't say, first of all,
this is what we say. Now, let's
figure some strategies by which
it can be heard. There is no
sermon until the people say,
what does this mean? There is no
call to be Christian until the
people say, what must we do?
Now, this is very, very
important, beginning with the
listeners. We are talking about
timing. We are talking about
appropriateness. How many times
has the door been closed to the
gospel because of poor timing or
inappropriate comments even
about Jesus Christ? Luke begins
with the listener, listening to
the listener. The world is full
of good speeches that failed
because they were given at the
wrong time to the wrong people.
Now, Luke says that this
audience has made up a folk from
every nation under heaven. And
then he gives a brief list. I'm
sure to marry it seemed like a
long list of strange words. He
gives a partial list of the
nations, known nations of that
time. Every nation under heaven
consisted of the world basically
around the Mediterranean and
describes the nations and
islands in the Mediterranean
Sea. Asia is represented, Europe
is represented, North Africa is
represented, and they're all
present on the occasion for the
first presentation of the gospel
in witnessing to the dead and
risen Christ. Now, what does
this mean? Well, the first
thought is that the gospel is
universal. It's for everybody in
the world. And that is true.
That has been said by all the
writers in the New Testament to
the Jew first, but also to the
Greeks, says Paul. To every
creature says Matthew. Every
nation says Luke. Jerusalem,
Judea, Samaria. To the ends of
the earth says Luke. We know
that the gospel is for the whole
universe. But what I want to
notice is that these nations,
all nations of the earth are
present when the gospel begins,
which means that all nations of
the earth are not just the
destination of the gospel,
they're the point of origin of
the gospel. You see what I mean?
Where did it all start? And the
Asians said with us, where did
it start? The Europeans said
with us, we were there when it
started. The Africans said, we
were there when it started.
Everybody said, we were there
when it started. It is very
important to understand that in
Luke's theology, the gospel
doesn't just go to the ends of
the earth. The ends of the earth
are present there the very first
day. There is no second hand,
third hand, fourth hand. There
is no it belong to us. And now
we're going to give it to you.
It started with us. We were
there the same day you were
there. That's important because
it removes all ground for that
ugly sense of triumphalism, for
that ugly arrogance and
superiority that takes over the
church sometimes, simply because
we get the notion that the
salvation of other people in the
world depends upon our behavior.
Luke says it started in all the
world at the same time. Now you
can take that literally,
symbolically, figuratively or
whatever, but his point is very
clear. And if we miss it in
Luke, we can get the figures
from 475 Riverside Drive. I
noticed the figures that came to
me, and I don't know how secure
it is and how accurate, but I
was told that when China was
closed to the United States and
to the West in 1959, there were
600,000 Protestant Christians in
China and Roman Catholic
Christians. When China was
opened 20 years later, 1979 to
American to the West, there were
over three million Protestant
Christians, three million
Catholic Christians, and we
weren't over there doing it. How
did that happen?
The origin,
as well as the destination of
the gospel, the whole world. And
Luke says in this audience, the
people heard each in his or her
own tongue. A complex
expression, difficult to
understand, really. What does it
mean? Does it mean that we are
to make sure that we translate
the Christian faith into every
language and dialect and idiom
of the world so that everybody
can hear in his or her own
tongue? Of course it means that.
But in Luke's description, it is
not referring to the duty of the
evangelist, but to the condition
of the listener. The listener
heard in his or her own
language. Luke is referring to
the capacity of the listener to
hear the gospel. Now this is a
tedious subject.
Fifty years ago in Germany, a
famous debate back and forth
between Barth and Brunner over
what was called the point of
contact. What is the point of
contact of the gospel upon the
ear of an unbeliever? And
Professor Barth said, there is no
point of contact. The image of
God has been totally erased. He
said to his students, don't ever
prepare an introduction to your
sermon. What are you trying to
do? Get them interested? There's
nothing there to get interested.
Don't get involved in the
idolatry of homiletics trying to
be interesting. Just present the
gospel. God prepares the ear.
God gives the message, trust
totally in God for all of it.
And that's it. And Mr. Brunner
said, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Mr. Brunner said, there is
something to the way you craft
to the sermon. There's many a
preacher who will, on account of
what is said, go to heaven. But
on account of how it is said, go
to hell. We have responsibility
because there is some capacity
in the listener, however you may
describe it, to hear the gospel.
When Mr. Tillich came along, he
rephrased it and regrouped the
ideas in another way with his
method of correlation based
fundamentally upon the idea that
whenever a question is asked, it
is assumed that there's
something in common between the
one who answers and the one who
asks, whatever you call it. Mr.
Bultmann said, let's don't talk
of point of contact. Let's talk
of point of conflict. There is
disturbance and rejection
whenever the gospel is preached
because sinful persons encounter
the power and the grace of God.
Whether you call it contact or
conflict, something occurs. Luke
has no term for it. He doesn't
say it's natural theology. He
doesn't call it image of God. He
doesn't say there is in everyone
a faint recollection of Eden. He
doesn't have any name like
prevenient grace. What Luke says
is, people who hear the gospel
for the first time,
listen, recognize it.
Now, you would expect that when
he's talking about the movement
of the gospel among the Jews in
Jerusalem when Peter preaches in
Jerusalem. His way of life, you
all know. You know the prophets.
You know the writings. You know
what he said. Of course they
knew. But when the gospel moved
out beyond the reach of Moses
and the law and the prophets,
where the name of Jesus Christ
was not known and the Bible was
not known. What did the
missionary say? When the
missionaries got to Lystra up in
Turkey, there wasn't a Bible
within 300 miles. They didn't
know Moses, Jesus, or any of
that. And the preacher said,
what? Listen, folk, we come to
you as people of a common nature
created from a common God, the
beneficiaries of a common
providence to talk to you about
a God who has never been without
witness in the world, seeing
that God gives to everyone
everywhere, goodness and rain
and fruitful seasons and makes
glad the human heart.
Now, the preacher isn't saying
what you already know is all we
came to say. They came to preach
Jesus Christ. But what they came
to say was this. What we came to
preach to you about redemption
concerns the same God you know
through creation. There is
continuity. When Paul got to
Athens, Greece, he walked up on
the era of Apagos, looked around
this unknown God I want to talk
to you about. And he began his
sermon. No Old Testament
references, none of that. He
simply said, there is one God
who created all of us, a God who
gave us life and appointed
places and times for us to live.
This is a God who created every
one of us with a certain
reaching longing, seeking in our
hearts. This is a God who has
stirred even your own poets to
say in God we live and move and
have our being. This is a God
who stirred even your own
philosophers to say we're all
the offspring of God. And so he
continued his message point of
conflict, point of contact. I
don't know. I do know that Luke
believes Luke believes that
there was something in the
listener that recognized the
truth of the gospel. Call it
what we will. Now, I don't mean
this as some kind of preacher
ploy on the part of Luke or on
my own part. I don't mean that
at all. It may sound that way.
Oh, it's really nice. Match up
the food and the appetite and
say how symmetrical it worked
out. That's not what he's doing.
Put a magnet in every human
breast and say, notice how
people are attracted to the
gospel. It's not that. What Luke
is saying and what I am saying
is what the whole world knows.
Even the systems of tyranny in
the world are nothing but
perversions of this same
longing, seeking capacity of the
human spirit. When Adolf Hitler
sold his program to the German
people, he didn't sell prisons
and ovens and genocide. You know
what he sold? A way to peace and
joy and every home a quiet place
and children happy. Don't you
want that? Of course we want
that. And along the way, some
painful but necessary steps.
Holy cost. The German people
didn't vote for holy cost. They
voted for something for which
people everywhere search.