John 20: 19-23
Sermon title: "Using Your Head"
Scriptures:
1 Corinthians 12:3-13 [MSG]
What I want to talk about now is the various ways God’s Spirit gets worked into our lives. This is complex and often misunderstood, but I want you to be informed and knowledgeable. Remember how you were when you didn’t know God, led from one phony god to another, never knowing what you were doing, just doing it because everybody else did it? It’s different in this life. God wants us to use our intelligence, to seek to understand as well as we can. For instance, by using your heads, you know perfectly well that the Spirit of God would never prompt anyone to say “Jesus be damned!” Nor would anyone be inclined to say “Jesus is Master!” without the insight of the Holy Spirit.
All these gifts have a common origin, but are handed out one by one by the one Spirit of God. He decides who gets what, and when.
You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body. It’s exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.
Acts 2:1-21 [MSG]
When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.
There were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. When they heard the sound, they came on the run. Then when they heard, one after another, their own mother tongues being spoken, they were blown away. They couldn’t for the life of them figure out what was going on, and kept saying, “Aren’t these all Galileans? How come we’re hearing them talk in our various mother tongues?
Parthians, Medes, and Elamites;
Visitors from Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia,
Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,
Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene;
Immigrants from Rome, both Jews and proselytes;
Even Cretans and Arabs!
“They’re speaking our languages, describing God’s mighty works!”
Their heads were spinning; they couldn’t make head or tail of any of it. They talked back and forth, confused: “What’s going on here?”
Others joked, “They’re drunk on cheap wine.”
That’s when Peter stood up and, backed by the other eleven, spoke out with bold urgency: “Fellow Jews, all of you who are visiting Jerusalem, listen carefully and get this story straight. These people aren’t drunk as some of you suspect. They haven’t had time to get drunk—it’s only nine o’clock in the morning. This is what the prophet Joel announced would happen:
“In the Last Days,” God says,
“I will pour out my Spirit
on every kind of people:
Your sons will prophesy,
also your daughters;
Your young men will see visions,
your old men dream dreams.
When the time comes,
I’ll pour out my Spirit
On those who serve me, men and women both,
and they’ll prophesy.
I’ll set wonders in the sky above
and signs on the earth below,
Blood and fire and billowing smoke,
the sun turning black and the moon blood-red,
Before the Day of the Lord arrives,
the Day tremendous and marvellous;
And whoever calls out for help
to me, God, will be saved.
INTRODUCTION:
Have you ever had the experience of expectantly looking for something spectacular to happen and later realizing you’ve missed something even more substantial that transpired right in front of you? That is, in fact, the big secret in magic shows: misdirection. An all-engrossing flash of light above you, while down below, in the shadows, the subject of the trick is whisked safely away.
Today is Pentecost Sunday, when we celebrate the spectacular outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the first disciples. We’ll be reading about that event in Acts and also sobering instructions from the Apostle Paul in his second letter to the church at Corinth. He is talking to the Corinthians “about the various ways God’s Spirit gets worked into our lives.” However, in stark contrast to breathtaking descriptions of events at Pentecost, Paul talks of practical spiritual gifts that support Christ’s work in the church, and I think, revisited with that in mind, even the day of Pentecost is a much more substantial and practical work of the Holy Spirit than we credit it to be.
The Corinthian church has been very exuberant about their spiritual experiences, but it has led them into many troubles, and Paul wants them, and us, to start “Using Your Head”.
SERMON:
I don’t want you to think that I’m going to disparage the miraculous outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. It was, exactly as Luke describes it, a momentous occurrence. The disciples were “all together in one place,” when the Holy Spirit rushed in upon them without warning with the sound of a gale force wind filling the whole building and “like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages.” This must have been an unimaginable experience for them. And it’s no surprise the church, through the years, has wanted to remember and revisit that encounter.
I must admit to having concerns when I see a mega-church show being broadcast, the band playing soft repeated tones while a music pastor leads the gathered community in a repeated mantra of praise, hands raised, bodies swaying, hoping to prepare themselves and to experience what they imagine happened on Pentecost. I turn the channel, and there’s a self-help guru or transcendental meditationist doing the same thing to prepare and encourage the followers.
The most important thing to remember about the day of Pentecost is that the Holy Spirit came without warning. Which isn’t to say we shouldn’t stop, and wait, and listen for the voice of God in our lives. Preparing ourselves for His work by enriching our walk with Jesus through reading and studying His word, and yes, there’s a difference and a place for both, and in supplication, praise and meditative prayer. But what the Holy Spirit does, He does in God’s time and in God’s way in God’s place. We don’t invoke the work of the Holy Spirit, although we may humbly, and this is mainly for the preparation of our own hearts and minds, invite Him to enrich our knowledge of His presence in our lives.
Like the magic trick, I think we miss the real substance of the Holy Spirit’s work on Pentecost when we focus on the amazing and miss the practical essence of what was accomplished. Almost with universal consistency, scripture speaks of the tongues of fire that descended on the disciples. And that is a legitimate translation, but far from the only one. Luke wrote Acts, as he did the Gospel, in the language of ancient Greece. That was translated into Latin by St. Jerome for use in the Church, a tradition that continued until the 16th century and the Reformation, when translations into German and other languages began. Finally, we had the King James English Bible in 1604, which has dominated the field until only recently. This description, tongues of fire, has carried through from translation to translation without question.
Now, if I said to you, “Pastor Wilson was really on fire in the pulpit last Sunday,” which you’d agree is a fair description of our beloved brother, not one of you would imagine, for even a second, that I meant that Wilson doused himself with petrol and set himself on fire. Which is why I really appreciate the honest work of Eugene Peterson’s translation of the Bible, The Message. Standing boldly in the face of 2,000 years of tradition, he renders from the Greek text, “Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks.”
We even use these allegorical descriptions of ideas spreading like wildfire and flames licking through the grass. Luke was using a common visual description that we even use today to indicate that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was not accomplished slowly, one disciple to another, like the spread of a cold, but swept through their midst, all of them infused with this wonderful gift of suddenly being able to speak in other, intelligible languages.
I’m not sure why we feel this need to imagine the disciples speaking mysterious, unintelligible angelic languages or a magical manifestation of tongues of fire resting on their heads, but I can only imagine it is The Accuser’s way of distracting us from the real and substantial work the Holy Spirit did that day, and continues to do in our church and our daily lives today. Something I think Paul agreed with in his letter to the Corinthians.
The Corinthian church had apparently experienced a full measure of the Gifts of the Spirit in their midst, but they were also rife with many troubles and shortcomings, as Paul attests, addressing these problems in both of his letters. He shifts gears here, saying, “What I want to talk about now is” leading into a sobering exposé of the gifts and work of the Holy Spirit. He doesn’t talk about emotional highs, mystical experiences or trancing yourself into a transcendental meditation with the otherworldly. He wants them to be informed and knowledgeable. How unexciting.
When Paul continues, “This is complex and often misunderstood,” I can agree that what he is about to say is often misconstrued, but I think he is being facetious when he says it is complex. It is only complicated if we don’t want to understand it.
And here we have one of those wonderful reversals Paul is so famous for. We live in a world today in which Christians are characterized as not using our heads or thinking for ourselves. They say we bury our heads in the precepts of our religion and can’t see the reality in front of us. But Paul says it’s just the opposite. “God wants us to use our intelligence, to seek to understand as well as we can.” The alternative is what the rest of the world is doing, following the status quo, the latest ‘woke’ culture fad whether it’s saving the whales, human rights or your carbon footprint.
Paul’s straightforward example illustrates precisely this. Anything of the Holy Spirit first proclaims Jesus as Lord, second is manifest for the common good of Christ’s body, the church, and third is expressed in wondrous, inclusive and expressive variety. It is very simple, so if we are swayed and distracted and off track, the cause is from within, our own heart; we don’t want to hear the plain truth of what that means for us and for what we’re doing. It’s so simple and easy to grasp that we have to turn off our brains to avoid it.
Paul injects a little poetry into his letter to make the point. This isn’t about us, nor is it for us personally. It is about God and revealing who He is through the outpouring of these gifts; and please note the very important qualifiers, everywhere and everyone. Do not think the Holy Spirit is limited to you in fulfilling the work of Jesus Christ. You’re not the cornerstone and neither is St. Edwards or the Presbyterian Church. Jesus Christ with the Father and the Spirit alone give gifts for the fulfilment of God’s work when they will, how they will and to whom they will.
Now pay close attention to what is given out by the Holy Spirit to accomplish God’s work. I don’t see much on that list that relates to exuberant experiences and emotional highs. On the top of the list is wise counsel, clear understanding and simple trust. Elements I would also put high on the priority list for any relationship, especially a fellowship of believers. If these three things are in your marriage and family, can you imagine the difference it makes? Would that our leaders in the church and in government were endowed by the Holy Spirit with these qualities of the mind and heart.
Healing the sick, miraculous acts, proclamation, and distinguishing between spirits can be accompanied by powerful manifestations of the presence of the Holy Spirit, but more often than not, they are accomplished with sober, Spirit-led effort. Much like the reading, prayer and thinking that went into the preparation of this proclamation today. Tongues was my brother’s specialty. He commanded, although not all fluently, seven languages, including Hebrew and Greek, for his work as a Bible College Professor. I suppose I could claim to know the language of mathematics and computers, which today may have a place in enriching the fellowship of believers, although arguably so.
None of these gifts requires a release of adrenaline or an infusion of endorphins to function. On the day of Pentecost, a gathering of sober, uncertain, fearful and hesitant believers was overcome by the Holy Spirit so that Jesus could begin to establish His church, His body, in Jerusalem, Judea, and the world. They were given the gift of speaking in other languages so that their praise of God could be understood by Jews from all over the Roman Empire who were in Jerusalem for the Festival of Pentecost. Impetuous and uneducated, Peter was given the gift of proclamation so that he could preach the first Christian sermon and call them to repentance through Jesus Christ. And three thousand gave their lives to Jesus that day.
In our exuberant, misguided hearts, we say, “Would that these things happen again today, here, with us!” And so we abandon Christ for the thrill of experience. No brothers and sisters, this is God’s work, and it is marvelous in our sight. No good can come of waving the magic wand, chanting the right incantation or repeating the proscribed movements. God the Holy Spirit will gift us as is needed to accomplish the fulfillment of his work of redemption in creation.
Don’t be dazzled by stories of miracles and magic, exuberant manifestations and happenings when right here, right now, the miracle of the Holy Spirit is gifting you with all that is needed in your life and fellowship; wise counsel, clear understanding, simple trust, and so, so much more as He wills and desires. Use your head. This is the work of the God who created the universe and us; He will not fail. We are each one of us “part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit.” Only use your head, it is really very simple “God wants us to use our intelligence, to seek to understand as well as we can.”
Amen
