Don Friesen
Last Sunday I reflected on that in-between period between the ascension of Jesus and the fulfilment of his promise to send someone to help them in his absence. For several years the disciples had Jesus with them, but the crucifixion put an end to that. The resurrection, however, renewed their hopes, only it wasn't long before Jesus ascended, and while he recognized that his departure caused them sorrow, he told his disciples, "It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you." (John 16:7)
It is to your advantage that I go away. Really? It didn't feel that way as they waited around back in the room where they had been sequestered after the crucifixion. They missed his presence and guidance. Oh, they did some of the things that needed doing. Judas had been voted off the apostolic island and had to be replaced, so they held a meeting, over which Peter presided, but like all meetings it wasn't that exciting. It seemed a pro forma procedure. There were two candidates, the successful candidate chosen by lot (Acts 1:15-26), and so no need for robocalls or recounts.
No record was kept of what all transpired during this in-between time, but then came the Festival of Pentecost, a Jewish harvest festival. It falls fifty days after Passover, was also known as the Feast of Weeks, and marked not only the gifts of harvest but the gift of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. Unlike Passover, a quiet family commemoration, the primary focus of the Festival of Pentecost was gratitude to God, and so it was a louder celebration. With many pilgrims pouring into the city for this festival it was busy, crowded, and perhaps raucous at times.
Chaos Is to our Advantage?
Well, the year Jesus ascended Pentecost turned out to be more raucous than ever! First came the "sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting." (Acts 2:2) Another translation reads: "Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force...." (2:2, MSG), "like the rushing of a violent tempest blast...." (2:2, AMP)
The Spirit of God came upon the disciples in a vivid and remarkable way, its power captured by Luke in provocative images reminiscent of the breath of God that "swept over the face of the waters" at the creation of the world. And the disciples, who were "sitting" when it happened, didn't sit again, I think, until the book of Acts is done! They were swept along in the wake of Pentecost. They felt compelled to proclaim the good news of God in Christ, even in the face of great opposition.
One day the disciples are sequestered, the next you can't keep them indoors! Their excitement was such that onlookers thought them inappropriately inebriated. After all, it was nine o'clock in the morning! (Acts 2:15) But how on earth could a bunch of drunks who spoke only Hebrew and that a quaint dialect from backwater Nazareth now speak in other languages?!? The usual indecipherable hubbub in Jerusalem at this time given the international make-up of the pilgrim crowds became a miracle of communication! "Amazed and astonished, (the pilgrims) asked, Are not ...these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?'" (2:7-8)
Cautions Don't Sound Advantageous
The fulfilment of Jesus' promise to send the Holy Spirit was a powerful and exciting event, lending some credence to Jesus' assertion that it was to the disciples' advantage that he go away. (John 16:7) I find it curious, then, that the New Testament issues a number of cautions regarding the Holy Spirit. The first caution is issued within a few chapters. In Acts, chapter 7, Stephen, in the form of an accusation, throws up a caution not to "resist the Holy Spirit." (Acts 7:51, RSV) Another caution is found in 1 Thessalonians: "Do not quench the Holy Spirit." (1 Thessalonians 5:20) "Do not restrain" (TEV) or "stifle the Holy Spirit." (JER) Yet another caution is found in the book of Hebrews, which tells us not to "insult the Holy Spirit" (Hebrews 10:29, CEV) or outrage the Holy Spirit. (RSV)
In Ephesians we are cautioned not to "grieve the Holy Spirit." (Ephesians 4:30) The context of this caution makes it explicit how this can be done, for immediately preceding it Paul warns his readers against speech which does not edify, speech which, rather than building up community, tears it down. And immediately following the warning Paul begs the Ephesian Christians to put away all bitterness, wrath, anger, wrangling and slander, suggesting that anything which sends good Christian fellowship off the rails grieves the Holy Spirit.
If it's possible for good Christian fellowship to go off the rails, you can bet the Corinthian congregation found it; consequently we find in Paul's letters to that congregation a lengthy discussion of both spiritual gifts and congregational unity. The Corinthian congregation had a knack for spiritual excess, while the Thessalonian congregation had the opposite problem; they liked things neat and tidy, and their fervency quiet and subdued. Some New Testament congregations, it appears, had to be cautioned not to overdose on the Holy Spirit, while others had to be cautioned not to stifle the Holy Spirit.
Dynamite! Helpful, but Handle with Care
Almost a century ago, when a Mennonite family from the Soviet Union arrived in Dorothy's home community, they did not know a word of English. The house they moved into had a problem with bed-bugs or some such thing, and they purchased some spray or solution to deal with it probably some pesticide recommended by the proprietor of the local hardware. The husband later praised its effectiveness, and when asked what it was he used, he said it was called, "Caution." Those were the biggest and most colourful letters on the container, so that must be its name! He was advised that he should use caution when applying this so-called "Caution".
There may be a lesson there for us when invoking the power of God's Holy's Spirit. Annie Dillard says something similar when she writes, "Does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of power we so blithely invoke? ...The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up batches of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews." (Teaching a Stone to Talk)
Dillard's mention of TNT reminds me of a biography I read in high school the biography of Alfred Nobel (1833-96), the Swedish chemist and engineer who invented dynamite. Experimenting with explosives, Nobel tried to find a safer way to use them, especially after his younger brother was killed at the family factory. When his experiments proved successful he considered naming the powerful substance "Nobel's Safety Powder," but settled instead on the word, "dynamite," from the Greek word for power a far more appropriate name!
When Alfred Nobel's brother died (1888), a French newspaper erroneously published Alfred's obituary, in which the writer condemned him for his invention of dynamite, leading with the headline, "The merchant of death is dead". ("Le marchand de la mort est mort") The obituary went on say that Nobel "became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before...." It may have been one of the factors that prompted Nobel to establish the Nobel Prizes, one of which is the Nobel Peace Prize.
Just as Nobel sought to improve the stability of the explosives he was developing, the Apostle Paul, in the New Testament and especially in his letters to the Corinthians, pleads for stability and caution with the powerful gifts with which the Holy Spirit endowed the church. Like dynamite, these spiritual gifts are very helpful to the church, but they must be handled with care.
Holy Spirit, Come with Power
The power of the Holy Spirit is evident, not only in the images Luke uses to describe Pentecost, but in the miracle of communication that occurred that day. The last Mennonite World Conference entailed a mammoth translation job, and it involved less than ten languages five or six, if I'm not mistaken. One can only imagine the number of languages present in Jerusalem on that Pentecost day. What an incredible gift to give to the apostles, such that these pilgrims would hear the gospel in their native tongue without benefit of translators! Luke goes out of his way to list the places from which these pilgrims travelled. When Jesus told his disciples, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8), little did the disciples know that the ends of the earth would be present in Jerusalem on Pentecost Day!
Theologically, this miracle of communication is a reversal of the biblical account of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9), a linguistic destruction of human community. God's gift of the Holy Spirit overcomes the brokenness of human community caused by our inability to understand one another.
The power of the Holy Spirit is also evident in the richness of spiritual gifts that help the church to function as a unit gifts of wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, the discernment of spirits, and so on. (1 Corinthians 12:8-10) "All (of) these," wrote Paul, "are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually ...as the Spirit chooses." (12:11) "To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." (12:7)
The Corinthian congregation, of course, liked to play with dynamite, and they soon found a way to use these gifts to compete with each other. They appeared not to have been given the gift of understanding, unclear as they were on the concept of the "common good". They thought some parts of the body were more important than others that the eye had no need of the hand, the head no need of feet, the stronger members of the body no need of the weaker. (1 Corinthians 12:21-22)
I read of a professor who, in his class on anatomy and physiology, used a plastic human torso as a teaching aid. Scattered around a table were plastic versions of the organs within us, and while the professor used a stopwatch to time them, the students had to place all of the organs back inside the torso as quickly as possible. I don't find that too reassuring for any surgery I have had or may still have, but the point was that all the organs were required, and in their rightful place. The Apostle Paul said that "God has so arranged the body, ...that there may be no dissension within the body, but (that) the members may ...care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it. ...you are the body of Christ...." (1 Corinthians 12:24-27)
If you start to wonder if the body is healthy and working properly, look for the fruit of the Holy Spirit: "...love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." (Galatians 5:22-23) Those wonderful qualities may not sound like dynamite, but they are attractive and draw people to Christian faith. Do you know, for example, that every day 60-to-70,000 people are baptized? Every day 1500 to 2,000 congregations come into being. On this year's Easter Sunday more than a billion people met in worship to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. The largest Christian congregation in the whole world is found in Seoul, Korea, with a membership of more than 500,000 members.
Several years ago David Simonson, a Lutheran missionary in Tanzania, baptized over 3,000 adults one Sunday well, he started on Sunday, but it took him a week to baptize them all. These baptisms were not the fruit of his efforts. Two village leaders from the Serengetti Plain gave their lives to Jesus, got themselves educated about the basics of Christianity, and then went back to their villages to share the good news! By the time Simonson arrived, they had over 3,000 people ready for baptism! When you hear stories like this, the story in the book of Acts telling of 3,000 people coming to faith in one day (Acts 2:41) doesn't sound at all exaggerated! The Spirit of God is a powerful force.
Jesus told his first disciples, "It is to your advantage that I go away...." It's seems like a counterintuitive claim, but the advantage to being without Jesus' earthly presence is that his presence is available to us in the powerful Holy Spirit. The Spirit brings the transforming power of God's love into our hearts and into our midst.
Maya Angelou (1928- ), American author and poet, whose other occupations have included pimp, prostitute, and night-club dancer, says that during her twenties she became an agnostic. She writes, "It wasn't that I had stopped believing in God; it's just that God didn't seem to be around the neighbourhoods I frequented." One day her voice teacher asked her to read a passage from a book a section which ended with the words: "God loves me." She did. The teacher asked her to read it again. She did so, but in a sarcastic tone. He asked her to read it again. "After about the seventh repetition," writes Angelou, "I began to sense that there might be truth in the statement, that there was a possibility that God really did love me. Me, Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things. I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything. For what could stand against me (and) God?" (Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now)