How does he do it? How is it that Peter is able to preach such a powerful sermon on the day of Pentecost? After all he has gone through! After all his doubts, his recklessness, his abandonment and denials, his fragility, his insecurity? How can he preach after just being literally blown away by the rushing and roaring wind of the Holy Spirit, the tongues of flame and the speaking in different tongues? The crowd thought they were drunk at nine in the morning! You can’t preach in that state, can you? One of the most striking lines in this whole Acts story recounts: ‘Then Peter stepped forward with the eleven other apostles and shouted to the crowd, “Listen carefully, all of you…” ‘, as he launches into one of the most powerful and moving sermons in all of Scripture – with self-assurance, poise and powerful words. He stepped forward with full confidence to preach. How does he do it? Let’s hold that question for a few minutes.
When Nelson and I met to read the Acts 2 Scripture for today, what we got intrigued about was the character of Peter and his transformation, and about what must all have happened in that short time between the traumatic events of the cross and the energy and confidence unleashed at Pentecost. You heard this already in Nelson’s opening words and the children’s story. How do we go so quickly from here to there? As Nelson said, how did the followers of Jesus adjust from the calamitous chaotic trauma of the crucifixion and the shock of resurrection? What all happened in those short 50 days – in that in-between time? How can this Sunday help us connect Passion Week to the Ascension, Pentecost and the surprising birth of the church?
In some ways, all we have is conjecture and imagination. The Biblical text does not give us much. There are just a few short stories of Jesus appearing to the disciples very soon after the Resurrection, and so much of that is wrapped in fear and doubt. The original shorter ending of the Gospel of Mark ends with the women at the tomb, told that Jesus is alive, but seized with terror and amazement, fleeing and not saying anything to anyone because they were afraid. From our vantage point 2000 plus years later, I don’t think we appreciate how terrifying and profoundly disorienting the events of Passion Week and the cross were, but also the resurrection itself. Resurrection shatters all human constructs and understandings, and the first emotions are fear and terror and panic and alarm rather than hope and promise of new life. The gospel of Matthew has the Great Commission with Jesus on the mountain in Galilee with the 11, where it admits that some worshipped but some doubted. Luke has the walk to Emmaus and not recognizing Jesus until he vanishes after the breaking of the bread, their hearts burning, and then another appearance and commissioning where the first response is to be startled and terrified and thinking they were seeing a ghost. John too has the disciples gathered in disbelief, voiced by Thomas who wants to put his finger in the mark of the nails on Jesus’ hand and side. John ends with the story of fishing and then eating on the beach with 7 astonished disciples, including Peter who maybe gets the first hints of starting to figure things out with the repeated affirmation of love and to feed my sheep. That’s it. From there we skip right to the Ascension. What happened to shift the perspectives, to provide healing, to move the disciples, and especially Peter, to a place where they could claim leadership and authority and hope in a future with the Spirit? All we have is the order by Jesus to not leave Jerusalem and to wait there for the promises of God.
And so I wonder about what was all happening in those days. The word Nelson and I came up with, was ‘processing.’ Somehow this was a time of tremendous processing within the disciples, processing, analysing, evaluating, and figuring out the meaning of what they had all just gone through. They had to re-think all of their understandings and categories of how the world worked. They had to review and walk through the 3 years with Jesus and re-examine all his words and actions for signs of what it might have all meant now. I like to imagine Jesus saying to them in those short days he had with them, ‘remember when we did this, or when I told you that parable, or when I used that image to talk about the Kingdom of God…. what do you think that might have really meant? What was the deeper meaning hidden underneath the surface? Look at what difference my being raised makes to all of this!’ These in-between days were important and vital for the disciples to be able to move forward.
I also wonder if this processing was helped by the disciples being in a place of vulnerability and openness. That’s when you are open to change. Any of their previously held beliefs or assumptions or confidences had been shattered by the events of Passion Week. They had abandoned Jesus. Peter had tried to chop off the ear of a soldier and later denied Jesus. They had hit rock bottom and had nothing left to stand on. Death brings you to that place of utter release, and a place of honesty and real-ness, a place of letting go, that allows you then to receive. I can’t help but think that the biggest gift Jesus must have given them in this in-between time, was love – a deep assurance that they were beloved, that he saw them for who they were, saw and cared about their pain, and gave them the full trust that they could heal and move on. What words of care must Jesus have shared with them, even through their doubt and fear?
The one thing we do know is that they were together. Maybe that is already part of the key. They were together in one place, a phrase repeated several times to start Acts and on the Day of Pentecost. There is something about figuring things out together, with the people who have shared the trauma with you, who are a part of your community. We see that when there are natural disasters or a death or difficult time within a family and so on. We don’t carry things or process things on our own – we need the people around us, the community of believers that journey with us as followers of Jesus. It also says a number of times that the devoted themselves to prayer. They had a spirit of waiting upon the Lord for what might be next.
These last few months have felt like a time of processing for me as our family walked the journey with my Dad of his illness and death. It was just over 40 days from the Sunday morning of Dad’s stroke and his incurable cancer diagnosis a few days later on Valentine’s Day/Ash Wednesday, until his funeral here in our sanctuary a week before Easter. It was our Lenten journey. There is a part that feels very surreal for me with how quickly everything happened and I still feel a deep sense of loss. What I reflected on this week though, given our passage and themes, was the gift of processing during that time, and continuing now. Watching your Dad die is a very vulnerable and humbling thing. There is a starkness to it and a realness to it that you can’t hide from. You are in a vulnerable, authentic, transparent place – you can’t help it. It gets you to the core of what is important in life and significant about the relationships that matter the most. In retrospect, we did have the gift of that time with him, especially the 3 plus weeks in hospice, where we had that supportive setting, he was verbal and able to communicate, and we could sing to him, read to him, tell him we loved him, and give thanks for the gifts he has given us. Every family member, grandchild, got to interact with him and say their goodbyes. I had long hours just sitting with him, talking, recounting stories, and playing him piano – mostly Bach. I am so grateful for that time. So much good can happen in that in-between time. I also think about the importance of being together as a family and as a community, and the importance of prayer – there were so many prayers offered to us by our pastors, by our community. And I can’t begin to give enough thanks and appreciation for the tremendous support around the visitation and funeral, from this congregation and well beyond – from a community of believers walking with us. There is something so important that happens in the rituals of our faith that brings you through these kinds of tough experiences. For those weeks we lived in this in-between, uncertain, and yet sacred and beautiful time, that helped us process and prepare for a good death and for what life might look like moving forward. It almost surprises me to find myself on the other side and feeling grounded and able to move forward, not in denial and not without grief, but with so much gratitude and hope.
Is this a bit like what happened with the disciples, with Peter? They had that time with Jesus between Resurrection and Ascension. They had time to process, to recount stories, to live between grief and hope, between uncertainty and renewed vision. They had time to be loved and to offer love. This is what starts to answer the question for me of how Peter could step forward and preach the sermon he preaches just moments after the coming of the Holy Spirit in the rush of a violent wind and in tongues of fire.
Peter was prepared, was ready, was waiting for this moment and the coming of the Spirit, even if he didn’t know what it might be like. I’ve always wondered what that Pentecost moment would have been like. Maybe the closest recent parallel I can think of is from this past Monday’s solar eclipse. There was this build up and waiting for this unusual phenomenon of light and darkness. It captured the imagination. Millions of people flocked to somewhere where they could be in the totality path. Niagara was overrun. Upon the invitation of some pastor friends with connections to ErieView Mennonite, I drove to Port Rowen and a house and property right on Lake Erie. There was this anticipation as we got out our silly looking solar glasses and stared into the skies, waiting for something we couldn’t really fully understand. My photos, other than a ‘sunset’ one over the lake, did not turn out great, but I will share a few from my cousin’s son Adam Neufeld. We kept looking into the skies, maybe a bit like it says in Acts 1 before the Ascension when they were ‘gazing up toward heaven… (and then asked) why do you stand looking up toward heaven?’ (Acts 1:10-11)
The moon kept covering more of the sun. And then suddenly, it was totally covered, the sky turned dark, it looked like sunset , the birds stopped singing, and there was almost this collective gasp when we hit full totality coverage. I heard cheers coming from the Port Rowen pier and the Bird Sanctuary, both relatively near on either side of us. For 2-3 minutes we took off our glasses and marvelled at this heavenly sight. We were almost giddy. Looking up at this stunning sight, then looking around us at a transformed world, and then looking up again. It felt good to share this experience with friends, but also a sense of sharing it with a very wide community of people across the continent that had been captivated. I have heard some people since describe it as a spiritual experience. Like many spiritual experiences, it is hard to describe. One person said ‘for a moment it was like the whole universe clicked into place.’ You felt like you were a part of something much bigger than you. My cousin Adam described it on Facebook this way:
‘Monday’s celestial event was beyond awe inspiring, to look up in the sky for a moment and see an otherworldly black sphere, lit up by a halo of the sun hidden so perfectly behind the moon, and to look down at an earth covered in darkness with a “sunset” on the horizon.
The impeding clouds throughout the day made us nervous of missing the whole thing, but the collective cheers and sounds of excitement from the crowds when the clouds cleared up were truly heartwarming… I am blown away by the ability to see the sun’s prominences stretching out from the surface into the corona. That is a once in a lifetime experience to capture something so otherworldly from Earth.’ (Adam Neufeld)
Is this what the experience for the disciples was like on Pentecost – a once in a lifetime otherworldly experience, a deeply spiritual experience, a moment when the whole universe clicked into place and they knew what that had to do moving forward – they were inspired and given strength by the Spirit to share the good news of the gospel they had received and to birth the church. Pentecost set them on a new course that we will follow through the book of Acts over the next 2 months. There will be more processing that they will need to do, new insights and shifting understandings of who is all a part of this community of faith, but they will do so with the strength of the Spirit sustaining and pushing and guiding them. They have become a spirit-centred people!
We just sang ‘Come, Holy Spirit, kindle in us the fire of your love…’ (VT 54) I love that image. When you build a fire you start with kindling, with a bunch of small little dry pieces of wood. You can’t light a match to a large log. You start small, almost underwhelming. You gather the kindling, and then light it, the spark, and the fire suddenly takes off and grows rapidly into a roaring inferno as you add more and more wood, each a bit bigger than the last one. It is like Peter and the disciples spent those 50 days gathering and preparing kindling – through that in-between time of processing, or re-thinking, and now with the coming of the Spirit in wind and flame, that kindling was lit afire and burst into the flame that would set the world on fire and birth the new church of Christ. No wonder Peter can preach that sermon.
Holy Spirit, come with fire, burn us with you presence new. Let us as one mighty choir sing our hymn of praise to you. Burn away our wasted sadness and enflame us with your love. Burst upon your congregation, give us gladness from above.’ (VT 57, v.2). May it be so. Amen.