Acts 2:1-21
June 8, 2025
When Brent and I first got married,
we went to a special event at the Country Music Hall of Fame that honored Felice
and Boudleaux Bryant, and, if I recall correctly, kicked off a special exhibit
of their work. Until I met my sweet husband, I had never heard of these folks.
I know that I would have remembered hearing about them before Brent came into
my life, simply because you don’t hear the names Felice and Boudleaux very
often. I soon learned that even though I didn’t know the names Felice and
Boudleaux, I knew many of the songs they wrote really, really well. Songs like,
Wake Up Little Suzie, Bye, Bye Love, Love Hurts, and
perhaps the one that means the most to us as Tennesseans, Rocky Top.
Felice and Boudleaux Bryant changed
the landscape of songwriting in the Nashville music scene. Felice was Italian,
and through her renowned cooking, musicians and music business emissaries alike
were introduced to amazing Italian food – which was not traditional to Nashville
at that time. And, of course, they wrote Rocky Top, which is you know, Rocky
Top! I bet if I started singing it right now, a whole lot of us would join
in.
So, we were at the Hall of Fame for
this special event surrounding the new exhibit of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant’s
archives and memorabilia, which also included the recipe for Felice’s famous
sauce. Felice and Boudleaux are gone, but their sons spoke to the gathered
crowd. Their sons were donating their parents’ archives to the Hall of Fame
from their original home in East Tennessee. The motivating reason behind this
was not just to preserve their parents’ legacy and to make their work more widely
known to music fans, it was also because a wildfire swept through East
Tennessee in November 2016 and threatened their family home. Putting their
parents’ historic work into the Hall of Fame was not just a matter of pride and
eagerness to share it with the world, but to keep it as safe as possible for
many years to come. The Bryant sons did not want to risk losing their mom and
dad’s precious, historic work to flames ever again.
I don’t blame them. While I am not a
fan of big storms, and I know how deadly they can be, I am even more afraid of
fire. A raging fire can destroy everything in its path in a matter of minutes,
whether it is a single house fire or an urban conflagration like the most
recent one in Southern California that destroyed entire neighborhoods and
communities. Fire is terrifying, and I completely understand why the children
of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant wanted to do everything they could to protect
their parents’ legacy. And because fire can be so frightening, I can well
imagine that the sight of flames burning in the midst of the disciples must
have been a terrifying thing to witness.
Whenever I preach on this Pentecost
story from Acts I focus almost exclusively on the Spirit roaring into their
midst like a violent wind, like a tornado and hurricane and tempest all rolled
into one. The imagery of that violent wind is a powerful one and, when it comes
to Pentecost, is the image that most often consumes my imagination. But the
tongues of flame that appeared in the midst of the disciples, the tongues of
flame that rested on each one of them, are equally as powerful, strange, and
scary.
The holy land was and is an arid
climate, but that does not mean that wildfire was not a real possibility. If
we, with our advanced technology and firefighting expertise, struggle to keep
wildfires contained and controlled, think about how awful it would have been to
deal with a raging fire in that time and place. I suspect that whole villages, cities
even, would have been consumed in a matter of hours. So the sight of flames
suddenly resting on these disciples must have been terrifying to say the least.
And what does the author of Acts mean when they write that the divided tongues
of flame rested on the disciples? I’ve always pictured happy little tongues of
flame dancing above their heads, almost like something out of a cartoon. But if
a tongue of flame rested on each disciple, maybe that was more like the burning
bush than a happy cartoon flame? Maybe the crowd of people witnessing this saw
these tongues of flame and wondered if the disciples were about to be destroyed
by the flame resting on them? Did someone shout “Fire!”? Did someone else make
a move to find water to douse the disciples?
If that was the instinct of anyone
there, we don’t read about it. And I suspect that even if that was the
inclination under normal circumstances, these were anything but normal
circumstances. The minute those flames appeared, the second they rested on the
disciples, the real strangeness of Pentecost began. The disciples began to
speak – not in their own language, but in the languages of every person
gathered there; in the languages of every Jew gathered from the diaspora of
that known world. They spoke in the language of the Parthians and Medes, the
Elamites and the residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia. The folks from
Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and Libya, and Rome were all
represented. Every person heard the good news of Jesus in their own language,
in their own idiom and syntax and sentence structure. Those tongues of fire
were not flames of destruction but of illumination, translation, and
enlightenment.
The text tells us that everyone who
was there was “amazed and astonished.” I bet they were! But it wasn’t enough
that they were amazed and astonished to hear the story of God in their own
languages after flames of fire appeared in the midst of these disciples, it was
that the ones speaking their languages were Galileans! A commentary I read
about this said that this was a subtle joke and jab; a reference that anyone
outside of the region might not get. Apparently Galileans were considered to be
the hicks of the region. They were the backwater, backward, uneducated,
unerudite, hicks and yahoos of that culture and context. So, while it would
have been amazing and astonishing for anyone to begin speaking in all these
different languages, it was especially amazing and astonishing that these acts
of wonder were being done through Galileans.
Maybe this was why some people just
could not believe what they were seeing and hearing. Though so many of the
people gathered there, hearing in their own language, did believe and did
accept that something bigger than themselves was taking place, others just
wrote it off as drunkenness. They’re drunk, they said. They’re hammered. This
isn’t God, this is wine. But Peter stood up and said,
“No.
This has nothing to do with drinking. This has everything to do with God. This
is the day that God promised. This is the fulfilment of the words of the prophet
Joel. These are the last days of the old way of experiencing God. This is God’s
new thing right here in our midst.”
And the flames of the Spirit that descended
on the disciples giving them the ability to speak in languages none of them
could speak in before, did not stop there. This holy fire was now unleashed on
the world. The good news of the gospel spread like wildfire. That’s what we
read about in the rest of the book of Acts. When the Spirit came, it not only
gave these once timid and terrified disciples new power, but it also took the
message of God, the good news of God, out into the world in a way no one
expected or even fully understood.
When the Holy Spirit descended, it
came like a violent, rushing, deafening, roaring wind, and it came like fire,
holy fire. And when that holy fire entered someone’s heart and mind, it could
not be extinguished. And when that holy fire spread from one disciple to
another, from one person to another, it did indeed spread like a wildfire
would. It would not be contained. It would not be subdued. It would not be barred
or blocked or barricaded. The Holy Spirit was unleashed on the world, and there
was no stopping it.
The Holy Spirit, this holy fire, is
still on the loose in the world. Its power has not been subdued or diluted. But
that does not mean that we know what to do with it or how to deal with it.
Maybe we are more like those folks in the crowd who assumed the disciples were
drunk. Maybe when we witness the Spirit in others or even feel it trying to
reach our own hearts and minds, we push back against it. We try to tame it and
domesticate it and make it manageable and palatable. We do this, I think,
because when the Holy Spirit comes our lives and their comfortable routines are
disrupted. The Spirit did not come to make everything nice. The Spirit came as
a wild maelstrom. The Spirit came to destroy the old ways of thinking and doing
and being. Is this because the Holy Spirit is about chaos or does it take
destruction of some things to build other things anew?
This sounds scary … and it is. The
people who witnessed this first Pentecost must have been terrified. What they
knew and understood about God and about one another was upended. But think
about what they experienced when those flames rested on the disciples? They
heard the good news in their languages. They heard the gospel in their idiom
and syntax and sentence structure. God through the Holy Spirit met them where
they were. It spoke to them in familiar words. It reached their ears in their
native tongue. In the midst of so much chaos, cacophony, and confusion, the
words of the gospel in their own language must have also been like a balm for
their hearts and minds. The Spirit met them where they were.
When
that holy fire descended on the disciples not just for the disciples’ sake, but
for the sake of those around them. When it reached their ears, it also reached
their hearts and minds, and nothing was ever the same again.
That’s
the thing about the coming of the Holy Spirit, when it comes nothing is ever
the same again. When the holy fire blazes in our midst, we cannot go back to
the status quo. When the Holy Spirit comes, we cannot return to how things
were. Everything is changed and so are we. But that is the good news, isn’t it?
That is the gospel. Nothing is the same. Everything is different and yet God
meets us where we are. God through the Holy Spirit comes to us, speaks to us in
our own language, touches our ears, minds, and hearts in our own idiom, with
the balm of language that is familiar, and yet nothing is the same.
I
know that this is confusing and unnerving and maybe more than a little
terrifying, yet that is the essence of the Holy Spirit. That is what happens
when we open ourselves to its movement and power. It changes us. It changes
everything. But in the change we are transformed. In the change we are made
new. In the change we are called to bring this good news to others, to make way
for the holy fire, the heavenly blaze to do its work of love and power.
Let
all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”
Amen.
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