Tell Your Story

Based on Acts 2:1-21

This morning’s scripture reading is, of course, the story of what happened the first Pentecost after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. Pentecost marks the fiftieth day after Passover, a festival called Shavuot, which celebrates the wheat harvest and also marks the time when Moses received the Ten Commandments. Jews from all across the world would go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem for this festival. This sets the table nicely for the gospel to be communicated to people representing many places across the world. The word will travel much faster this way!

As I reflected on this passage, there were a few things that struck me. The first is that the disciples were all together in one place. They were not scattered about or in their own homes. And by disciples, it isn’t just the twelve. We read that there were 120 disciples gathered together. Must have been a big house! Before Jesus ascended to heaven, he told the disciples to go to Jerusalem and to wait for the Holy Spirit to come down upon them, so that they would have power from on high. And so, here they were, waiting for the coming of the promised Holy Spirit.

Now, just because they were all together in one place doesn’t mean that they were all of one mind. They all believed in Jesus. They are all disciples, obviously. But we shouldn’t be surprised if there were some personality conflicts. After all, with 120 people in one place, and probably pretty tight quarters, there was bound to be some people who really didn’t like each other. Some people probably got on other people’s nerves. We know in the gospels that the disciples didn’t always get along. And everyone is just kind of waiting around to see what will happen next. They are waiting for the Spirit. But when the Spirit does come, what then? Maybe there was some strategizing already taking place about what the next move would be once the Spirit arrived to give them the power they needed. Maybe some cautioned not to make any decisions about what to do next until the Spirit arrived and let them know what to do next. The bottom line, you have 120 people in one house who are waiting around, not sure what the next move will be, and probably not all on the same page. That they are all together in one place is a feat in and of itself.

The second thing that struck me is how the Holy Spirit fell on every person present. The Spirit didn’t just come down on Peter and the rest of the twelve. No, the Spirit came down on everyone gathered together in the house, all 120. It was an inclusive outpouring of the Spirit. No one was left out. Each person had what appeared to be a flame of fire appear over their heads, like a bunch of human candles. Each person was moved to proclaim the mighty works of God. Each person participated in the move of the Spirit in their midst. No one sat by or got passed over.

We also believe that no one gets passed over by the Holy Spirit. It isn’t just ordained clergy that have the Holy Spirit. We believe that when a person is baptized they receive the Holy Spirit as part of this sacramental act. After I baptize someone, I pray that the Holy Spirit come upon that person to empower them to become a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ. With holy oil, I mark that person on their forehead with the sign of the cross as an act of sealing them with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit takes up residence in their soul. For us as United Methodists, we believe that people who are baptized don’t wait until some later time when the Spirit falls on them. Some churches do believe that later in a believer’s life they receive Spirit baptism which is accompanied by signs, often speaking in tongues. But for us and many other churches the Spirit fills us at the moment of our baptism. Whether you are baptized as a baby or well along in life, when the baptism happens you receive the Holy Spirit. No one is passed over. And the Spirit doesn’t come and go. The Spirit abides with us. We are temples of the Holy Spirit. We have received what we need to be empowered to live the life of discipleship. All there is for us to do is to be open to the leading and empowerment of the Spirit, to tap into the Spirit rather than block it off.

Here’s the third thing that struck me about this story from Acts. When the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit they rushed out of the house and into the streets to proclaim the mighty acts of God. They didn’t just stay inside and bask in the presence of the Spirit. No, they were compelled to get out of the house so they could tell others how awesome God is and what are the awesome things God has done. It seems that no one stayed behind in the house. Everyone went out together into the streets so that those outside the four walls of the house could find out what God is doing.

Have you ever experienced something in which every part of your being cried out for you to tell somebody? Maybe you learned you were pregnant. Or you got the promotion you have been waiting for. Or you are going to be a grandparent. Or some other great thing just happened in your life. Maybe you rushed to post your good news on Facebook. Or you called a friend. Or you find a way to steer the conversation toward your good news. However you do it, the news is so hot, so exciting, you just have to get it out. You have to tell someone your good news. This seems to be what it was like for those disciples when the Spirit promised by Jesus came down upon them. They had to get out there and tell others, even complete strangers, their good news.

From time to time we have good news to tell. But when was the last time you felt compelled to proclaim the mighty acts of God? When was the last time you had an experience with God that was so powerful, so exciting and uplifting, that you just had to share that experience with others? I would hope that for all of us this would be a regular occurrence. But I can honestly tell you that it has been awhile since I have felt compelled to share my experience of God with others. It’s not that I have something against it. It’s not that I don’t have anything to share. If someone were to ask me I would surely tell them about how I have experienced God in my life. But it’s not something I lead with. It’s not something I am so excited about that I am compelled to steer conversations toward talking about how I have experienced God in my life. Am I the only one for which this is true? It’s common that, over time, our relationship with God becomes so much a part of our lives that it loses its wonder and excitement. God becomes so familiar. Our experience of God is as common as breathing. It doesn’t have the same excitement as when we first experienced God in a deep way. Our experience of God has become so common and normal that it doesn’t feel like we have much of anything interesting to share. I’m not saying this is bad, it’s just the way it is. In any relationship, after a while, the excitement levels off. We are simply doing life together, in our human relationships and in our relationship with God. And let’s be honest, our lives often are not very exciting.

The disciples, of course, experienced God in an extremely powerful way. They were compelled by the awesomeness of the experience to go out into the streets to tell their story. But the miracle in this story is how every person could understand what the disciples were saying in their own native language. Any communication barrier was removed. The people in the street didn’t have to translate the Aramaic that the disciples were speaking. They didn’t hear Aramaic but instead heard what was being said in the language they were most familiar with, the one they were raised with. Amazing. The crowds may not have understood what the disciples meant to say. But they didn’t have to translate the words. What the disciples said could be understood even if what they were hearing needed further explanation, which is what Peter does when he gives his first sermon, probably speaking in Greek.

This is the last thing that struck me, that the communication barrier had been removed. I have noticed that we Christians have our own language. You could call it “Christianeze.” We talk about salvation, grace, sin, and even sometimes use words like justification and sanctification. Any word that has five syllables may not be a familiar word to everyone. Church language, Christianeze, is not a language everyone understands. People who don’t know anything about Jesus or think about salvation may not know what we are talking about when we use those church words. Here’s our challenge. How do we share our experiences of God without using Christianeze? How do we tell others about what God has done without using church words?

I heard this story once told by a woman whose addiction to alcohol left her homeless and penniless on the streets of Detroit. She had burned a lot of bridges. And in one last desperate attempt, she reached out on Facebook posting about the situation she was in, asking if anyone could help her, and that she was scared. Well, one of her friends read that post and contacted their pastor. That night, they drove from Toledo to Detroit to pick her up. As they drove back to Toledo she kept saying over and over how grateful she was, and the pastor and her friend kept saying over and over, “This is what we do.” She was welcomed into the church without judgment. She was loved on, even when she didn’t act very loving. They didn’t give up on her. As she told her story, she emphasized over and over how she was loved and included, that she had a new family. She spoke of how she had experienced the mighty work of God in her life without words like saved, sin, justification, sanctification, or any other church words. She spoke of love, acceptance, family, and hope. I can imagine that if she told this story to people who aren’t Christians, they would understand what she was saying and may even wish they could be a part of that community as well.

The Holy Spirit is with us. We carry the Spirit in our bodies. And we all have stories to share of our own experiences of God. Likely those experiences manifested through the presence and loving actions of others. Some of them may be in this room. They were there for you when you needed support. They loved on you when you weren’t always very lovable. They prayed for you. They included you when you didn’t feel like you fit in anywhere. Our stories are different. They are personal. They are uniquely ours to tell. And with the Spirit in us we have all we need to tell our stories. So, I challenge all of us to be ready to share our story with others. We don’t need to rush out of here and start shouting. But we can be ready, when the time is right, to share our experience, not with religious language but in ways that people can relate to. We can talk about how with God and with God’s people we have experienced love, belonging, and hope. I believe that when those opportunities come, as the Spirit prompts us, and we share from the heart, that those who hear our stories will be moved to ask the question, “Can I experience this love too?” And then we will have the joy to respond with a firm, “Yes, you can.”