A Pentecostal Picnic

What a thought! A Pentecostal Picnic for Dutch-German-Prussian-Russian Mennonites. Can you imagine us speaking in tongues and being slain in the Spirit – all before we sit down to a good picnic lunch with Farmers Sausage? What a thought!

Of course, Pentecost Sunday is not about “speaking in tongues”. Certainly, that particular phenomenon took place on that first Pentecost, but tongues are not the point. Let’s take a few moments this Pentecost to ask what the real point is, and to commit ourselves to paying attention to what God wants us to do.

Genesis 11

Genesis 11 tells how the unity of peoples at the beginning of the chapter are scattered into the plurality of peoples in which God called Abraham and Sarah to form the People of God. The human family had a common language, which enabled them to work together. This is seen as a good thing, a gift of God’s grace. Then, as happens throughout the biblical narrative, the human race used God’s grace to establish themselves and undermine God. They said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

God saw the threat of human independence and countered it by confusing their languages. No longer able to understand each other, people spread out across the earth. God’s judgment separated people from each other so that they could again begin to find God. The rest of Scripture details God’s search for the human race, reconciling all people to God’s self.

Acts 2

Pentecost is so named because it comes 50 days after the Passover – so, for Christians, 50 days (seven weeks) after the crucifixion and resurrection. [For Jews, the Feast of Weeks (see Deuteronomy 16).] In Acts 1: 3, Luke tells us that the ascension followed the resurrection by 40 days, so Pentecost came about 10 days later.

The disciples were waiting in Jerusalem for God’s Spirit to come (Acts 1: 5). When the Spirit came, they were gathered together – perhaps in the upper room of Acts 1: 13, or perhaps in the Temple area more generally as Acts 2 seems to suggest. Signs of the Spirit’s presence were tongues of fire and the sound of a mighty wind, and then the dramatic sign of speaking in other language. A crowd of pilgrims from around the Jewish world responded to the sign and to Peter’s sermon, leading to the first church in Jerusalem.

The Point

We often think that the point of Pentecost is that the first believers spoke in tongues. They did, but that is a fruit of the real point, not itself the important point for us to take. So, what is the real point? Go back to the way that this passage is paired off with Genesis 11. Genesis 11 shows how and why God judged the human race. God judged the human race for its pride and rebellion in trying to establish itself without God [trying to take God’s place], and God judged the human race by confusing their tongues and creating many languages.

This fact of judgment suggests that at Pentecost, God heals the judgment of Babel. That suggestion is true, but not in the way that we might have expected: God does not reverse the judgment. A simple healing would have been to restore the original language to all the people present, so that everyone would have found themselves speaking God’s language. [German, maybe?] That is not what happens! The text says that they started speaking in various languages, so that the people listening said, “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language?”

Aside: Actually, the text is ambiguous. It states: “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken.” The disciples “spoke in other tongues” and the hearers heard their own language. It is not quite clear that the disciples spoke the languages that the hearers understood. There may have been as much a miracle of hearing as of speaking.

Confusion is healed by anointing each language and culture and making it the vehicle that bears God’s revelation. What was experienced as judgment in Genesis 11 is experienced as grace in Acts 2. This is a profoundly important point: God uses the problems and difficulties of our lives to reveal grace and mercy and love. God does not deliver us from our problems, but rather God uses our problems to bring us into closer relationship with God.

You observe that God’s Spirit came on the disciples while they were waiting for the Spirit. Jesus told them to go to Jerusalem and wait for God’s Spirit (Acts 1: 4-5). After the ascension, they did just that, walking from the Mount of Olives a Sabbath Day’s walk back into Jerusalem.

As I said earlier, they probably waited for about a week and a half, but there was not much in what Jesus said to tell them how long they would need to wait. All he said was this (Acts1: 4-5): “Wait in Jerusalem … [and] in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” How long is “a few days”? I don’t know. It turns out to have been a week and a half, but they didn’t know that. I once asked a South Korean student if she thought that North and South Korea would reunify soon. [This was just after East and West Germany had re-unified.] She said, “Yes.” I said, “How soon?” She said, “About 30 years!” Her idea of soon was different than mine.

Well, God’s idea of “a few days” may be different than ours. All they knew was that they were going to wait for God to act. As one preacher put it, “Don’t just do something. Stand there!” More often, we think of what we can do to bring in God’s reign, while God wants us to wait for the moving of the Spirit.

Living with the Texts

So, what do we do? We see where these two ideas take us: 1) We need the presence of God’s Spirit to experience God’s healing; and 2) God’s healing comes through the problems of our lives – not simply by removing them, but by working through them for our benefit.

My first thought is that these passages call us to acknowledge our own pride and our own desire to do God’s work ourselves. Like the people at Babel, we want to establish ourselves and make a name for ourselves. I experience this desire as much as anyone here, but the fact is that none of us can make life work just right. Sooner or later, life is too much for us, and we run into trouble. Then we make our problems worse by insisting that we can fix them ourselves. Asking God to do in us what God wants to do is hard, because God might want to do something we don’t want.

Step number one, then: Admit our faults and failures. Admit that often enough we are responsible for our own problems. For example, I say sometimes that I’m not a good organizer. That is certainly true, but I was listening to someone in one of the committee meetings I go to. He said, “When I get up in the morning, one of the first things I do is look at my schedule so that I remember what I need to do today.” I thought to myself, “I’ve never done that!” Well, who should I blame for not being a good organizer? At least some of my trouble with organizing is simply my own fault.

Step number two: Seek God’s Spirit. Wait for the Holy Spirit. Waiting is an expectant, intentional act. It is not simply doing nothing and trusting that God will fix everything some day. God will fix everything some day, but another word for that time is “Judgment Day”. Malachi speaks sternly to people who take that day lightly: “Who shall abide the day of his coming, and who shall stand when he appears?” Waiting is not an aimless careless attitude towards life.

To wait for the Holy Spirit is to trust God to take care of us. To wait for God is to act in the present based on what we know today, trusting that God will show us tomorrow what we should do. To wait is to examine ourselves and make sure there is nothing in us to hinder or grieve God’s Spirit. To wait is to anticipate and long for and believe deeply, “God is coming!”

Confession and repentance and trust combine in the community we call the church as we wait for God to break in. When the Spirit comes, God uses the problems that we have been struggling with to heal us. At Pentecost, God used the problem of broken and fractured languages that we call “culture”, and God baptized cultures and languages and used them to reveal the coming of God’s Spirit. That’s what God does. God heals us not from, but through, our problems.

When that happens, God’s Spirit bursts out among us, and people gaze in wonder at the transformation that takes place. You can’t predict what God’s work will look like. You can’t predict who God’s Spirit will fall on. You can’t predict what will happen to SMC in the next ten years. All we can do is wait – anticipate and long for and prepare ourselves for God to work.

A Closing Picture

A few weeks ago I attended a conference on the Global Anabaptist Identity. John Roth, director of the Institute for the Study ofGlobal Anabaptism in Goshen, Indiana, was our resource speaker. He came up with an unusual image of what the church looks like as it spreads through the work of God’s Spirit. He by-passed the usual images that we think of such as a building, or a body, or a community [although all of these are true and good] and suggested a different picture instead. He compared the church to a rhizome.

Now, perhaps the only people here who know what a rhizome is are the gardeners. Here is Wikipedia’s definition of a rhizome: “In botany and dendrology, a rhizome is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow horizontally. The rhizome also retains the ability to allow new shoots to grow upwards.”

More simply, everything from aspens to quack grass: Plants that share a root system, so that they are one organism, while growing as many plants. The Mennonite Church in Ethiopia shows us how resilient such an organism is, led by the Holy Spirit. The first Mennonite workers entered Ethiopia in 1945, and the first Ethiopian converts were baptized in 1951. In 1974, the country came under Communist rule in a military coup, and the government placed increasing restrictions on the church. In 1982, the government closed the 14 Mennonite congregations then in existence and confiscated the church’s property. People were forbidden to meet n groups any larger than five. There were about 5,000 Mennonites at that time, and they organized themselves in small cell groups of five people.

Over the next 10 years, believers met in homes in these small groups, and finally a new government came to power. In 1991, the church was allowed to meet in larger groups and their property was restored. When they came out into the open, they found that they had grown from 5,000 to 34,000 – the ultimate example of a rhizome! You think you have stamped it out, when all that has happened is that it has gone underground and spread widely.

[Information on the Meserete Kristos Church comes from Gameo and from the Anabaptist Wiki.]

Most important in that example is the fact that the Holy Spirit used what seemed to be great tragedy and distress to do God’s work. That is the lesson I want to learn. God works through what feels like judgment to bring grace and new life. Our part is to wait in God’s presence and remain open to God’s work.

A disclaimer: What I am saying can easily be turned into a destructive triumphalism. Someone loses a loved one, and we say, “Wait for what God is doing in your life!” Ouch! Paul tells us to weep with those who weep. Our first response in the face of tragedy is to grieve and weep together. Not to explain. Please, not to explain! Or someone might say, “You have lost your loved one so young! What did you do that God is punishing you for?” Please no! Do not explain! First we grieve together.

Within the hard times and tragedies of our lives, I can hold out this word of hope: God works God’s grace and comfort and gives us joy, even in the darkest night. Wait for the Lord. Wait for God’s Spirit. God will come, and we will grow with the Spirit’s growth as God heals our confusion and gives us life.

Steinbach Mennonite Church

Church Picnic

9 June 2019

Genesis 11: 1-9

The tower of Babel

11 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. ² As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

³ They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and bitumen for mortar. ⁴ Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

⁵ But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. ⁶ The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. ⁷ Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

⁸ So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. ⁹ That is why it was called Babel – because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

Acts 2: 1-21

The Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost

2 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. ² Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. ³ They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. ⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

⁵ Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. ⁶ When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. ⁷ Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸ Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? ⁹ Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰ Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome ¹¹ (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs – we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!’ ¹² Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

¹³ Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”

Peter addresses the crowd

¹⁴ Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. ¹⁵ These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! ¹⁶ No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

¹⁷ “In the last days,” God says, “I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. ¹⁸ Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.

¹⁹  “I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. ²⁰ The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. ²¹ And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”