The Holy Spirit Has Been Set Loose on the World, a sermon based on Acts 2: 1-21, preached on May 19, 2024

According to the Wycliffe Global Alliance, as of last September, the entire Bible has been translated into 736 languages. The New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,658 languages, and smaller portions of Scripture have been translated into another 1,264 languages in addition to that, bringing the grand total of languages that some portion of the Bible has been translated into to 3,658. Since that day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit gave the disciples the ability to speak in languages that those pilgrims in Jerusalem could understand, the Holy Spirit has been set loose on the world. There is no need to learn Latin, nor Hebrew or Greek, to hear the Good News. In their own mother tongues, the people who speak any of those 3,658 languages can hear of God’s great deeds of power without an interpreter. The Holy Spirit has been set loose on the world. Today is the day when we celebrate this reality. The fire started on this day so long ago when the disciples, who had been huddled in their one room, not knowing what to do with themselves since Jesus had ascended into heaven, were pushed out to address the crowd. Before the Spirit came, they busied themselves voting on stuff. They sound like a group of Presbyterians. “What should we do?” one asked. “Maybe we should form a committee.” Yet the Spirit burst into their meeting. They were like a valley of dry bones that were suddenly given flesh and blood. Their agenda was tossed out the window by the holy wind that swept the room. These disciples were then given a power they didn’t understand. They faced the crowd outside and began speaking in languages as the Spirit gave them ability. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, so that Parthians, Meades, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belong to Cyrene all heard them speaking, not in any language they had to learn in school, but in the very language their mothers had cooed into their ears since the day they first rested on their mothers’ chests. When the disciples spoke, the crowd of people didn’t have to think, “What do these words mean?” They knew instinctively. They heard the Gospel preached directly to them. They could hear God speaking in a language that they could understand. Do you know how wonderful that is? The fire of Pentecost is still spreading today. The Scriptures are being translated more and more, yet there have always been people who wanted to put out the fire of Pentecost. You all know that there was a time when God’s people had to learn Latin to understand Scripture. When John Wycliffe, the namesake of the Wycliffe Bible Alliance, whose objective is translating the Bible into every language on earth, first translated the Gospels into English, he was declared a heretic, his translations were burned, and his remains were burned as well, then thrown into the River Swift by order of Pope Martin V. Why? For just as it was true in the time of John Wycliffe, so it was true on that day of Pentecost so long ago: Not everyone rejoiced at the sound of hearing God’s word spoken in the mother tongues of the nations. Some there on that day of Pentecost so long ago assumed that the disciples were drunk. “Drunk? No,” the Disciple Peter said, “It’s much too early for that.” I love that line. Think with me, though, about what the crowd thought. Some in the crowd thought that the disciples were drunk. Some in the time of John Wycliffe thought it was reckless to translate the Bible into the language of the people. Then, when Martin Luther translated the Bible into German about 100 years later, he was called a heretic as well, but this time it didn’t matter because by the time of Martin Luther, the printing press had been invented, so his works couldn’t be burned. They were all so mass produced that they spread throughout Western Europe, as though the Holy Spirit had been set loose on the world once again. Looking back on the COVID-19 pandemic, all that comes to mind. I think about the disciples and how the crowd thought they were drunk. I think of how Wycliffe and Luther were declared heretics. I remember how the internet was streaming our service out into the world in 2020, but so many were anxious for things to go back to the way they had been before. Do you remember? There’s an article that appeared in The New York Times that made me so mad that I’m dedicating my doctoral dissertation to proving the author wrong. The article is titled, “Why Churches Should Drop Their Online Services.” It was written in January of 2022, and the author makes some great points about how much better it is to be here, worshiping God together in this one room, how community is strengthened by the physical presence of other human beings. The author is right about all of that. Just think about how much easier it is to sing when there are other people around you singing. Think about how good it feels to pass the peace and have a hand to shake. Yet, also think about how, before 2020, we weren’t thinking too much about the men and women in the Cobb County Jail. Before 2020, members of the choir weren’t going out into the community, singing at retirement homes. Before 2020, if you were traveling with your kids’ sports team, you were missing church. If you lived out of state and missed your home church here in Marietta, tough luck. If you were in the hospital or couldn’t drive here, we’d say a prayer for you during the service, but you couldn’t hear it in the hospital. Worship had to happen here in this place. The Spirit was confined to these four walls, yet since 2020, this worship service has been set loose on the world. I drove up to Nashville, Tennessee a couple weeks ago to marry a couple who worships with us online. This summer we’ll be welcoming a new member to our church who lives in London. Not London, Arkansas. London, London. I bet she’s worshiping with us right now, as she does every Sunday, because the Holy Spirit has been set loose on this world of ours, pushing Christ’s disciples out into the world in ways that we’ve never dreamed of and in ways that some people in the crowd think are crazy at best and heretical at worst. It’s different is what it is. It’s not heretical. We’re not drunk. It’s just different. And not everyone likes different. The author of this article in The New York Times just a couple years ago that called on churches to discontinue their virtual worship services wanted churches to turn off the livestream, assuming that if we stopped livestreaming, people would come back into the church building. The point of the article was that if we stopped doing this new thing, people would return to the old thing, yet I can’t believe that we are wise to ever be quick in rejecting what is new and different, for new and different may be the work of God. If people accuse you of being drunk or heretical, it may mean that you’re on the right path. Now, that’s not always the case, of course. If new and different is vegetarian lobster or tofurkey at Thanksgiving, I’m against it. But hear me on this: On Pentecost, nearly 2,000 years ago, God made something happen, and crowds of people explained it away, saying, “They must be drunk because they sure are acting crazy,” for when human beings see something they can’t explain simply, they explain it away. Don’t be quick to reject what is new and different. What if different is the work of God? What if God wasn’t satisfied with what we were doing before? Remember with me what the disciples were doing in that room before the Holy Spirit showed up. Do you remember what they were doing? They were voting. I’m all for voting. Here in the United States of America, we are blessed to live in a functioning democracy where we have the right and the privilege to elect our leaders, yet voting is not the same thing as doing, and the Church, sometimes, gets stuck in voting. We vote, and then we vote again. It’s happened to the Presbyterian Church. It’s happened to the Methodist Church. We vote on who can do what and when and how, as though once we get all the voting out of the way, we’ll finally be the perfect church that Christ has called us to be, while the Spirit pushed the disciples out of their voting booth and into the world. That’s what the Spirit did on Pentecost so long ago. The disciples had been in their nice, little room taking care of business, yet the work Jesus the Christ calls us to cannot be confined to these four walls. The Spirit pushes us out into the world that we might make known the love we have received in Him. Get out there, the Spirit says. Get out in the world, for once this hour of worship comes to an end, the service begins. That’s Pentecost. That’s what it’s about. New things. Radical things. The kind of new and radical things that might make all of us good Presbyterians a little nervous because if we go out into the world doing the things that the Spirit moves us to do, someone might start whispering about us. Maybe they’ll say: “I thought he was a pastor. Should he really be serving beer at Two Birds Taphouse?” Outside a church in a small town in Tennessee, Jack and Frank were standing around talking, when a stranger walked up disgusted. “Is this one of those churches that welcomes everyone?” he asked. Not knowing what to say besides the truth, Jack or Frank said, “It sure is. Why don’t you come on in?” The man didn’t like that answer, so he kept walking. Sometimes that’s how it goes. You can’t please everyone, but can we please the Holy Spirit? Can we be moved by the Spirit to do the will of God? My friends, in our Sanctuary, a room that has been standing in Marietta, Georgia for nearly 200 years, there is a black box sitting atop the pulpit. About 100 years ago, the pastor at the time, Dr. Patton, had a telephone installed in that pulpit that he would take off the receiver so that any on the party line could listen in to the worship service. From that pulpit, the Gospel went out into the world. From this Great Hall, may the Gospel go out into the world through you. Go from here out there, led by the Spirit to let our world better understand the radical love of God for all people. Regardless of the languages that they speak, may they hear the Good News in their mother tongues. Regardless of who they are, may they know that they are loved, unconditionally. Regardless of what the world says about us, may we be bold in our proclamation. May the Holy Spirit be set loose on the world. Amen.