The message of Pentecost is about the power of God. But that doesn’t mean what we normally think it means because God’s power isn’t over us, it’s power with us.
In Pentecost, both the medium and the message matter
Pentecost | Acts 2:1-21
I don’t know if you heard, but there was a big wedding on Saturday. Over a billion people were paying attention. And in the middle of it, this man stood up and preached about the love of God with such passion and hope that I think a few people came to Jesus then.
Now, I’m no Michael Curry. Our presiding bishop is a tough act to follow. But I want to tell you that this was a Pentecost moment. This is what real tongues of fire looks like because it was getting hot in that chapel! That red-headed groom was feeling that heat behind those pink cheeks!
This was a real Pentecost moment, but before we get to that, I want to tell you about a billboard.
Is This Love?
There was a billboard on 70 on the way to Indianapolis I’d always see. It said something like “Jesus is the only way to God.” The only was in bold, of course.
And every time I’d see it, I’d wonder why someone would pay for such a billboard. I mean, it’s not a terribly compelling argument for belief, if that’s what it’s about. Tide and Snickers do a much better job of getting me to consider buying their products than this nonsense.
But right now, I can’t tell you if the billboard is even there anymore. I’ve stopped noticing it. Billboards are only one way to share a message. And a weak one at that.
A message about the saving power of God does only so much when shared on a billboard, a TV commercial, or an ad in the newspaper. Because, as it has often been said, the medium is the message. And when your message is an advertisement, well, we all know what we do with ads.
But if the message is the saving power of God’s love, then the medium better reflect the message.
The Message at Pentecost
However, Pentecost is a perfect example of the medium overpowering the message. The message is about the transforming hope and saving grace of God. But the medium—the vehicle for this message—is tongues of fire and rushing wind and the multitude of languages! The spectacle of Pentecost can easily overpower the message.
I’m starting to wonder if Pentecost is like the Super Bowl commercial of the church calendar. The day we remember the crazy stuff we can’t believe is happening, but afterward we can’t remember what the sponsor was trying to say.
Even my favorite part, when Peter dismisses the suggestion from the crowd that everybody must be drunk; he does it by arguing that it’s 9:00 in the morning, which makes me laugh every single time we read this story (Peter must never have been near a college campus on game day!)—that right there can derail the message!
Most of the Easter season, we’ve been encouraged by the gospel readings to see past the surface, to not get distracted by the bright colors and enticing arguments, but to get to the heart of the matter. This work of digging down to find the purpose should prepare us for the onslaught of Pentecost because this time we really have to see past the spectacle. Otherwise we might miss the most important part:
It’s the synergy between the medium and the message which reveals the point.
It is no coincidence that many voices in spontaneous languages are suddenly “speaking about God’s deeds of power.” This is intentional. The medium and the message are one.
Over the last few weeks, we’ve heard how the message is being brought to the gentiles. But we aren’t there yet. The message hasn’t yet gone out. This is the powerful revelation to Jewish people from all over the world. YOUR God is here. OUR God is shaking things up! God isn’t out there, God is here; hear it!
Deeds of Power
The message was about power and the medium was a demonstration of power. But not economic or political power. God didn’t spend money on a billboard or a TV ad or get something in the local papers. God didn’t push legislation or declare a new interpretation from the bench.
This was an act of social power, loosing the tongues of people and giving them inspiration to share the good news of God to all the people. What we might call old fashioned evangelism. Not that turn-or-burn trash. The personal and the public witness that God is up to something in this world and we’re being called to make it happen.
The medium and the message were one. Like another old adage: show, don’t tell. This revealed is the power of God.
But what then is power?
The Trouble with Power
I’ve shared with you the trouble I have with words like power and kingdom and Lord because these speak to the evils of power: of domination, authoritarianism, exploitation. It is the language of oppressors and rulers—the very things Jesus came to overturn with an upside-down gospel which includes, shares, and loves.
So this message of power which reveals and invites — intimate language from a collaborative God of love is too often confused for a rallying cry which divides and provokes. It’s used to recruit the bullies to dominate, the lawyers to exclude, and the zealots to rage.
It could inspire the same sense of fear and domination which inspired a massacre in Gaza this week or a bombing in Toronto last month. A message we could share, not as a moment of inclusion and collaboration with God’s imagination, but as an exclusive club to join. With all the perks. How we know power in our culture.
But that is hearing the message without seeing the medium. And it distorts the very nature of God for its own selfish ends. To hear the Good News of Jesus actually means learning how Jesus taught the apostles to have a different vision of power.
And Peter keeps preaching through the rest of this chapter from Acts. And he connects Jesus to scripture, the prophetic tradition, and the Kingly line of David—to talk about God! To talk about the unifying, transforming vision God has for the world. A vision of love and barrier-breaking mercy; and we are collaborators in this daring vision, not in human power.
This is the message!
The Message
God’s message is a message of transformation—not to give power like a reward—that’s not how the message comes! As in Acts, it comes to the apostles in great demonstrations of shared power to transform our individualistic and selfish culture into a more loving and collaborative one.
And the message comes in Jesus, who clothes the powerless in a protection of service. Who shares a generous spirit to find sufficiency when starting with nothing, and hospitality when they have nothing to offer in return.
Jesus shares a vision of God who overturns the powerful because of their power. He doesn’t excuse the abuse because the people at the top are good people—because it isn’t about their temperament. He condemns the system for how it exploits the powerless and the hypocrites who protect injustice.
And most of all, God seeks to transform the world in the person of Jesus sharing at tables, restoring the outcast to true community, and then has the audacity to tell the apostles to do the same.
Jesus is the message. A message of love and transformation, embodied in the flesh.
The Presiding Bishop Brought the Message.
A message an American presiding bishop offered a royal family on a momentous day. The kind of moment Samuel Seabury could only dream of. A moment the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. could only dream of.
The rebellious, spirit-filled American, whose boundary-breaking life story serves the perfect match for the Spirit’s purpose and God’s subversive power. The sort of man, whose mere presence in the room, sends shockwaves throughout the Anglican Communion. And then, given the gravity of hate and history, he receives the great honor of proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ to three billion people!
And the message Michael proclaimed was the gospel distilled: the power of God’s love.
He was for us the tongue of fire: the living embodiment of God’s love in a powerful vessel. Short in stature, balding up top, hair grayed, but the fire of love fills his eyes and the water of baptism is constantly on his skin and his lips can’t contain the message, it wouldn’t matter if he ever tried. It comes out full of love.
Speaking to the royal family about power and love and God; about the prophets and justice and slavery; Michael showed them the power of God’s love is not contained by castle walls, traditions, and the human trappings of empire. God’s power doesn’t grant humans the right to own other humans or punish them for their ungodliness. It’s to love them. To share the power of the message to become the very medium for the message.
That they have the power in God to transform the world.
This is Pentecost.
Doing what Jesus does.
This is what God’s power actually looks like—people gathering together, searching for meaning and love in a world which mistakes power to dominate for moral authority and mistakes injustice for human nature. Or worse, God’s punishment.
This message of transformational Good News is ours. Its shared with us without strings, enfleshed with love and bursting with hope. And its aflame with passion and roars with the wind.
This is why it’s our work, not to tell people how awesome Jesus is or how awesome we are for being down with Christ, but to love and share, and embody the decentralized power of God sparking the love and dignity within every one of us. Because we are how Christ is known, how Jesus loves, and the world is saved.
We is the Way.