May 28, 2023, Tongues of Fire and the Big Bang Theory, Acts 2:1-13 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ May 28, 2023 ♦ Leave a comment

We attended our first Episcopal Pentecost service at Trinity Church in Potsdam. Trinity has a wonderful tradition for Pentecost – when the priest or deacon begins reading the gospel, other people scattered throughout the congregation also begin reading it, too, all at the same time – but in all different languages: French, German, Chinese, Armenian, even Greek and Latin. That first time especially, it was an incredibly powerful experience, a little taste of what it must have sounded like on Pentecost in the streets of Jerusalem 2000 years ago. It made the reading real to us in a new way. You could understand why some of the bystanders thought those crazy people must be drunk; all those different tongues all at once sound like pure chaos.

But that experience, as vivid and moving as it is, kind of obscures the most important thing that was happening on that Sunday morning – which wasn’t chaos at all, but communication. In the midst of the city morning traffic, amid the clamor of over a hundred people speaking in dozens of different languages, the most amazing thing that happened is that people heard God speaking to them. An Arab and an Elamite, a man from Egypt, and a woman from Libya, Jews from birth and converts, all those homesick foreigners in Jerusalem suddenly heard the sweet sound of their own mother tongue, proclaiming the great deeds of the Lord.

Can you imagine what that must have been like? It must have seemed like God was speaking to them personally, as they heard the beloved, familiar language of their childhood pouring forth from the mouths of the disciples.

We know that the day of Pentecost is about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Church, the rushing wind, the tongues of fire – but Pentecost is also the starting-point of the expansion of God’s kingdom, beyond the speakers of Aramaic and Hebrew – beyond the walls of the Temple – beyond the Jerusalem city limits – beyond the borders of Israel,

out into the world.

Here’s a little science moment: In 1929, a man named Edwin Hubble made an observation that brought about a seismic change in our understanding of the universe. Hubble was observing what is called the “red shift” of galaxies, which is the phenomenon that when an object is moving away from you, the light it emits moves into the red end of the spectrum. Hubble found that the red shift of galaxies was directly proportional to the distance of the galaxy from the earth. In other words, things that were farther away from the earth were moving away faster. That meant that the universe must be expanding. And Hubble’s discovery paved the way for what we call the “Big Bang Theory.”

Before Hubble’s observation, everyone assumed that the universe was static. Some people believed that all matter had just existed infinitely, and others believed that it had been created. But until Hubble, no one knew that everything that exists, all created matter, is flying outward, continually expanding.

You might say that Pentecost was a kind of Big Bang moment. Jesus came to live among God’s people when Israel was a tiny, insignificant nation, defined and encircled by its history and traditions, and especially by the Law of Moses. All those things set the Jewish people apart from all other nations. There had been times of exile, when God’s people had been carried off to other nations, to Babylon, to Assyria, but they held fast to their identity, even when the Roman Empire swept in and threatened to engulf them.

All those foreign Jews who were in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, they had come from their homeland to Jerusalem because Jerusalem was the site of the Temple. It was the one and only place of worship for all Jews. It was the place where God’s presence rested among his people, in the inner chamber of the Temple called the Holy of Holies.

But on the day the Holy Spirit rushed in and anointed the believers gathered in the upper room, on the day they ran out into the streets, babbling in languages they didn’t even know, on the day immigrants from all over the civilized and not-so-civilized world heard the voice of God in the language of their birth – on that day God was revealing the expansion of his kingdom.

And the book of the Acts of the Apostles tells the story of that dramatic expansion. There was some reluctance at first, some confusion, some foot-dragging, some out-and-out rebellion, but by and large, Acts is the story of how the church, from a little band of hundred or so observant Jews, fairly exploded into new life – three thousand new believers on that very first day after Peter’s astoundingly successful first sermon, with thousands more to come, growing day by day. It was exactly what Joel had prophesied, “Everyone who called on the name of the Lord was being saved.” Not only Jews, but Gentiles too; not only “respectable” people, but people from every walk of life and every social class, everyone who heard the gospel of the Christ and believed. By the end of the book of Acts, which covers about three decades, the Church had already expanded from Jerusalem, to the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire, and beyond.

But it is, I think, so much harder for us to believe in the expansion of God’s kingdom today. We are so far removed from that exciting Pentecost day. We don’t see people gathering by the hundreds and thousands to hear the preaching of the gospel. Very seldom do I give a sermon and have three thousand people cut to the heart, clamoring to accept Christ.

Unlike Hubble’s observations, the evidence for the expansion of God’s kingdom seems pretty scarce these days. If you read the news, there are so many articles out there reporting on the decline of the Church – in America, particularly – articles like “The importance of religion in the lives of Americans is shrinking” and “America’s Christian Majority is Shrinking” and “Christians in U.S. on Decline.” Just looking around us, we can see congregations of all denominations getting smaller – and older.

It’s hard for us to see the kingdom growing, for one thing, because we don’t have the right perspective; it’s as hard for us to see what is happening in the kingdom of God, as it is for us to see the expanding of the universe by just going outside and looking up at the night sky.

But it is also hard for us to see because so often we’re not looking in the right places. We have built our walls of tradition and history and rules, to contain the Church as we know it. But God is in the business of expanding his kingdom, and if we listen, he is speaking in the tongues of people we don’t know yet, in places we haven’t been yet.

For years and years I’ve read articles and heard teachings on growing the church. There are statistics and advice out there ad nauseum on exactly what churches need to be doing to bring in new members. There are articles written by successful churches, telling us how we can follow their pattern and grow our congregations. And I’m sure there’s a lot of good and useful advice hidden in all that data.

But church growth by the numbers is not at all the same thing as the expansion of God’s kingdom. We should do everything we can to welcome people here at St. Philip’s. We should keep on being a light in this community in all the ways we can, with all the love and energy we have. But we are only a very small part of the whole; there’s a whole thing that God is doing in his kingdom, and we are a part of that, too. But God is speaking to people we might not have been expecting him to speak to. Just like Jesus did in his earthly ministry, God is inviting people into his kingdom that we might not have chosen to invite. People are hearing God’s voice, speaking in ways they can understand, just like he did on the day of Pentecost. And they are coming into his kingdom.

The kingdom of God is expanding out to places that are far from our familiar traditions and comfortable experience. A lot of churches in America are shrinking right now; that’s the sad truth. But God is at work, even here, if we pay attention. And in Africa, in South America, in China – Christianity is growing by leaps and bounds. The Spirit, says James, blows where it wishes; we don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. The kingdom is expanding, according to the marvelous wisdom and power of God, until the whole creation is full of his glory, until everyone hears his voice.

As Paul wrote: “The same one who came down (meaning Jesus) is the one who went back up (who ascended to the Father), that he might fill all things everywhere with himself, from the very lowest to the very highest.” That the whole creation might be filled with the presence of Christ, that is what we pray for, when we pray “Thy kingdom come….”

Let us pray:

Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.