Wind and Fire
This week we draw on a story from the Talmud to bring together the Pentecost story in Acts with the “Feast of Weeks,” the Jewish festival which celebrates God’s gift of the Torah to Israel.
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Transcript
At this pulpit on Easter Sunday, Father Stuart opened this season by telling us a brief tale from the desert monks and nuns of Egypt.
The story that he told us that morning finds its fulfillment 50 days later here this morning on the feast of Pentecost.
So I will remind you of that tale once again.
Abbot Lot came to Abbot Joseph and said,
“Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule and my little fast, my prayer, meditation, and contemplative silence.
And according as I am able, I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts.
Now, what more should I do?”
The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands into heaven, and his fingers became like 10 lamps of fire.
And he said, “Why not be totally changed into fire?”
That fire, which Stuart spoke about at Easter, is made manifest to us at the feast of Pentecost, during which the Holy Spirit descends upon the gathered apostles in wind and flame.
Our festivals and holidays often take place on the same day as the festivals in other older traditions.
We’re accustomed in the Christian year to celebrate Easter as best we can for seven long weeks, and then to tie things up with bright red ribbons on the 50th day at Pentecost.
We’re so familiar with the pattern that we tend to take it for granted.
But hidden underneath the church year is the older pattern of the Jewish year, and the way they fit together is no accident.
Just as Easter is related to the Jewish observance of Passover, so our observance of Pentecost has beneath it another ancient festival.
When I was growing up among the Baptists, and I heard this story from the Book of Acts, I didn’t know any of this.
All I knew was that Jesus’ disciples happened to be gathered together in one place.
It never even occurred to me to ask what the disciples were doing or why they were there.
If I thought about it at all, I supposed that they were probably having some kind of a church meeting, like the board of deacons in the Baptist church where I grew up, or what we would call a vestry meeting.
If I closed my eyes, I could see the disciples shuffling in and shaking hands, draping their coats over the backs of the chairs and firing up the coffee maker.
It would be pledges and plans, budgets and business.
But now, having been educated, ordained, and employed, I know different.
Now, when I close my eyes, I can see that the disciples in that room are there because they have come to a festival.
They are celebrating Shavuot, the feast of weeks.
People have assembled in Jerusalem to go to the temple and celebrate the end of the harvest.
But why so many people?
And why have they come from places so far away?
Why has this old agricultural festival become such a big deal?
To find the answer to that, we have to go back even further.
Back to the Egyptian desert where those monks we were listening to would move when they hoped to be changed into fire.
We have to go all the way back to Moses and the people of Israel, back to Sinai.
The feast of weeks wasn’t just about the ripened grain.
By the time the disciples had met to observe it, it had become a celebration of the gift of the Torah and the obligation of the whole people of Israel to be its guardians.
They would tell the tale of God descending in fire upon Mount Sinai, and of the reluctance of the people to accept such a demanding gift.
According to a later Jewish tradition, even God was a bit hesitant about the whole affair and required of Moses a guarantee that people would not forget the promises that they would need to make.
But what kind of guarantee could they hope to offer?
As the story goes, Moses and the people first offered to God the witness of their ancestors, of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, the famous patriarchs whose stories are told in the book of Genesis.
And God thought about this and said, “No.
The patriarchs, as memorable and foundational as they were, were not sufficient.
Everyone knew the troubles they had gotten into, and besides, they were all long gone.”
So the people looked ahead to the great prophets who were to come.
Elijah and Elisha, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Hosea, all of them.
And they thought, “Surely the faithfulness of the prophets would count as a sufficient guarantee.”
But God said, “No.”
The witness of the prophets, even though they were marvelous and mysterious in their words and deeds, still remained insufficient.
They were a jumble of confusing names, all with books unwritten and unread.
How could they guarantee that the Torah would be faithfully observed?
So the people thought and thought, and they began to realize that God would never be satisfied with one group or another to act as their representatives.
But they themselves were so often unfaithful.
At last, they came up with the most audacious suggestion they could think of.
Everyone had to take part in this great promise.
Everyone, the patriarchs and the prophets, they themselves, and all their children yet unborn, and all their children’s children, far and near, up and down to the very end of time.
And God said, “Yes.”
And that was what happened, according to the tale.
Somehow, by God’s power, every Jew from every time and place stood present that day before Mount Sinai to make their Pentecostal vow.
And by that same power, the Torah came to each of them as gift and obligation, just as it comes to them today whenever they hear it read and promise to live according to its precepts.
That’s the foundation on which our reading from the Book of Acts begins.
And every person sitting in that room in Jerusalem remembered the story.
So maybe, for the disciples at Pentecost, it was a sort of vestry meeting after all.
A meeting in which a little group, vested with authority and responsibility, take the time to consider the obligations before them and the gifts they have available to answer those needs.
But things were not at all the same in Jerusalem under Rome.
Mount Sinai was impossibly long ago and so very far away.
Only days before, these disciples had stood on a different mountain, gazing up into the sky as the man who had led and taught them, offering them such hope, was lost to sight in the clouds.
His disciples had returned to the city filled with uncertainty, never having reached that promised land that they had thought of as their destination.
But it was here, in this moment, that things took an unexpected turn.
Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
Divided tongues as of fire appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.
All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the spirit gave them ability.
It is quite peculiar when you think about it.
Flames do often resemble tongues, with a sort of odd speech that crackles among the kindling, spreading rumors and secrets, gossip and promises.
And amid the darkness and the smoke, you can’t always trust the voices whispering from the corners of the hearth.
But in this case, there is no obscurity.
There is clarity of vision, enlightenment, and understanding.
The Holy Spirit, which spoke the Torah of God into human words at Sinai, now begins to speak again.
And God’s deeds and power are proclaimed in the languages of every nation under heaven.
People hearing it are amazed, astonished, and bewildered.
Now, supposing that that other ancient folktale is true, then all of these devout Jews gathered in the city had once been present at Sinai.
And now, it seemed as if Sinai itself had come to Jerusalem to meet them in wind and fire.
Some people call Pentecost the birth of the church.
But I think it is more of a revealing of something which has always been present, though often unrecognized.
The church is called to be the herald of the new life of the kingdom of God breaking into the world, and there is no place and no time in which this cannot happen.
It is true that Jesus ascends to heaven, but as Father Brandon taught us last week, his ascent is not away from us toward some distant and unreachable place, but a bringing down of heaven deep into every crack and crevice of the created world.
So, in a very real sense, the Ascension and Pentecost are indivisible.
They are two aspects of a single event in which Christ returns to glory and glory comes to earth.
Filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit, even people like us, you and I, are called to embody the life of Christ in the world.
I have seen this happen in this very place on more than one occasion.
And of all the strange stories I’ve shared with you this morning, this may be the strangest one of all.
I have joined a circle of people gathered for meditation in a single room.
Sometimes there are many, sometimes only a few.
One person will read a poem or a passage from a book, and during a period of reflection, the rest of us will consider it and respond.
And then it happens.
Sometimes slowly, sometimes quite rapidly, something like small flames will come to life, completely invisible, but very real, as person after person begins to speak.
And in the midst of the diversity of our backgrounds and perspectives, somehow we will begin to hear each other, enlightening us, touching our hearts, speaking in our own language.
Sometimes we will laugh with delight, and on occasion, we will find ourselves in tears.
The spirit moves like wind and fire around and through this Charis Circle, always patient, always inviting, but never keeping still.
It is a marvelous thing.
In the last days, it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.
In this very place, in this very moment, Sinai and Pentecost are arriving together, coming close to us, and we are very much at risk of being made anew.
Every voice we hear, however soft the whisper, may echo the distant roar of the very breath of God.
Every prayer, however brief, may become the descent of living fire.
May we become what we receive.
Amen.