Loving God, you promise to pour out your Spirit upon all flesh, that all might call upon you and be saved. Grant each one of us an openness to that same Spirit, that we might be ambassadors of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
It is interesting that when the Holy Spirit shows up at Pentecost, there are wind and fire involved. Both can be dangerous and both can be life-giving. Really - is the Holy Spirit safe? Wind, as you know, can rearrange things in a hurry. In fact, if the wind is violent enough it can cause great damage and can even take away human life. The rush of a violent wind certainly doesn't sound very safe!
Yet, at the same time, wind and breath and spirit are quite life-giving. To a Hebrew person, at least, it would make perfect sense that the Holy Spirit would sound "like the rush of a violent wind" (Acts 2:2). This is because in Hebrew, the word for spirit, and the word for breath, and the word for wind are all the same word, ruach. And so, in today's Psalm, when God takes away the ruach or breath of his creatures, they die and return to dust. However, when God sends forth his ruach or Spirit, they are created and renewed (Ps. 104:29-30). It is almost as if God's Spirit and the breath of life that is in us are one and the same. The Holy Spirit may not be "safe," but it is, indeed, life-giving.
The same could be said of fire. Fire, of course, can also do untold damage. We've heard about flash-overs and back drafts, and the many hazards that are faced by fire fighters. We've seen forest fires rearrange the landscape of a whole area. Yet, once again, it would be no surprise to the people gathered together at Pentecost that the Holy Spirit might show up looking like tongues of fire. After all, there was often fire involved when God showed up in the Old Testament - especially the pillar of fire that led them through the wilderness by night.
At the same time, fire, too, is life-giving. On the TV show "Survivor," one of the first things that each tribe wants to get is fire. Before they are able to start a fire, everybody's miserable. They can't boil any drinking water, so they get dehydrated. They can't cook any food. They don't have any light or warmth at night. When you are out in the wilderness with no other resources, fire is life-giving.
The Holy Spirit is life-giving, too, and may not be entirely safe. Our priorities might get rearranged on us. We might dare to speak to people about things that we have never dared to speak about before. We might get asked to do things that are way out of our comfort zone, like teach a Sunday school class, or visit a sick person. We might actually be asked to set ourselves aside so that the Holy Spirit can work through us. God might speak through us just like he spoke through the disciples at Pentecost.
You know, the amazing thing about what happened at Pentecost is not the fact that they heard people speaking in other languages. The amazing thing was that they each heard the message in their own language. The Spirit, apparently, speaks our language. The message about Jesus is one that God wants to communicate to us. It is not given in some other language that we need to interpret. God speaks our language. God also communicates through us - if we will allow it.
Consider this: The disciples are all Galileans who would have normally spoken Aramaic, or perhaps Hebrew. Yet, the Holy Spirit speaks through these relatively uneducated people in many other languages. Now - if the Holy Spirit can speak through them in other languages, shouldn't the Holy Spirit be able to speak through us in English?
So many times, we tend to be afraid to talk to anybody about our faith, or to say a prayer out loud, or even to pray with somebody. To be quite truthful, these were not things that I was used to doing before I became a pastor. However, it wasn't so much that I learned how to pray or learned what to say, as I learned to rely on the Holy Spirit to give me the words when they were needed. The Holy Spirit can speak through any one of us. We simply need to step out in faith - to move out beyond our comfort zone - and to allow the Holy Spirit to use us in order to speak the language of faith.
I don't know if you noticed or not in today's first reading from Acts, but in the Messianic Age, God is not particularly discriminating about who receives the Holy Spirit - at least not according to the prophet Joel. You see, in the Old Testament, God's Spirit seemed to be poured out on certain select people - on people who had been called by God to be a prophet, or on people who had been anointed by God as king of Israel. However, when the prophet Joel speaks about the last days, God's Spirit will be poured out upon "all flesh." Both men and women will prophesy. People of all social statuses and classes will be included. According to Acts, this is what is happening on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is poured out with power upon all of Jesus' disciples.
