The Coming Of The Holy Spirit
Commentary
As far as the earliest church was concerned, the ability to speak in tongues was the definitive event that proved to anyone watching that the Holy Spirit had entered a believer. Paul was insistent that Gentiles ought to be admitted to the fellowship of believers, and after Peter saw Gentiles speaking in languages they had never learned, he agreed with Paul.
This gift to the early disciples was not exactly what most people think of when we talk about speaking in tongues today, however. They were not babbling, not making nonsense sounds; they were speaking actual languages, although not languages that they had learned, familiar to Jews in the Diaspora. Proof of this is the ability of the Jews who had been dispersed but were now living in Jerusalem to understand what the disciples were saying, as his native language was being spoken in the street by these disciples. The list of countries where these Jews had lived shows that the Jewish faith had traveled to the reaches of the Roman empire, which included most of what we now call Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, even as far as India. It is this widely dispersed nation that will return to “the mountain of God” (Mount Zion) when Messiah appears, according to Isaiah 2:3.
Acts 2:1-21
The introduction to the advent of the Holy Spirit could not have been described more dramatically than the way Luke does. And yet, the pictures many of us have in our heads could not undermine the drama more. Those old Sunday school materials tend to show the disciples in prayer, and the “flames” that came to rest on their heads look like little red elf hats. Worse, the disciples look as though they’ve been struck dumb.
Exactly the opposite is true, perhaps in every respect.
The disciples may have been in prayer, but since it’s 9 o’clock in the morning, it’s more likely that they were busy cleaning up. Breakfast dishes needed to be cleaned, the floor needed to be swept, they may have been sitting around talking. The conversation possibly was around the question of whether they could go out of the house (it’s been long enough, people will not necessarily recognize them as Jesus’ followers) and go to the temple to worship.
As they are doing these ordinary, day-to-day activities, they hear a sudden roaring sound. Has a storm come up? If they were in a windowless room, the lack of moving air might not be a factor. Even as they were looking around, wondering what this sound might mean, tongues of flame rushed into the room and came to rest on the heads of each of the disciples. These “divided tongues” were not static, they were as dynamic as the flames of a fire, as the movement of the Spirit. They appeared, and a tongue came to rest on “each of them.”
This was an experience never to be forgotten! The effect of these flames was that “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.” How did they know this? “[They all] began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability” (v. 4). When they go outside, speaking in this variety of languages (tongues), they have transcended their mortal lives, their native language, and the people listening are equally as shocked. “Aren’t these all Galileans?” they ask.
How did they identify them as Galileans? If they were all speaking in different languages, their distinctive Galilean accent should not have been a factor. So how did the Jews from every-where know they were Galileans?
There were certainly a great many differences between the Galileans and the Jerusalemites. The Galilee was actually larger than Judea, stretching along the Jordan Valley and the sea. Two major trade routes passed through Galilee, one east-west and the other north-south. This made for more contact with a variety of foreigners than the people in Jerusalem. And while the educated person in Judea spoke both Aramaic and Greek, most Galileans spoke both Greek and Aramaic, with the Greek predominating.
The Galileans were more open to diversity than the Jerusalemites, less interested in the Law, certainly less interested in the laws the Pharisees so vigorously defended. They were more culturally diverse than the Jews in the south, because after Assyria swept down and conquered the Israelites the northern part of Palestine was amazingly empty for 600 years. No towns, no cities. No evidence of crops. When it was resettled, about 100 years before Jesus was born, the new people were largely Greek and other Gentiles from the east.
Why are we considering this? Because if there was any way for the Jews listening to the disciples to know they were Galilean, it was that they looked different from their southern cousins. Ken Gire, a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary says: “The term Galilean was synonymous with outsider. They were half-breeds, a mongrel collection of mixed marriages, mingled accents, skin colors, and pagan influences. Jews had a presence in the area, but they were a minority, and most were not orthodox.”1
There are always a few naysayers: “Others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’ ” That comment was a putdown as well, because longer fermentation periods (old wine) generally produce a smoother wine, while the flavor of new wine is coarser, more resembling what a person might drink just in order to get drunk. And being cheaper, it is the drink of the poor.
Peter ignores the sneering, the implications tossed at them from the crowd. He says that they are not drunk -- it’s only nine in the morning! (As though they could not possibly be drunk at that hour!)
This business of having to explain to outsiders what speaking in tongues means and accomplishes is clearly part of Paul’s concern when he says in 1 Corinthians 14:5 that “One who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues.” While speaking in tongues certainly makes a person feel rapturous, because they are partaking of the Holy Spirit and talking directly with God, it can turn off visitors because they have no idea what is being said and it doesn’t build up the people around them. Paul, having grown up in the rabbinic tradition, values logic and reason over mystical practices. This has been one of the points of tension throughout the history of humankind, even in the church today.
I remember my first experience in seminary because of this. We were introducing ourselves around the circle of students and teachers, and I do not remember exactly what I had said about my personal relationship with God, but the man sitting next to me (a fellow student) said, “Oh my gawd, you’re a mystic!” He wasn’t exactly derisive, but that tone startled me. I’d never experienced being labeled that way, and it put me on edge (of course). I replied, “Is that a problem for you?” Everyone laughed, and eventually someone said, “You’ll certainly contribute interestingly to our discussions here!” (I did too!)
Peter also knows the scriptures. But his training has not been rabbinic, it has been at the feet of Jesus, where compassion and mercy count for more than logic and intellect. Inspired by God’s Spirit, he quotes the prophet Joel. The second chapter of Joel is a prophecy of the end times: the mountains look as though an army of horses and soldiers are racing down the slopes toward the Israelites. “Before them the land looks like the Garden of Eden. Behind them, it is a wasteland, even the stubble is burnt to ash.” The army of God is on the march, terrifying to behold, and they swarm up the walls of the city and break into houses. There is no place to hide! Yet as soon as the people turn away from their sinful ways and turn back to God, God repents (turns back from the way things were going) and blesses the people and the land once more.
After all that threat, after all that destruction, after all that fear, Joel says that God declares that “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.” In the Old Testament as well as the New, prophets often began their prophesying by achieving an ecstatic state. Even King Saul, before he was king, was seen to strip off his clothes and go dancing and ululating along with a group of prophets, so that it was asked “Is Saul also among the prophets?” (1 Samuel, chapters 10 and 19). Peter has established a holy text for what the people were seeing in the preaching of the disciples.
In biblical times, men memorized whole sections of scripture. Writing was a magical sort of practice to them, and only certain people could read and write: the teachers in the temple, men who were trained as rabbis. Men who could not afford such education might, however, sit in the synagogue and listen to the scriptures being read, and work at memorizing whole chapters and even whole books. And when a man began to quote a passage, other people around him might begin to chant with him. This way, if one person might miss a word or a phrase, the others would prevent him from keeping the mistake in his mind by chanting the accepted words. Thus the scriptures were passed from generation to generation. And when a person quoted the first line of a psalm, those around him knew the whole psalm, and the sense of the whole was transmitted to those listening, even if they did not recite the whole passage.2
The disciples had just come through a time that must have seemed to them like the Day of the Lord -- a day of destruction, darkness, and fear, just as Joel said. Jesus, whom they trusted, was arrested, beaten nearly senseless, dragged half-clothed to Pilate, judged in the dark of night, forced to carry his cross outside of the city to Golgotha, where nails were driven through his ankles and wrists, and then hoisted onto a post, where anyone passing by could do what they wanted to him. That he died quickly was a blessing. But all of their hopes had been nailed to that cross as well. The words of Joel 2 must have been to them a description of what they had all just gone through.
So it is a work of faith as well as the Spirit that just 50 days later Peter could quote Joel, and point to the coming of the Holy Spirit after so much destruction. Their hope was restored. They were no longer afraid. All of those gathered in that room -- men and women alike, if Joel foresaw correctly -- were revived by the Spirit and driven out into the street, where they began to preach the Good News: Jesus is alive, proof that even though we may all be killed, we are no longer afraid. Listen! Jesus is alive, and has the power to send the Holy Spirit to comfort us... to empower us... to give us new words to speak.
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
By the time Paul was writing this letter to the church at Corinth, the concept of “spiritual gifts” had become proof for the church in general that a person had the blessing of the Holy Spirit. Tongues of fire had been confined, it appears, to that first wave of Followers of the Way (as the followers of Jesus called themselves). When Peter went to the house of the centurion Cornelius (see Acts 10), “[T]he Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God.” In other words, it was proof to the early Christians that they were to be open and welcoming to Gentiles in their fellowship.
However, this practice also served to divide the fledgling church. Those who spoke in tongues were unintelligible to others. It felt wonderful, but it seemed to those who had never had this experience that those who had were building themselves up, perhaps even at the expense of others. It may even have been that those who had this gift thought that those who didn’t weren’t relating to God properly. Or worse, that they didn’t have the second baptism, the baptism in the Spirit. It’s probable that it is this very thing that makes Paul write as he does in today’s passage.
Paul says that there are many gifts of the spirit (see 1 Corinthians 12). Most of these gifts have the effect of building up the Body of Christ, such as the ability to heal, to teach, to prophesy, or to comfort. But the gift of tongues tends to turn inwards, to focus on God alone. Unless there is someone in the room to interpret what is being said, it does nothing for the fellowship -- except perhaps to frighten a visitor who is unprepared for such things.
There is an important statement that is easily lost in this passage, but that we need to hear: “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you” (v. 18). Paul is not saying that speaking in tongues is evil, but (v. 19): “in church I would rather speak five words with my mind, in order to instruct others also.” Sadly, many people have a very negative view of speaking in tongues, so those who have had this happen to them in private hide that experience from others, and even if it happens in a church where such things are common, some may be very embarrassed by the experience.
Many years ago, I was part of a charismatic prayer group. We read the Bible, talked about our walk with God, and prayed. Some people prayed in tongues -- very softly, no jumping or dancing around. We were educated people, for the most part, and tentative in our approach to the emotional gifts.
At that same time, I woke up one morning with terrible pain in my neck. It wasn’t just a pulled muscle -- I couldn’t get relief with a hot pad or a soaking bath or exercise. I also couldn’t get out of bed without help, nor use my right arm. I wound up in traction in the hospital, broken up by hours of physical therapy, heat, massage, and muscle relaxers. My doctor proposed I go to a specialist for surgery, but I didn’t like the odds of getting well (70%) or dying on the table (under 5%). After a week of intense treatment, I was sent home with a traction rig to attach to a door. I started out with three sessions a day with a harness around my head and 50 pounds of lead pulling my head up to free the pinched nerve. After three months of decreasing the time I spent in that rig, I was at last out of pain. I was relieved. The prayer group was too; they’d been praying for me, of course.
One month later, I woke with the same pain I’d had at the first. Depression doesn’t even begin to say how I felt about that. Happily, though, the next night was the meeting time of our prayer group. One of the men, a doctor, said to me, “Sandra, you look so tired tonight. What’s up?” I told the group what I was going through. They all prayed for me, but when we got up to have a snack and return home, the doctor came over to me with another man. “Would you allow us to lay hands on you and pray in tongues over you?” I agreed; I was ready to try anything. They began to pray over me, and one of the two slipped into praying in tongues. It was the strangest vocalization I’d ever heard. Instead of flowing, it contained a hard CLICK! at intervals. It was distracting; I kept wondering what kind of language that could be.
When they were done praying, the doctor told me to give my pain to Jesus. In my mind, I looked at Jesus on the cross and silently said, “No, I will not give you any more pain. You have already suffered because of who I used to be.” And the pain stopped. I could turn my head, lift my arm. I was so shocked that all I could say was “Thank you!” over and over.
A few months later, my husband was in the living room, watching television. I was a few feet away, cleaning the kitchen. Suddenly I stopped dead. Someone on the TV was speaking that language that the doctor had been speaking over me when I was healed! I walked into the room, my eyes and ears tuned to what was happening on the screen. “What language is that man speaking?” I asked. “Don’t remember,” my husband said. Then he turned to look directly at me. “Is that what that guy in your prayer group was speaking?” All I could do was nod my head. I later found out that there are nine or ten different languages in south and east Africa that include “click consonants” as they are called. I never did find out which one it was, but it doesn’t matter. My pain was gone. Today, I do regularly exercise my neck so that the muscles can keep the badly damaged vertebrae in my neck properly aligned, but I have never again had to be hospitalized for the pain and paralysis I suffered at first... for which I thank God and the man who let God use him for my healing and my faith.
John 20:19-23
John’s gospel is often called “the mystic gospel,” because of its focus on the pre-existent and resurrected Christ rather than on Jesus the man. Today’s text is one of those that leads to that title. It’s a simple little story, easily understood if you don’t think about it too much.
It’s not a ghost story. Jesus didn’t appear as a filmy, watery sort of apparition. He was apparently in solid form: “Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ ” It’s the standard greeting in his country at that time. “Ave Maria.” “Hail to you all!” “Benedicte!” They’re all the same, something you say when meeting with someone you know but have been away from for a while.
“After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.” Luke also has Jesus still wounded. He has not been healed of the blows he received. And yet they apparently aren’t painful. John seems to be saying that the wounds are sort of an identifying mark, so that the disciples will recognize Jesus. After all, he has just suddenly appeared with them in a locked room. But with whom could they confuse him?
We know that Mary Magdalen didn’t recognize Jesus the first time she saw him, there in the garden. It was only when he said her name that she cried out “My Teacher!”
We know that the two disciples on the way to Emmaus didn’t recognize him at any point along the road, with him expounding the scriptures. It was only when he broke the bread and started to hand it to them that they recognized him, and then he disappeared.
How does a dead man appear in a locked room? How do the disciples know it was truly Jesus? How could they not know him? John’s gospel says that Jesus came back again, just for Thomas, because Thomas was not with them when Jesus came the first time. That second time Jesus asked for a piece of fish to eat, and ate it in their presence. How -- and why -- does a dead man, a ghost, eat? This is to convince them that he is actually alive. Not dead. Not a ghost. Real and active. Breathing. He breathes on them, and said to them: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
Who can breathe? Not a dead man. Only the risen Savior, the Son of God. And that breath is the very wind that blew across the earth when “It was without form and void.” That Wind, that Breath, that Spirit gives them (and dare we say, us?) power -- power to teach, power to heal, power to literally change the world.
That’s what Pentecost is all about.
1 Ken Gire, Relentless Pursuit: God’s Love of Outsiders (Bethany House, 2012), p. 114
2 For example, Jesus quoted Psalm 22 from the cross, a cry of despair if we don’t know the entire psalm, but an affirmation of trust in God if we recite the entire passage.
This gift to the early disciples was not exactly what most people think of when we talk about speaking in tongues today, however. They were not babbling, not making nonsense sounds; they were speaking actual languages, although not languages that they had learned, familiar to Jews in the Diaspora. Proof of this is the ability of the Jews who had been dispersed but were now living in Jerusalem to understand what the disciples were saying, as his native language was being spoken in the street by these disciples. The list of countries where these Jews had lived shows that the Jewish faith had traveled to the reaches of the Roman empire, which included most of what we now call Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, even as far as India. It is this widely dispersed nation that will return to “the mountain of God” (Mount Zion) when Messiah appears, according to Isaiah 2:3.
Acts 2:1-21
The introduction to the advent of the Holy Spirit could not have been described more dramatically than the way Luke does. And yet, the pictures many of us have in our heads could not undermine the drama more. Those old Sunday school materials tend to show the disciples in prayer, and the “flames” that came to rest on their heads look like little red elf hats. Worse, the disciples look as though they’ve been struck dumb.
Exactly the opposite is true, perhaps in every respect.
The disciples may have been in prayer, but since it’s 9 o’clock in the morning, it’s more likely that they were busy cleaning up. Breakfast dishes needed to be cleaned, the floor needed to be swept, they may have been sitting around talking. The conversation possibly was around the question of whether they could go out of the house (it’s been long enough, people will not necessarily recognize them as Jesus’ followers) and go to the temple to worship.
As they are doing these ordinary, day-to-day activities, they hear a sudden roaring sound. Has a storm come up? If they were in a windowless room, the lack of moving air might not be a factor. Even as they were looking around, wondering what this sound might mean, tongues of flame rushed into the room and came to rest on the heads of each of the disciples. These “divided tongues” were not static, they were as dynamic as the flames of a fire, as the movement of the Spirit. They appeared, and a tongue came to rest on “each of them.”
This was an experience never to be forgotten! The effect of these flames was that “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.” How did they know this? “[They all] began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability” (v. 4). When they go outside, speaking in this variety of languages (tongues), they have transcended their mortal lives, their native language, and the people listening are equally as shocked. “Aren’t these all Galileans?” they ask.
How did they identify them as Galileans? If they were all speaking in different languages, their distinctive Galilean accent should not have been a factor. So how did the Jews from every-where know they were Galileans?
There were certainly a great many differences between the Galileans and the Jerusalemites. The Galilee was actually larger than Judea, stretching along the Jordan Valley and the sea. Two major trade routes passed through Galilee, one east-west and the other north-south. This made for more contact with a variety of foreigners than the people in Jerusalem. And while the educated person in Judea spoke both Aramaic and Greek, most Galileans spoke both Greek and Aramaic, with the Greek predominating.
The Galileans were more open to diversity than the Jerusalemites, less interested in the Law, certainly less interested in the laws the Pharisees so vigorously defended. They were more culturally diverse than the Jews in the south, because after Assyria swept down and conquered the Israelites the northern part of Palestine was amazingly empty for 600 years. No towns, no cities. No evidence of crops. When it was resettled, about 100 years before Jesus was born, the new people were largely Greek and other Gentiles from the east.
Why are we considering this? Because if there was any way for the Jews listening to the disciples to know they were Galilean, it was that they looked different from their southern cousins. Ken Gire, a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary says: “The term Galilean was synonymous with outsider. They were half-breeds, a mongrel collection of mixed marriages, mingled accents, skin colors, and pagan influences. Jews had a presence in the area, but they were a minority, and most were not orthodox.”1
There are always a few naysayers: “Others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’ ” That comment was a putdown as well, because longer fermentation periods (old wine) generally produce a smoother wine, while the flavor of new wine is coarser, more resembling what a person might drink just in order to get drunk. And being cheaper, it is the drink of the poor.
Peter ignores the sneering, the implications tossed at them from the crowd. He says that they are not drunk -- it’s only nine in the morning! (As though they could not possibly be drunk at that hour!)
This business of having to explain to outsiders what speaking in tongues means and accomplishes is clearly part of Paul’s concern when he says in 1 Corinthians 14:5 that “One who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues.” While speaking in tongues certainly makes a person feel rapturous, because they are partaking of the Holy Spirit and talking directly with God, it can turn off visitors because they have no idea what is being said and it doesn’t build up the people around them. Paul, having grown up in the rabbinic tradition, values logic and reason over mystical practices. This has been one of the points of tension throughout the history of humankind, even in the church today.
I remember my first experience in seminary because of this. We were introducing ourselves around the circle of students and teachers, and I do not remember exactly what I had said about my personal relationship with God, but the man sitting next to me (a fellow student) said, “Oh my gawd, you’re a mystic!” He wasn’t exactly derisive, but that tone startled me. I’d never experienced being labeled that way, and it put me on edge (of course). I replied, “Is that a problem for you?” Everyone laughed, and eventually someone said, “You’ll certainly contribute interestingly to our discussions here!” (I did too!)
Peter also knows the scriptures. But his training has not been rabbinic, it has been at the feet of Jesus, where compassion and mercy count for more than logic and intellect. Inspired by God’s Spirit, he quotes the prophet Joel. The second chapter of Joel is a prophecy of the end times: the mountains look as though an army of horses and soldiers are racing down the slopes toward the Israelites. “Before them the land looks like the Garden of Eden. Behind them, it is a wasteland, even the stubble is burnt to ash.” The army of God is on the march, terrifying to behold, and they swarm up the walls of the city and break into houses. There is no place to hide! Yet as soon as the people turn away from their sinful ways and turn back to God, God repents (turns back from the way things were going) and blesses the people and the land once more.
After all that threat, after all that destruction, after all that fear, Joel says that God declares that “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.” In the Old Testament as well as the New, prophets often began their prophesying by achieving an ecstatic state. Even King Saul, before he was king, was seen to strip off his clothes and go dancing and ululating along with a group of prophets, so that it was asked “Is Saul also among the prophets?” (1 Samuel, chapters 10 and 19). Peter has established a holy text for what the people were seeing in the preaching of the disciples.
In biblical times, men memorized whole sections of scripture. Writing was a magical sort of practice to them, and only certain people could read and write: the teachers in the temple, men who were trained as rabbis. Men who could not afford such education might, however, sit in the synagogue and listen to the scriptures being read, and work at memorizing whole chapters and even whole books. And when a man began to quote a passage, other people around him might begin to chant with him. This way, if one person might miss a word or a phrase, the others would prevent him from keeping the mistake in his mind by chanting the accepted words. Thus the scriptures were passed from generation to generation. And when a person quoted the first line of a psalm, those around him knew the whole psalm, and the sense of the whole was transmitted to those listening, even if they did not recite the whole passage.2
The disciples had just come through a time that must have seemed to them like the Day of the Lord -- a day of destruction, darkness, and fear, just as Joel said. Jesus, whom they trusted, was arrested, beaten nearly senseless, dragged half-clothed to Pilate, judged in the dark of night, forced to carry his cross outside of the city to Golgotha, where nails were driven through his ankles and wrists, and then hoisted onto a post, where anyone passing by could do what they wanted to him. That he died quickly was a blessing. But all of their hopes had been nailed to that cross as well. The words of Joel 2 must have been to them a description of what they had all just gone through.
So it is a work of faith as well as the Spirit that just 50 days later Peter could quote Joel, and point to the coming of the Holy Spirit after so much destruction. Their hope was restored. They were no longer afraid. All of those gathered in that room -- men and women alike, if Joel foresaw correctly -- were revived by the Spirit and driven out into the street, where they began to preach the Good News: Jesus is alive, proof that even though we may all be killed, we are no longer afraid. Listen! Jesus is alive, and has the power to send the Holy Spirit to comfort us... to empower us... to give us new words to speak.
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
By the time Paul was writing this letter to the church at Corinth, the concept of “spiritual gifts” had become proof for the church in general that a person had the blessing of the Holy Spirit. Tongues of fire had been confined, it appears, to that first wave of Followers of the Way (as the followers of Jesus called themselves). When Peter went to the house of the centurion Cornelius (see Acts 10), “[T]he Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God.” In other words, it was proof to the early Christians that they were to be open and welcoming to Gentiles in their fellowship.
However, this practice also served to divide the fledgling church. Those who spoke in tongues were unintelligible to others. It felt wonderful, but it seemed to those who had never had this experience that those who had were building themselves up, perhaps even at the expense of others. It may even have been that those who had this gift thought that those who didn’t weren’t relating to God properly. Or worse, that they didn’t have the second baptism, the baptism in the Spirit. It’s probable that it is this very thing that makes Paul write as he does in today’s passage.
Paul says that there are many gifts of the spirit (see 1 Corinthians 12). Most of these gifts have the effect of building up the Body of Christ, such as the ability to heal, to teach, to prophesy, or to comfort. But the gift of tongues tends to turn inwards, to focus on God alone. Unless there is someone in the room to interpret what is being said, it does nothing for the fellowship -- except perhaps to frighten a visitor who is unprepared for such things.
There is an important statement that is easily lost in this passage, but that we need to hear: “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you” (v. 18). Paul is not saying that speaking in tongues is evil, but (v. 19): “in church I would rather speak five words with my mind, in order to instruct others also.” Sadly, many people have a very negative view of speaking in tongues, so those who have had this happen to them in private hide that experience from others, and even if it happens in a church where such things are common, some may be very embarrassed by the experience.
Many years ago, I was part of a charismatic prayer group. We read the Bible, talked about our walk with God, and prayed. Some people prayed in tongues -- very softly, no jumping or dancing around. We were educated people, for the most part, and tentative in our approach to the emotional gifts.
At that same time, I woke up one morning with terrible pain in my neck. It wasn’t just a pulled muscle -- I couldn’t get relief with a hot pad or a soaking bath or exercise. I also couldn’t get out of bed without help, nor use my right arm. I wound up in traction in the hospital, broken up by hours of physical therapy, heat, massage, and muscle relaxers. My doctor proposed I go to a specialist for surgery, but I didn’t like the odds of getting well (70%) or dying on the table (under 5%). After a week of intense treatment, I was sent home with a traction rig to attach to a door. I started out with three sessions a day with a harness around my head and 50 pounds of lead pulling my head up to free the pinched nerve. After three months of decreasing the time I spent in that rig, I was at last out of pain. I was relieved. The prayer group was too; they’d been praying for me, of course.
One month later, I woke with the same pain I’d had at the first. Depression doesn’t even begin to say how I felt about that. Happily, though, the next night was the meeting time of our prayer group. One of the men, a doctor, said to me, “Sandra, you look so tired tonight. What’s up?” I told the group what I was going through. They all prayed for me, but when we got up to have a snack and return home, the doctor came over to me with another man. “Would you allow us to lay hands on you and pray in tongues over you?” I agreed; I was ready to try anything. They began to pray over me, and one of the two slipped into praying in tongues. It was the strangest vocalization I’d ever heard. Instead of flowing, it contained a hard CLICK! at intervals. It was distracting; I kept wondering what kind of language that could be.
When they were done praying, the doctor told me to give my pain to Jesus. In my mind, I looked at Jesus on the cross and silently said, “No, I will not give you any more pain. You have already suffered because of who I used to be.” And the pain stopped. I could turn my head, lift my arm. I was so shocked that all I could say was “Thank you!” over and over.
A few months later, my husband was in the living room, watching television. I was a few feet away, cleaning the kitchen. Suddenly I stopped dead. Someone on the TV was speaking that language that the doctor had been speaking over me when I was healed! I walked into the room, my eyes and ears tuned to what was happening on the screen. “What language is that man speaking?” I asked. “Don’t remember,” my husband said. Then he turned to look directly at me. “Is that what that guy in your prayer group was speaking?” All I could do was nod my head. I later found out that there are nine or ten different languages in south and east Africa that include “click consonants” as they are called. I never did find out which one it was, but it doesn’t matter. My pain was gone. Today, I do regularly exercise my neck so that the muscles can keep the badly damaged vertebrae in my neck properly aligned, but I have never again had to be hospitalized for the pain and paralysis I suffered at first... for which I thank God and the man who let God use him for my healing and my faith.
John 20:19-23
John’s gospel is often called “the mystic gospel,” because of its focus on the pre-existent and resurrected Christ rather than on Jesus the man. Today’s text is one of those that leads to that title. It’s a simple little story, easily understood if you don’t think about it too much.
It’s not a ghost story. Jesus didn’t appear as a filmy, watery sort of apparition. He was apparently in solid form: “Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ ” It’s the standard greeting in his country at that time. “Ave Maria.” “Hail to you all!” “Benedicte!” They’re all the same, something you say when meeting with someone you know but have been away from for a while.
“After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.” Luke also has Jesus still wounded. He has not been healed of the blows he received. And yet they apparently aren’t painful. John seems to be saying that the wounds are sort of an identifying mark, so that the disciples will recognize Jesus. After all, he has just suddenly appeared with them in a locked room. But with whom could they confuse him?
We know that Mary Magdalen didn’t recognize Jesus the first time she saw him, there in the garden. It was only when he said her name that she cried out “My Teacher!”
We know that the two disciples on the way to Emmaus didn’t recognize him at any point along the road, with him expounding the scriptures. It was only when he broke the bread and started to hand it to them that they recognized him, and then he disappeared.
How does a dead man appear in a locked room? How do the disciples know it was truly Jesus? How could they not know him? John’s gospel says that Jesus came back again, just for Thomas, because Thomas was not with them when Jesus came the first time. That second time Jesus asked for a piece of fish to eat, and ate it in their presence. How -- and why -- does a dead man, a ghost, eat? This is to convince them that he is actually alive. Not dead. Not a ghost. Real and active. Breathing. He breathes on them, and said to them: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
Who can breathe? Not a dead man. Only the risen Savior, the Son of God. And that breath is the very wind that blew across the earth when “It was without form and void.” That Wind, that Breath, that Spirit gives them (and dare we say, us?) power -- power to teach, power to heal, power to literally change the world.
That’s what Pentecost is all about.
1 Ken Gire, Relentless Pursuit: God’s Love of Outsiders (Bethany House, 2012), p. 114
2 For example, Jesus quoted Psalm 22 from the cross, a cry of despair if we don’t know the entire psalm, but an affirmation of trust in God if we recite the entire passage.
