Rethink Future
“Rethink Future” Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:24-34, 35b; Romans 8:22-27; John 15:26-16:15
“And when the Spirit comes,” Jesus told his disciples at the Last Supper, “the Spirit will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.”
If you’re here in the Mount Vernon area this morning, I’m sure you can hear the cicadas up in the trees right now – they’re getting louder and louder every day right now. The Psalmist today might say that the cicadas are joining in all creation’s song of praise to God. And perhaps they are.
However, from what I’ve read about the cicadas, it seems that the sound doesn’t come from all of them but just the males. And they are singing their own praises in hopes of impressing a mate. So maybe cicadas aren’t as different from humans as we thought. Humans also have a way of singing our own praises trying to impress others – and sometimes trying to convince them, or perhaps convince ourselves, that we’re just praising God.
When Jesus tells his disciples at the Last Supper, “when the Spirit comes, the Spirit will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment” – Jesus is preparing his disciples for the change that his death and, more importantly, his resurrection will make on them and their world.
On one level this is simple – the people who crucified Jesus, the religious leaders like the high priest and the Sanhedrin, the civil leaders like the Roman governor Pontius Pilate and his soldiers who carried out the torture and execution – these people thought that they were righteous, that they were doing God’s work, that they were carrying out divine judgment on Jesus. On Jesus who dared to disrespect their power, who stir up the lower classes, the blind and the lame, the imprisoned and the hungry, the lepers and the outcasts and the foreigners, with dangerous thoughts that they, too, might be beloved children of a God who plays no favorites and whose power is manifest in weakness. Jesus hung out with sinners, the authorities are in the place of God, and their judgment on him was righteous. And by raising Jesus from the dead God says all of that thinking is just plain wrong.
But it’s more than just what happened two thousand years ago. We still think – maybe especially religious people still think – that judgment is the work of the Accuser. Judgment is what the Accuser says: you’re not good enough, you haven’t done enough, you do everything wrong. It’s interesting that the Hebrew word for “accuser” is “Satan.” In the Bible the Satan is the Accuser – perhaps you remember the beginning of the book of Job, where God is in heaven and says “That Job is really a good and righteous man,” and the Satan – the Accuser – comes to God and says, That Job is not as holy and pure as you think he is. The voice of accusation – the voice of judgment that you’re no good and not worthy – that’s not God talking; that’s the devil.
But the Holy Spirit, according to Jesus, is not an accuser but an Advocate. Not a prosecutor but a defender. The judgment that comes from God is defense and protection, not accusation or condemnation. “For God so loved the world that the only Son was sent into the world, not to condemn the world but to save it.” Condemning the world is the Satan’s job, saving the world is God’s job.
Yet when we feel the Accuser – when we are troubled by the suggestion that we aren’t enough, that we don’t have enough, that we don’t do enough, that we aren’t good enough – our instinctive response is to defend ourselves. To become a human cicada – No, I’m good! Look at me, look at the good things I’ve done, look at how good my intentions were, be impressed with me in this brief time that I have to sing my own praises! And maybe we even buy our own story, for a while. But that’s not what makes the Accuser go away.
One way to look at the life and ministry of Jesus is to see what a human life looks like when it is lived with complete trust in God, with complete trust in the Advocate who will defend us from the Accuser and win a victory over the Accuser. And so Jesus can make the kingdom of God present and alive – in healings and exorcisms and feedings and calming storms and in forgiving and inspiring. But Jesus meets resistance from those who don’t live with trust in God and who are trying to fight off the Accuser with human cicada songs.
At the Last Supper Jesus tells his disciples: Soon you will see who is right. The Spirit will show you that the way of the world is wrong and that my way is right. And when you try to live in my way, like me you will come up against resistance. Don’t worry, trust the Spirit, and you will do the same things that I do.
We read today in Acts what happened on the Jewish festival called Pentecost, 50 days after Passover, 50 days after the death and resurrection of Jesus. The first time the disciples of Jesus went out in public living in the Spirit of Easter.
One thing that they do is they start to speak – but they’re not human cicadas, they’re not speaking of their own virtue or wisdom or insight. They are, Acts tells us, “speaking about God’s deeds of power.” Speaking of righteousness as something God has done, not something that they have achieved. Speaking about God’s judgment on the world to lift up and save when humans walking in the way of the Accuser have killed and destroyed.
And people from all over the world, who were present in Jerusalem for the festival, all these people hear about God’s deeds of power in their own languages. People did not have to learn the disciples’ language, they didn’t have to leave behind their own cultures and identities and their own selves to figure out, second hand, what the disciples of Jesus were talking about. Because God spoke their language. And this happens throughout the book of Acts and indeed throughout the centuries to our own times: we keep getting pushed into recognizing, often despite ourselves, that God is already working and speaking in the lives of people who are very different from us. And that we get to participate in what God is doing, if only we can get out of the way. This is what life in the Spirit of Jesus looks like: trusting that God can do more than we ever imagined possible.
The disciples begin in the Spirit to do what Jesus did: to make the kingdom of God alive and visible. And immediately they provoke opposition. Immediately the voice of the Accuser speaks: These people are drunk. These people are spouting drunken nonsense. Pay no attention.
And notice what Peter does: Peter acknowledges the accusation. His comeback is a classic: These people aren’t drunk. It’s only 9:00 in the morning. (Maybe Peter didn’t know any alcoholics.) But then he gives an interpretation of what is happening, looking to the Scriptures. Remember, Peter says, the prophet Joel – who said that the day would come when the Spirit would be loose in the whole world, when everyone could have the Spirit and be moved to praise God and live with confidence and trust in God. Everyone, from the greatest to the least. Old and young, slave and free, men and women. And on that day, terrifying as it might be to some, on that day everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. This is what the Scriptures say will happen when people are freed to live in the Spirit of God.
You say this is the spirits of fermentation talking – but I say this is the Holy Spirit. And I say this, Peter goes on in the part of the text that we didn’t read today, because I can testify that Jesus is risen. And that even you who put Jesus to death, even you who are sinners, even you who hear the voice of the Accuser in the back of your head – even you can be forgiven if only you’ll trust, if you’ll let the Advocate teach you and stand up to the Accuser for you. If you’ll only trust the Advocate to help you overcome resistance and build up your spiritual muscles to push back on the resistance and grow in the life of the Spirit.
Pentecost is sometimes called the “birthday of the Church” because this is what living as a Christian has been like ever since. Easter teaches us that the way of the world is wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment, that the Advocate is calling us to live with trust. That when we do this – yes, we will get resistance. People might dismiss us as drunks or worse. But we will also see people hearing good news, in their own languages and their own concrete lives, learning that they matter, that they belong, that they are safe, that they can be forgiven, that the Spirit of God is for them too. This is how we know that we are living Pentecost.