It was April 27, 1837, when the great violinist, Niccolo Paganini made his last will and testament. He did so because he was the owner of many great violins, but there was one, the Guarneri del Gesu that was particularly valuable. Paganini loved this instrument. The last thing he wanted after his demise was for this instrument to be used or abused, so he bequeathed it to the City of Genoa with the one condition: that it be preserved and not played. In 1840, Paganini died. He had cancer of the larynx. They found not only this great Guarneri, they also found an Amati, a Stradivari, and many others, but it was the one in particular that he insisted be preserved and not played. The City of Genoa acceded to his wishes and his will. It meant of course that this great instrument would be preserved. But it was also a profoundly selfish thing, for Paganini had the use of it, he had been able to play it, it had made glorious sounds, but never again would it really appear in the same way in a public forum.
According to a report in Life Magazine in 1953, however, Paganini’s violin was taken out of its case, and it was played for five minutes. It sounded magnificent! Realizing they had to meet the needs and the requirements of the will, they put it back into its case. Rumour has it that still they take it out of the case once a year to check on it and somebody for a few minutes is able to touch and play it. But unfortunately, its sound is not heard by audiences throughout the world. It is sad! It seems to me that Paganini’s wish stands in complete contrast to everything that we read about Jesus and Pentecost. In today’s magnificent passage, we have the exact opposite to preserving and keeping and holding on to something. We have the sharing and the giving and the expansiveness of what Jesus had, for what Jesus had was the relationship with his Father.
It was the relationship that Jesus had with his Father which, as we looked at the last couple of weeks, he continued to promise to his disciples. He said: “I will not leave you as orphans”, “I will send you another comforter”, and “I will come to you in power.” Time-and-time again, Jesus told the disciples that after his death and Resurrection, he would give them or send them something or someone to empower them so that they might continue his ministry. He spoke of them having a new life, a new birth, a new world, and a new power. He talked about them having an eternal presence. He talked about them having the right words to say whenever they confronted difficulties or challenges. He talked about peace, and the peace that passes understanding dwelling among them. He talked about unity, and how what he was going to send them would unite them and give them a bond that they had never had in their lives before. He promised to give them an assurance that everything that he had promised would be fulfilled. He promised them the power of the Holy Spirit.
In this incredible passage, we have the arrival of the Holy Spirit. If Christmas is the magnificent season when we celebrate the Incarnation, when Easter is the celebration of our Redemption, it seems to me that Pentecost is the third of this great triumvirate of great occasions, because this is the expansion of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. First the birth, then the death and Resurrection, and then the power of the Spirit to continue to maintain all that he was doing. If you look at the Book of Acts, these opening passages that describe the arrival of the Holy Spirit, it is sort of like a concentric circle, moving from the middle gradually outwards, but also moving outwards and gradually moving inwards. It is an incredible image really of the power of God at work.
I want to look at that concentric circle, and to begin not in the inside of the circle, but on the outside of the circle, for what the power of the Holy Spirit is about is the universal power of God in the world. When the people gathered in Jerusalem, they gathered from all over the world. They gathered from all the countries in the known area around Israel and Palestine at the time. The fact that Luke mentions so many of them from Rome to Cyrene, from Jerusalem itself right through to Persia, there is this sense in which the whole world was in Jerusalem at the time. Remarkably, even though they had and they were people of faith, they were astounded that they were able to hear what Peter and the disciples were saying in their own language. Now, you have to go back to The Old Testament to realize the power and the significance of this, because in The Old Testament in the Book of Genesis we have the story of The Tower of Babel. This story is about the fragmentation of the world into different languages and the people building a tower. Let me read you a little bit of it and you will hear just how radically different Pentecost was from this. From Genesis, Chapter 11:
Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, ‘Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ They used brick instead of stone and tar instead of water. Then, they said, ‘Come, let us build a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens so that we make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’ But, the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The Lord said, ‘It was one people speaking the same language, they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do would be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’ So, the Lord scattered them from all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That it is why it is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the world. From there, the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole world.
In other words, The Tower of Babel was in fact a tower that was being erected by humanity to reach heaven and take over from God, and God said, “No, the nations will be scattered. There will be many nations; there will be many language.” But now, in the Pentecost moment, thousands of years later, the Holy Spirit is allowing the people with all their scattered language to hear God, to hear the One that they worship. It is a reversal of The Tower of Babel. It is the bringing back of humanity to God. It is the restoration of humanity to hear the Word of God under God’s holy and magnificent sovereignty. Now, the word that is used to describe these tongues is Xenolalia, and this is where we get the word from xeno, which is sort of “the universal” or “the different” or “the other.” Xenolalia is the language of others, and all these multiple languages of others hear God. It is not to be confused with glossolalia, which is the spiritual language which we find in the Book of Corinthians. This is people hearing in their very own tongue. It is a sign of the expansion and the growth of God, the reaching out of God into the world. It is the desire for the whole ministry of Jesus to be universal.
I find in ministry at the moment something unprecedented, and maybe it is because of technology and social media, or maybe it is just because of the way the world has become smaller, but I have realized that hardly a day goes by when I don’t read about, hear about, have correspondence from somebody or a group or an organization in another part of the world. In fact, I am staggered by this! I turn on a television program at night and I hear about the plight of Christians, the Maronites, and how they might be driven out of the Middle East. I hear about the state of the Iraqi Christians and the Syrian Christians and the Lebanese Christians and how they are trying to bear witness where they are, and are frightened for their future. Then I receive a telephone call inviting me to have a coffee and a meeting with someone who works in international justice ministries. He works with law and order groups in other parts of the world to make sure that justice is carried out. After the terrible events of the civil war in Rwanda, a group of Christians got together and believed that one of the ways that they can help save the weak and the poor and the needy is to help reverse the injustices of different countries. The person I met with had just come back from Uganda and Burundi and Rwanda, and was talking about how the courts in those countries are changing, and how there is a need for a greater sense of justice, particularly for the poor, people who are being moved out of their houses, and those who are being persecuted because of their faith. But they are not alone, I get these daily! It seems to me that the world Christian community is right on our doorstep, right at our fingertips, right on our screens. It walks in through our doors, it comes into our churches. Refugees come here and ask for help. People who need food come to the food bank. Many of them have fled from other countries. It is continuous!
If I have a great passion in my heart, if you were to say “What really deep down in your soul matters most?” it is that we develop the bond of the unity of the Holy Spirit with those who share our common conviction in Jesus Christ. It is desperately needed! Pentecost is a reminder that it is not us in our pews alone; it is in fact the power and the work of the Spirit throughout the world. It is not that the faith is declining; it is shifting. It is finding itself in new places, in new expressions, and in new cultures and new ideas. Even talking to people within The Canadian Bible Society you hear about the translations that they are doing for aboriginal groups in New Brunswick, who have a very unique language, in order that they can live a Christian life and share it with their children in their own native tongue. This is the power and the work of the Holy Spirit. It really is! People are hearing the Word of God in their own tongue. It is a brilliant thing! It is amazing when it happens, and it is amazing when I find myself worshipping with people of faith who are worshiping in another language. I have discovered something over the years. At no point when I am worshipping with people who are using other languages do I feel that I am a foreigner or do I feel that I am not fully present. It is the power of the Spirit that unites us. It doesn’t matter if it is in Ukrainian, Aramaic, Zulu: The power of the Spirit is what unites believers. It always has done, and it always will do, and to God be the glory!
Then there is a middle part to this concentric circle and that is the Church. The universal power of God is often overwhelming, and for those who belong to a community of faith it might almost seem surreal and beyond our own boundaries. But in one place, gathered in one room, the power of the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples. In one city a congregation was formed. Such is the power of the Holy Spirit to bring people together to worship. If you look at the language used to describe the power of the Holy Spirit in Acts, Chapter Two, you find that it starts out with a great tongue of fire, but then that fire reaches out and touches individuals. It is almost as if the enormity of the power of God is disseminated amongst the believers who are gathered in one place, that the sheer awesomeness and power of God is too much for us to bear, and that is why Moses had to look through a burning bush.
When God’s Spirit is diffused and spread amongst a community of believers, that community experiences the power of the Spirit. I was thinking about my childhood in Bermuda – there are some Bermudians here this morning who will identify with this. There is a very famous day that is known as Kite Day. It is almost a national holiday in Bermuda. You go out and launch kites. There are all sorts, and they are beautiful. They sky is full of them! There is one park that we used to go to in Devonshire, and I had a really, really big kite: It was fantastic. I saw in the distance a sign from the Bermuda Electricity Board, Bermuda Light and Power, warning about an extremely high voltage wire. But when you went into an adjacent field, a rugby field, there were still wires overhead, but no warning. Someone described this to me as the following: “In the first set of wires, they are pure transmission wires, but in the second, they have gone through a transformer and are not as dangerous.
In other words, it is not just the transmission of the power; it is the transforming of the power that actually makes it safe. I liken that to the Spirit of God working in congregations and people. It is as if there is this enormous power at our disposal: The power of God! But the power of God is given to us in such a way that we can handle it. It is given to us and it transforms us in the process. It seems to me that the real power of the Church is in congregations that have been renewed by the power of that Holy Spirit. It is that power of the Holy Spirit working within the congregation and working within a group of people that actually transforms the world. So often we think that the transformation of a people or a place is down to some kind of marketing scheme or new structure or order, or maybe a new curriculum, or a different type of music, prayer, liturgy or preacher, but it is not. It never was. It never will be. It is the transforming power of the Holy Spirit alone that turns a people into a church.
It is the transforming power of the Holy Spirit that changes a congregation into a place of renewal, and it is the power of the Holy Spirit that turns a church into a transformer of peoples’ lives. That is why I so believe not only in the universal church and all its needs, but in the local church and all its challenges, for in fact it is the local church that bears witness within communities. It is the local church that becomes the locus of the study of the Word of God. It is the local church that reaches out its hand to the people in the community in need. It is very interesting that even one of our city councillors, who is not a Christian, has observed that when churches in communities are closed, so many of the social outreach ministries that were taken for granted disappear, and other agencies have to pick up the slack. All because quietly, serenely, sometimes too quietly and serenely, these ministries have provided caring and support. It is still the local ministry where the power of the Holy Spirit hits the street.
In the middle of the circle is always going to be the powerful, loving presence of Christ’s Spirit in the life of the believer. It is to each in their own language that the power of God was given. It was in the language they would understand. It didn’t matter where they came from, they heard the Word of God as if God was speaking to them. It seems to me that it is that source of power in our lives that is what we need to dwell on this Pentecost Sunday, and before whom we really should bow and pay homage.
Many, many years ago, maybe centuries ago, there was a test done for people who were mentally challenged. The big question was if the people who were mentally challenged should stay within an institution, maybe a monastery or wherever it was, or if they could live on their own and find their way in the world. It was a very compassionate thing, because as we know, people who have mental challenges have not always universally been treated with respect. In the test, they would place the subjects in a room with a running tap. The tap would run into a bowl, and the bowl would overflow. They would ask the individual to go mop up the water. They were given a mop and would do one of two things: either they would mop the water up or they would shut off the tap. If they shut off the tap, it was deemed that they had sufficient cognitive power to be able to live on their own. It sounds rough, but there was a principle behind it. It is the very same principle behind the power of Pentecost. It is not that we turn off the tap of the power; it is rather that we recognize the source, and the power itself. That is exactly what, as Christians, we need to do.
If all the promises of Jesus are to be fulfilled, if all the promises of Jesus are true, if the ministry of Jesus means anything, it must result in the power of his Spirit touching the lives of believers and changing them. It is never, ever going to be by fiat or by dictates of churches or by policies or by power in earthly sects, that people’s lives are changed; it is by God. It is by the power of the Holy Spirit and over the years, I have witnessed, as a pastor, more transformed lives by the power of the Holy Spirit than anything that I or anyone else has ever done. It is often mysterious. It is often beyond our comprehension. It is beyond our knowing, but it is real.
This Pentecost, I encourage you to take a moment, regardless of all the changes in the world, all the needs of the universal church, and irrespective of the challenges and needs of our congregation and the challenges in our society, and bow your head and say as Christians have done for two thousand years, veni creator spiritus – come Holy Spirit into my life. If you do that, then you will be at one with those in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. Come Holy Spirit, Come! Amen.