The Miracle of Inclusiveness (A Sermon on Act 2:1-21)

The Miracle of Inclusiveness (A Sermon on Act 2:1-21)



When we look at the history of the church there are plenty of chapters in that history that are nothing to be proud of, and when we look at the controversies surrounding the church today they do start to make Hinduism and Islam look a lot more attractive!


Why celebrate the birth of the church? It's a good question, and behind it is an even more painful question: 'Does the world really need the church?'


In as much as we love our little Christian community, we do need to recognise that the institution of the church is not viewed by most as God's greatest gift to humanity! Did the world ever really need it? After all, what was wrong with the good ol' synagogue?


It's a fair question, but if you look at the story of Acts chapter 2 that marks the birth of the church, you get the impression that the disciples of Jesus felt that there was plenty to celebrate! It's a story filled with excitement and passion and noise and carry-on and all sorts of wonderful miracles that indicate that God joined in that party too!


What went wrong? Did we forget something?


I think we did forget something. Perhaps we forgot a lot of things, and that's why it's so important that we hark back to the birthday of the church every now and then and take a good look at what we were created to be. It's all here in the Pentecost story, Indeed, I believe it's all contained in the miracles!


Miracles play a very special role in the Bible. Yes, miracles play a special role for anyone who experiences them - giving us encouragement and strength and joy - but they play a very specific role in the New Testament as 'signs' - signs of things to come. Indeed, the word normally translated as 'miracle' in the New Testament is the Greek word 'semeion', meaning 'sign'.


Miracles are signs. They point to something. They point to the identity of Jesus, the miracle worker, but more often than not they also point to the future - to what the Kingdom of God will be like when we one day reach it - a place without sickness or hunger, where 'the earth is as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea' (Isaiah 11:9). The miracles of Jesus give us a glimpse of that future, and likewise the miracle of Pentecost - the miracle that takes place at the foundation of the church. It gives us a glimpse of what the church is destined to become!


You can't work it out in reverse unfortunately. I tried! It doesn't work!


What I mean is, if you forget for the moment the story of Pentecost, and start with the church today, and then guess what miracles might have taken place that foretold what it was to become, you get very erroneous results!


Try it!


Let's assume for a moment that the story of Pentecost was lost and that all we knew of the birth of the church was that the disciples were gathered together and that God came upon them and that wonderful miracles started taking place.


My reconstruction - projecting backwards from the church today - is that the Heavens must have opened and amazing gifts of administration must have fallen upon each of the disciples!


All of a sudden, a group of hapless fishermen who barely knew which way to hold up an abacus were turned into geniuses of accountancy, meticulous minute-takers, prodigious producers of protocols - persons who now had the nous to transform their poverty-stricken band into one of the most wealthy and powerful institutions ever known to humanity!


Indeed, if you project back from the Sydney Anglican Diocese specifically, you can almost see the beards dropping from the faces of the disciples as their humble clothes are miraculously transformed into suits, after which they come out speaking in languages that were previously unknown to them, such as legalese and realpolitik.


Sorry. I am being deliberately facetious but, in truth, it is hard to work out what miracles might have inaugurated the church if you start at this end of the process and, quite frankly, it would have been equally difficult to have anticipated what miracles might have taken place had you been there just before this 'Day of Pentecost' took place.


I think if I'd been one of the disciples I would have been hoping for gifts of healing!


Lots of people have been healed in and through the church, of course, and it is appropriate, I believe, to think of the church as a place of healing. Why didn't an outpouring of miraculous healings mark the birth of the church?


Or what about a simple 'gift of love'.


"By this shall all men know that you are my disciples", said Jesus, "that you have love, one for another!" (John 13:35). In that case should not the miraculous gift that fell upon the disciples have been a great outpouring of compassion!


Perhaps St Peter could have been given the 'gift of listening' to balance out his constant chatter? Perhaps James and acim now app

- the 'sons of thunder' - could have been filled with the spirit of gentleness such that they might have become known as the 'sons of tranquility'.


None of the above happened, did it? Instead...


"When the day of Pentecost came, all of them were together in one place. Suddenly, a sound like the roaring of a mighty windstorm came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw tongues like flames of fire that separated, and one rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance." (Acts 2:1-4)


The scene that follows is quite bizarre, and it makes clear to the reader that the strange 'tongues' that the disciples are speaking in are all human languages that were previously unknown to them!

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