Reading: Acts 2
Speaker: Tommy Pratt
This Week’s Thoughts
It is with great solemnity that I must deliver this news. If you haven’t yet heard it, I recommend that you find a chair and steel yourself before going further. Perhaps pop the kettle on too.
God is not an Englishman.
It’s true, I’m afraid. As much as I am hoping that there will be cream teas, steam trains, and Exmoor-like rolling hills in Heaven, the King of Heaven does not hail from Ol’ Blighty. And Pentecost, as I see it, is about as clear enough evidence as you can get.
Humour me for a moment, and try to imagine an English Pentecost.
The Holy Spirit coming up to the door to tap on it gently, and perhaps make a polite cough or two until the apostles notice He is there. The crowd, upon hearing words in all of their native languages, thinking little more than, ‘How odd and peculiar,’ with a shrug. Peter, standing up sheepishly to say, ‘Excuse me, sorry to cause a fuss, but if you wouldn’t mind too much, I really think you ought to hear a bit about this Jesus fellow.’ Then, finally, the crowds responding with a collective, ‘Well, thank you very much. You’ve given us a lot of food for thought. But we really ought to be on our way. Why don’t we come back at the same time next week?’
It doesn’t really have the same gusto behind it, does it?
The birth of the church in reality was anything but reserved, and Luke makes sure we know it.
The gathered apostles, their hearts and minds perhaps still reeling from the roller-coaster of emotions that was witnessing Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension, ‘[s]uddenly [hear] a sound like the blowing of a violent wind’ and see ‘tongues of fire’ (Acts 2:2-3). The crowd outside is in ‘bewilderment’, ‘[u]tterly amazed’ and ‘perplexed’ (Acts 2:6, 7, 12). Peter and the eleven, who had not so long ago been hiding in fear of Jews, now stand to deliver the gospel to them. And those who hear it do not merely take on board the news, but are ‘cut to the heart’ and baptised, and ‘[e]veryone was filled with awe’ (Acts 2:37, 43).
When the Holy Spirit moves, the scene is raw and powerful and unapologetically so. Very un-English indeed.
However, though God is not an Englishman, He is most certainly for the English, to which Pentecost again is about as clear enough evidence as you can get.
Though the crowd was made up of members of ‘every nation under heaven’ (Acts 2:5), each one heard their own language being spoken. In quoting Joel, Peter says: ‘Your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit’ (Acts 2:17-18). In other words: ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved’ (Acts 2:21).
Everyone.
If modern English existed in the first century, and a speaker of it somehow stumbled their way into Jerusalem on that day, I have little doubt they would have heard it from the apostles’ mouths as well. And just to make things absolutely crystal, Peter finishes with this: ‘The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.’ (Acts 2:39)
Kettle boiled yet?