Alone

Acts 2:1-13
1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. 5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7 Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." 12 All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" 13 But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."

In his short story A Rose for Emily, William Faulkner tells the tale of a peculiar woman in the small, southern town of Jefferson, Mississippi in the early 1900s. Emily’s life is relayed to the reader through the eyes of an anonymous citizen, and the life which that citizen shares exemplifies loneliness. Emily lived with her father in a fashionable house in the middle of town all her life. She loved her father, but anytime a suitor would call on young Emily, her father would refuse him. She grew to be a woman, a woman without any real prospects for a husband—that is until her father eventually surrendered to one young man the narrator simply refers to as Emily’s “sweetheart.” But then darkness, as it tends to do in all our lives at some point, casts its shadow on the small sliver of joy in Emily’s life—her father dies. She is so grieved that for three days after his death, she refuses to let anyone in her home to take his body away. Shortly thereafter, her sweetheart disappears, never to be seen or heard from again.
Emily withdraws from the world. She’s rarely seen outside of her house, and no one goes in except an old family servant and a tax collecting committee. Progress overtakes the town of Jefferson as gas stations and cotton gins pop up, and Emily’s once beautiful home become little more than a drab and dusty mess. Then the day finally comes—Emily dies. When some people from town come into her home they are shocked, perplexed, and perhaps disgusted to discover that the body of her onetime sweetheart had been lying in her bed all these years, a grotesque attempt to deal with the dark pains of loneliness left by a lifetime of heartache and irrelevance caused by the hardened heart of a callous father and the cruel expectations of the South during Reconstruction. Loneliness had overtaken Emily, loneliness caused by her uncaring father, a community that couldn’t seem to decide whether to loathe her or pity her, and the all too overwhelming feeling that she was in this world alone.
Even though hers is a story of fiction written by one of the great authors of the twentieth century, Emily’s story could easily be found in this morning’s newspaper. We live in the deep irony of an ever-shrinking world, where we have access to people and cultures at the push of a button or the click of a mouse. With the internet, we can connect with people across the ocean, old high school friends we would have otherwise long forgotten, find family members we didn’t even know we had, and even talk face-to-face with loved ones fighting in wars overseas. In such a world, however, suicide and depression statistics seem to always be creeping higher. People become more reclusive as they claim to be more connected. So many people live their lives day-to-day with the feeling that they are in this thing called life all by themselves.
That’s Emily’s story, but this morning we have heard a different story, a story not about loneliness or death, but one about communion and the birth of Christ’s Church. It’s a story that doesn’t take place in a quiet little country town in Mississippi, but in the swelling crowds of pilgrims in the first century city of Jerusalem. It happens during the festival of Pentecost (the Greek word for fifty), and some 120 Galilean followers of Jesus are gathered together just days after his ascension. Pentecost was one of the three pilgrimage festivals that took place in Jerusalem, and it was by far the best attended: Jerusalem would swell from a city with some 100,000 citizens to a city of over a million pilgrims during the festival. And people from all over the known world made up that crowd of pilgrims, these followers of Christ were among them.
One can imagine the emotional rollercoaster they must have endured. For years they walked, talked, ate, laughed, cried, and worked with Jesus, only to see him lynched on a cross. Then, with an unexpected joy, Jesus conquers sin and the grave and is with them again, only to tell them (as we heard in John’s gospel this morning) that he would leave them again, this time for a little longer it seemed than three days. But he didn’t leave without promising them an Advocate, a Helper, the Holy Spirit. And it is here, during the gathering at Pentecost, that the Holy Spirit explodes upon Jesus’ first disciples, and the Church is born.
It’s an amazing story, with such theologically significant detail that scholars are still debating the nature of what took place. Whatever it may have been (whether speaking in foreign languages, incoherent divine dialogue, or just new interpretations of old customs ) one thing is certain, this was the beginning of Christ’s Church; this was the beginning of a world-wide communion; this was the beginning of a faith that says to its followers that no matter how difficult things in this life may get, you are never in it alone, because now Christ has given us the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit empowers our brothers and sister to be the Church.
(I almost hesitate to say it, but) I feel as if we in the Evangelical tradition have done ourselves a great disservice over the last few generations. When I was first introduced to what it means to be a Christian, one phrase I heard often was “a personal relationship with Jesus.” Now, I don’t deny the validity of such a statement; after all, if you don’t know Jesus personally there is no real way to recognize him in the life of others or in the collected Church. But what does bother me is the extent to which we emphasize a sort of individuality when it comes to faith in Christ. Somehow it seems as if we place the individual above the entire body (or below it depending on your point of view). We preach the gospel as if its only power lies in the salvation of an individual soul and not the transformation of the entire world and human history through the Holy Spirit’s power in the Church. It is as if we are saying to those who hear us preach that the Church is little more than a building, a social club, or some sort of market where salvation is sold at an unbelievable price! When we present the gospel in such a way we are telling the dying, depressed, and lonely in this world that faith and salvation are little more than a transaction, an investment that will pay dividends when we die, but you’re still going to have to tough this world out, loneliness and all.
But that isn’t the message of Pentecost. That isn’t the message that comes with the Holy Spirit and Christ’s Church. Because here we see for the first time the ingathering of all kinds of people from all walks of life, and the Holy Spirit descends on them all. Those pilgrims who came to Jerusalem for the festival heard the Good News of Jesus Christ for the first time—in their own language—and they took it away from there with them. They started churches in Rome, Egypt, and Asia Minor; the apostle Paul would encounter some of the churches those early converts helped to start. They heard the message of a savior who would never leave them nor forsake them, and they witnessed the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that would unite them with their brothers and sisters, and they couldn’t keep it to themselves. Pentecost is not only beginning of the Church, but the beginning of the Church’s proclamation of the gospel to a lonely, dying world.
Perhaps you are a sort of pilgrim in this place on this Pentecost Sunday. Perhaps you are here this morning hoping to just escape the loneliness of everyday life for an hour or two. Maybe you’re here hoping to discover that you’re not in this thing called life by yourself, that your salvation is more than just waiting on heavenly dividends. Maybe you’re here today, as you’ve been here so many Sundays before, wearing a mask to hide the pain of feeling alone, hoping that someone, anyone, would just take the time to listen. Let me tell you that you aren’t in this by yourself; you don’t have to hide the pain any longer. You don’t have to feel alone anymore. The Holy Spirit is here, calling you to a life lived in the fullness of God in Christ Jesus. The Holy Spirit is here, not in the confines of this building, but in the hearts of those sitting around you whom the Holy Spirit has already transformed. If you are here this morning, hoping to escape this life’s loneliness, this time is for you. This time of invitation is for you and anyone who wants to call on the name of Christ, for anyone who longs to know the fullness of the family of God. So if you are here this morning, longing for that relationship with Christ and his Church, won’t you come? Let today be the last day you ever had to feel like you are in this world alone, and come to Christ. Let this be the last day you feel alone and the first day you call yourself a part of the family of God.
Let us pray…