Acts
2: 1–21; Psalm 104: 25–35, 37; Romans 8: 22–27; John 15: 26-27; 16: 4b-15
This is the homily given
at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, May 20,
2018.
“WHEN THE
FIRE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT ACTS ON THE WATER OF BAPTISM”
(Homily text: Acts 2: 1-21)
Fire
and water interact with one another in specific ways.
For
example, water can be used to douse a fire. But fire can be used to heat water,
turning it into steam. Steam has the power to do enormous amounts of work. For
example, ships can be driven by the power of steam (even if the fire consists
of a nuclear reactor which supplies the heat). Railroad locomotives were
powered by it, and even today, stationary boilers are used to heat buildings.
Fire
and water are two of the oldest things known to human beings. We’ve long known
that water can put out a fire. We’ve known that fire can create steam for a
smaller portion of human history, although the historical record seems to
indicate that the ancient Greeks did some experimenting with that idea.
Let’s
take the interaction of the heat of a fire, acting on water to produce steam,
and apply it to our Christian life. It is particularly appropriate, I think, to
do this on the feast of Pentecost, for, today, we read in Acts, chapter two,
about the coming of the Holy Spirit, whose arrival was marked with something
like tongues of fire which appeared above the heads of each of the disciples
who were gathered together to celebrate that occasion.
The
Spirit’s arrival did something: It gave each one gathered that day the ability
to speak in a different foreign language. (A side note is worth mentioning
here: There are two kinds of divine
speech mentioned in the Bible: One is
the ability to speak a foreign language unknown to the speaker previously, and
the other is speech which offers praise to God, often a sort of speech which is
unknown to humankind generally, and which requires someone to interpret what is
being said.[1]
The technical term for such speech is glossolalia.
It is the first form of this gift that we are talking about when we read the
second chapter of Acts.)
As
we make our way through the Book of Acts, we read again and again that one of
the manifestations of the presence of the Holy Spirit is the gift of tongues,
or glossolalia. Luke, the author of
the Book of Acts, includes several accounts of this phenomenon in his record of
the early Church’s history.[2]
The
Spirit’s power is evident in other ways in the accounts we read in Acts. For
example, St. Peter is transformed by the indwelling of the Spirit to be an
eloquent and powerful spokesman for the Lord and for the Church. Peter’s
speeches in Acts make for enlightening reading, and they remind us that the
Spirit has the power to transform someone like Peter, who – before the Lord’s
resurrection – was a fearful bumbler who often opened his mouth to say
something before his brain was engaged to guide what he said. But with the
coming of the Spirit, Peter speaks fearlessly, even in circumstances where his
bold speech would put him in danger of meeting the same fate that the Lord did.
(See Acts 4: 1–22 for an example of Peter’s boldness.)
The
Holy Spirit’s fire energizes the water of Baptism, through which we have passed
from our former life into our new life in Christ. The Spirit’s fire gets the
molecules of our faith moving, expanding their activity and driving us to
proclaim the Good News of God in Christ to those around us. The Spirit’s
activity is the beginning point, the origin, of all that we are called to do
for God in the world. Without the Spirit’s fire, all that we do will be without
the essential energizing force that makes living the Christian life possible in
the first place.
At
this point, three comments about the relationship of the Holy Spirit’s fire and
its interaction with the water of Baptism seem appropriate:
The
first comment has to do with the way in which the two relate to one
another. In a tea kettle, it is the
bottom of the kettle that separates the water from the heat source. In a
railroad steam locomotive, it is the steel of the firebox which does the same
thing. Now, that separation does something else: It allow the heat of the fire to
heat the water, causing it to turn into steam. The metal separating the two
becomes the means of transmission of the heat from one to the other. In our
faith walk, the means of transmission of the Holy Spirit’s fire comes in the
form of hearing and reading the Bible, in the form of hearing a homily or
sermon, in the liturgy of the Church, in the mysteries of the Holy Eucharist,
and in other ways.
Now,
two notes of caution are in order:
The
first caution is the temptation to just get a little close to the Spirit: In the interaction of the Spirit with all the
baptized, it won’t do to get close enough to the Spirit’s heat to just get
thawed out a little. No, what we need to do is to allow ourselves to be fully
energized by a close and ongoing proximity to that fire. Only then will the
Spirit’s power to enliven, to enlighten and to drive us to be witnesses (along
with that first group of apostles) to the Lord’s resurrection and power over
death.
The
second caution has to do with trying to live the Christian life without the
Spirit’s power and presence: We would do
well to heed the experiences of the early Church in Corinth, who seemed to
being along their way without the guidance of the Holy Spirit. No wonder they
got into factional fighting among themselves, no wonder they misused the gift
of tongues as a way to try to prove their spiritual superiority.
The
evil one loves things like this to happen to the Church, for factionalism and
self-promotion undercut the Church’s witness that it is a community which has
been transformed from the default behaviors of unredeemed humanity into a new,
better and living way of being. All such transformations begin with the coming
and the indwelling of the Spirit.
So
we sing with Christians down through the ages
“Come, Holy Ghost, our souls
inspire,
and lighten with celestial fire.”
[1] The early Church in Corinth had problems
with the misuse of the gift of tongues. Apparently, some in Corinth were using
their ability to display this gift as a way of showing others that they were
spiritually superior to those who did not possess the gift. St. Paul deals
directly with this problem, telling the Corinthian Christians that they are not
to misuse this gift. He also puts limits on its display during worship, telling
the Corinthian Church that if someone is prompted to speak in tongues, then
there must be someone to interpret what is being said. See I Corinthians 14: 1–26. The misuse of the gift of tongues remains a problem for Christians, even
today.
[2] Luke’s focus on the presence and the working
of the Spirit has prompted some biblical scholars to apply an informal title to
the Book of Acts, calling it the “Gospel of the Holy Spirit.”
