Acts 2:1-13 “New Wine”
This last week, as some of you already know, I was taken down with the stomach flew that has been going around lately. In fact, my wife and daughter were also taken down by the bug. We were all sick together. Now, I mention this because one of the side effects of being sick to one’s stomach is that to recover you have to eat things like oatmeal and avoid harsh drinks such as cappuccino. I wanted to warn you this morning that this is a decaffeinated/oatmeal sermon. I may have been a little delirious when I was putting it together. Yes, this is a typical “psycho” sermon.
And, speaking of “Psycho,” do any of you remember that 1960’s Hitchcock thriller in which Norman Bates hears his dead mother speaking to him from the dilapidated mansion up on the hill? You know, I never really appreciated what Norman Bates must have been going through—now I do. On this Mothers’ Day, I will admit to all of you that my mother still speaks to me—not like Norman Bates’ mother, mind you. I am not getting messages to cause others harm. However, when something unusual happens, I picture my mother and hear her opinion just as clear as day. She died about a year ago now. She still lives in my heart, and somehow that translates into very real messages coming to me. In fact, I may hear her clearer today than when she was alive. One thing is for sure: her spirit lives on.
Something happens in retrospect when somebody you love passes away. You are much more able to voice the feelings that you had for that person than when they were still alive. Not only do I still hear my mother’s voice, but it seems to be coming out of my mouth more and more since she has passed onto the Lord.
This morning’s Scripture was about the Holy Spirit’s coming down and giving voice to about five thousand people who were gathered in Jerusalem for the Pentecost celebration. It was an incredible miracle that allowed people who could not otherwise understand each other to hear one another as if they were speaking in their native tongues.
Just imagine for one minute that I am not speaking a language that you understand up here on the chancel this morning. Imagine that I am speaking Swahili or Cambodian. However, you hear the tone of my voice. You see that I am holding up the Bible. You see, that I am looking sincerely into your eyes and am touching my heart. Then, all of the sudden you understand what I am trying to tell you—God loves you! This is the miracle! The Spirit can speak and be understood through the Spirit, by spiritual means.
Our Scripture tells us that Spirit gives utterance. This is a great miracle that the Spirit can talk through us. Now, I have a theory that comes from years of being an English teacher. When we break down the things that stop us from understanding one another, then the language flows naturally. When we break down the things that stop the Spirit from flowing between us, then the Spirit flows naturally.
If you want to learn a second language, the absolute best way to do it is to forget English first. English blocks you from accepting the other language. The best way to drop English is to get really, really tired. Let your defenses down. Have a glass of wine as Paul suggests to Timothy. Get the stomach flu and be really sick. Whatever it takes! Because when you let your defenses down, that is when you can learn new things.
How do the mother and the child communicate when the child is first born? They are just absolutely open to one another. They can see things in each other’s eyes. Their spirits meld together. Love just flows back and forth. They are emotionally just completely open. What does that look like?
The end of our scripture for this morning tells us that it looks like a bunch of people being drunk on new wine. In fact, they were drunk on the Holy Spirit. They were drunk on the love of God. They were emotionally in a very open state. They were so open to the Spirit that they could understand everybody else speaking their own languages! Amen to that!
Let me just share with you some of the things I learned while studying linguistics that makes this a true miracle. First, when I speak, for instance, when I give a sermon, the normal amount of what is called “verbal transmission interference” is around 90%. That is to say, when I am thinking of what I am communicating to you, you are only getting about 10% of what I am actually thinking. You may be hanging on the edge of your seats listening to every word, but there is no way you can actually know exactly and precisely what is going on in my head when I am saying it. That might be rather scary in fact.
Beyond losing 90% already, after two minutes it is estimated that you will not be able to recall exactly what I said anyway. So, the “verbal reception rate” may knock down what you get out of this sermon another 90%. We are already left with 10% of 10% then. The amount of retention after two days is infinitesimal. The is the actual “retention rate.” It is well below 1% of what I had actually thought about when delivering this sermon.
I want to add just one more linguistic factor into this. In order to have a 50% retention rate, the average person will have to see or hear a message some seventy times. That is why the same commercial is played on the same television program over and over again. Yes, that is intentional. Advertisers know that you will have to see their add seventy times before you will be swayed in the supermarket to even glance at their product and consider to buy it.
One more thing that plays into all of this: We need to hear seven positive statements for every negative statement we hear because we tend to hear negative things better than positive things at a seven-to-one ratio. When somebody says something negative or leaves us a negative note, then we crumple it up and throw it away. If somebody leaves us a note that is uplifting, we stick it on the refrigerator for a week or two. We actually need to do that to balance our lives! For Mother’s Day, that means that you should send seven cards instead of one! Or, if you really want to make sure that your mother knows and remembers that she is loved by you, then you should send seventy cards!
Consider what is happening at this time of the coming down of the Holy Spirit: Everyone is understanding everybody else perfectly. This idea is unfolded better still in 1 Corinthians 2:10-11, “These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God.”
For the first time, through the Spirit’s coming down, we began to search the “depths of God.” God revealed God’s self to His children in a brand new way! Like a mother looking down into the heart and soul of her child when being first held after birth, so God has poured out God’s love and spirit onto all of us.
However, I need you to consider that, like our mothers, the Spirit of God would have its own personality. The Spirit of God is not a thing. It is a person. The spirit cries for us. It weeps for us when we are hurting. It intercedes for us and lifts up our prayers to God.
I cannot help but think about all that I put my mother through. Yet, she was always there for me. Even in her ailing years and several thousand miles away, she was amazingly present. This week my daughter is in Germany, and I recall the first time I went to live there that my mother sent an airmail package to me right away. I got it about ten days after being there. Inside was a picture of herself in a frame and a note: “You forgot this.” Her picture is still up in my office. You know, she still talks to me!
In Galatians 5:22-23 we read, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” These are the highest attributes of humanity that come to us through God’s blessing of the Holy Spirit. These are strangely the attributes that our mothers seem to have left us with also!
Please consider then what I have told you today. And, you will understand why I repeat these things to you. The Spirit still speaks to us today. It breaks down our walls of separation and makes us understand one another. It gives us utterance. It speaks through us. It allows us to touch the depth of God and gives us the gifts we need to touch the depths of one another’s hearts. It is a picture of God coming to us, reminding us that God loves us and cares about us. Amen.