Tongues of Fire: A Pentecost Sermon
Anthony G. Cirilla
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Thy Sight, O Lord my Strength and my Redeemer. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Today, I want to ask you to join me in a somewhat fanciful act of imagination. Imagine if, when you spoke, you breathed fire. While this might sound sort of fun, it would also be somewhat dangerous. Conversation would be a lot harder. You’d have to be more careful talking to your pets or when someone you’re talking to had just used hair spray. Breathing fire might seem like a nice power to have when someone makes you angry, but it might also lead to some hasty decisions. Imagine if the fire you breathed had different effects, depending on your attitude. Imagine if when you were angry with someone, your tongues of fire would burn, and when you were happy, your tongues of fire would spread light. When you wanted to help someone, your fire would warm them, and when you wanted to hurt them, you could turn their surroundings to ash. You would quickly learn that this power of breathing fire would have to be kept under strict control. You’d want to learn how to manage the fire that you breathed, so that no one would get hurt.
Listen to what the Apostle James wrote in 3:5-6 of his Epistle: “Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.” The fact is, we do breathe fire. We don’t get a choice about whether we breathe fire, because every word we speak, like fire, spreads. And the words we don’t speak, don’t spread. So the question we have to ask about our words is, what is the fuel that feeds our tongues of fire? Is the fuel a worldly and unbiblical way of thinking? Then our words will spread a fire of worldly and unbiblical way of thinking. Is our fuel a focus on what we want, on our dissatisfactions and frustrations? Then we will spread a fire of selfish dissatisfaction and frustration. Where our heart is, there our tongues will be also, and that will spread. Perhaps we don’t exactly have bad motivations, but how much of the fuel in our tank is the Gospel? If we don’t feed our hearts with the fuel of the good news, then our fire grows cold, and by not talking about Jesus and what he did for us, we spread the flame of indifference that makes others think we just don’t care about him that much. I must confess I am guilty of that. A quote falsely attributed to St Francis is that we should spread the Gospel always and only when necessary, use words. But that is not a biblical or Christian idea. We see here in the reading for Pentecost that God cared so much about speech that through the holy Spirit he worked an incredible miracle – he made fire appear on their heads and they could speak languages they had never known. Luke reports in Acts, “And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” Miraculously, they could share the Gospel in languages they had never studied, maybe in some cases languages they had not even heard.
Beyond its miraculous nature, Pentecost is a special day for two reasons. First, it is the first appearance of the Holy Spirit to the general body of Christ, and related to that, this moment is often regarded as the official institution of the church. This is important because it seals the revelation of the third person of the Trinity as closely related to the work of Christians in sharing the faith. Quoting Joel in the first Pentecost Sunday sermon, St. Peter explains later in Acts 2:16-17: “But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh.” Now, on this day, it is finally made clear what had been prophesied then in Joel about the new revelation about God’s nature. God the Father is clearly known in the Old Testament and God the Son in the Gospels – God the Holy Spirit is now made manifest to His People. Though one God, the three persons of the Trinity all speak with their own voices. God the Father spoke love to his son. God the Son spoke the means of salvation to his Bride. Now, here the Holy Spirit speaks not to but through the bride of Christ. Understand, the Holy Spirit is, as a Person of God, the same God who made the Universe. He is the same God who made the fires of the sun and the molten magma in the core of the earth and the fires that burn away the underbrush in the forests. As Hebrews 12:29 says, “our God is a consuming fire.” This fiery Third Person of the Triune God is the person to whom you and I, as Christians, have access. Are you afraid to share the Gospel? The sun is not afraid to shine its light from the sky. The lava is not afraid to burst forth from the earth in display of its power. The fires are not afraid to burn away the underbrush. The tongues of fire which moved the Christians to preach at Pentecost could not be tamed any more than those natural forces. They had to speak. They were so filled by the Holy Spirit that they couldn’t contain it. Today, you know, we have a lot of resources for learning languages they didn’t have then – there was no Rosetta Stone. But often we don’t need to speak another language. Often the fear we face is not the language barrier of a different ethnicity, but the language barrier of a different worldview, or a different political perspective, or just a different attitude about life. But if the Holy Spirit could make it possible for people to speak languages they never learned, surely he can teach our tongues to loosen and speak in English the words of the Gospel we already know. If we aren’t doing that, the simple fact is, we need to be. We are often concerned with missions and spreading the Gospel to other countries, but this nation’s commitment to Christianity is weak. Notice how the proper preface on page 78 connects Pentecost to the Great Commission: “giving them boldness with fervent zeal constantly to preach the Gospel unto all nations.” That includes this nation of America. It’s significant that our observation of Pentecost coincides with Memorial Day. Our wall of veterans, and those who laid down their lives for their fellow countrymen, did not enlist because of a particular political party’s war policies, but because they understood that it takes force to defend our Constitution. We should never take for granted the rights of freedom of speech that we have to assemble, to worship freely, to share the Gospel, that even if our views are not met with a friendly response, we do have a country where we are able to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, while many Christians in other nations live in fear of real persecution for doing so. One such Christian is on our prayer list right now. We were commanded by Christ Himself to share the Gospel, whose shed blood alone saved us from our sins, and by obeying His Great Commission we also honor those who were willing to serve to protect our right to do so, those who shed or risked shedding their blood to ensure a defense against those who might desire to take that right away. The power of Pentecost, of the Holy Spirit’s tongues of evangelistic fire, is the bridge between the first and second greatest commandments, between love of God and love of neighbor. Pentecost bridges the significance of Easter for all Christians who belong the Kingdom of God throughout the whole family of nations and the significance of tomorrow’s Memorial Day for us as American citizens in particular. For the sake of our earthly patriotism and the health of our nation, we seek first the Kingdom of God, whereby our fellow countrymen can be “brought out of darkness and error into the clear light and true knowledge” of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.So if we are facing a situation where we are afraid to speak Gospel truth, the mistake we are making is we are trying to make our own fuel for the tongues of fire. Maybe we are relying on being smart enough, on being able to out argue that family member who always seems to know more than we do and is hostile to the faith. Maybe we are relying on wanting the other person to like us so we don’t say anything about the truth and Christ that would make that person uncomfortable. But maybe what makes that person uncomfortable is what they need to hear. Maybe we don’t share the Gospel because the fact is we just aren’t that interested in doing it because it’s less convenient than other things we might do. If any of those things are true, if we are reluctant to spread the flames of the Gospel, then we are using the wrong fuel for the tongues of fire.
St. Peter’s quotation shows that Joel directly connects the ability to share the Gospel to being filled with the Holy Spirit. He says in 18 “And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy,” and then in 21 “And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. When it comes to sharing Jesus, the key here is not to rely on our own gifts, such as our intelligence, though surely we should seek to understand Christian truth as best we can. Or rely on our loving personalities, though of course we should be loving. Not even charitable works are enough to replace this duty to speak. We need to rely on the Holy Spirit, and ask him to put such a burning desire to share the Gospel that we won’t be able to keep our mouths shut. Think about the appearance of the believers on that first Whitsunday: “And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.” Even if they didn’t say anything, people passing by and seeing this just couldn’t help but see something remarkable was going on for those people. It certainly got attention. Does our faith manifest in our lives in a way that would make people notice? Of course we shouldn’t be annoying or rude in how we share the Gospel, and maybe we can’t expect to see actual fire dancing over our heads, but if we don’t act enthusiastic about our faith, how will people ever know it’s something they might want? Using guilt or other forms of manipulation won’t work – we need to light up when we talk about Jesus, about God, about the Church, about worship! We need the Holy Spirit to stoke the fires of our hearts so that when we speak about the Gospel, the consuming fire of desire for God will spread from us to others around us. I don’t think God’s plan for church is that we just shuffle in here, have a nice worship service and eat cookies, though all of that is good and important. I believe that every church, including St Joseph, can be ground zero for the outbreak of a spiritual wildfire, that our zeal for reverent worship and persistent prayer and Gospel truth and the power of the Lord’s Supper can become contagious and other people will look at what the Holy Spirit is doing here and say, Wow, this place is special! The history of St Joseph is the history of just that: from the founding rector’s living room, to renting space in the Old Stone Presbyterian Church, to having our own building, the ministry at St. Joseph has grown by the power of the Holy Spirit.Fire can do three positive things: it can burn up filth, it can spread warmth, and it can spread light. If we want to dwell in the same power of the Spirit we see at Pentecost, the first thing we need to be committed to doing is letting the Holy Spirit burn to ash the effects of sin by means of the repentance Christ made possible by his work on the cross. The more we fight the dark fire of sin with the spiritual fire of repentance, the lighter we will be on our feet, the more eager we will be to share the good news. I don’t mean to say we won’t struggle with sin, but if that struggle is one undertaken with the Holy Spirit, we will be strengthened for kingdom work. And second, fire can spread warmth. We see that here at St Joseph – there is love here. You feel it. We’ve all felt that special love. That isn’t just a sentimental feeling. I believe that is a real connection we have to each other, the fire of the Holy Spirit warming our hearts into a living part of the Body of Christ, a connection to Pentecost we receive through the sacramental rite of Confirmation. And third, just as physical fire spreads light, spiritual fire spreads enlightenment. As Jesus Christ said in the Gospel lesson today, “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” To worship God in spirit, we have to worship him in truth. We need to be curious about the Gospel, about the truth God’s word contains. The Holy Spirit can enliven our desire to draw closer to God by exercising our minds in his word. And the more clearly we see and understand, the more prepared we will be to spread the light for others and help them to do the same. The Church of Pentecost doesn’t look like a complacent church. The Christians on that day didn’t see worship as a nice way to spend a Sunday and then go on their business. They were being prepared to light a fire that would set the world on fire with love for Christ, and it did! And it still is! Two thousand years later the work of Christian tongues of flame still burn, because as surely as God made light on the first day of creation, the Holy Spirit made believers in Christ light up with the truth and the love and the passion for their Savior that began the very Church that Christians in all branches of Christ’s church are a part of now.So we have a question. Will we spread the message that what happened on Pentecost wasn’t all that special by not sharing the Gospel when we have a chance? Will we fuel the fires of our tongue with indifference to the gift of the Church which the Holy Spirit gave us? If that’s the fire we choose, that is the fire we’ll spread. On the other hand, if we want to taste the same power that those first century Christians felt that day, then we can ask the Holy Spirit to ignite a flame for ministry that burns in our hearts so warmly and so brightly we won’t be able to hide it. Christ told us to, by the power of the Holy Spirit, “not let our heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid.” If we are afraid, or shy, or nervous, or reluctant to speak, he can give us tongues of fire that can make us brave, steadfast, confident, and eager to let the world know that we love the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and it is from love of neighbor that we want to share Jesus with them. And the weeds of our indifference and our fear and our hopelessness will burn up in the testimony of the passion and the love and the hope of Christ our Lord, which will burn brightly for our country and for the whole world to see, for our God is a consuming fire, and we are and pray to be set ablaze to shine out as His lights to this world. Amen.