Just a bunch of drunks

Some folks thought the disciples were drunk.

It is so very striking that the disciples were thought to be drunk on Pentecost.  Striking because drunkenness most always leads to destruction. 

Drinking too much alcohol usually leads to destructive behavior.  Drunkenness destroys relationships.  Years of drunkenness frays nerves and destroys the liver.

When folks drink to cope with loss and hard times, hope begins to decay and their chances of climbing out of the hole they’ve landed in grow slim.

            Drinking too much is destructive.

            When someone says, “Boy, he’s drunk!” or “wow, she seems drunk!” they never mean it as a compliment, and they usually mean something destructive is happening and thus the person engaged in the disruptive behavior be may well be drunk.

            And you’re wondering, what is he talking about?  Did we wander into an AA meeting?

No, it’s Pentecost and I am wondering why some in the crowd thought the disciples were drunk. 

It doesn’t make any sense.

            Let’s look at the story. 

On Pentecost God disrupted everything with a sound like the rush of a violent wind.  The place where the disciples gathered whirled with sound like a hurricane of wind and fire; flames hovered over their heads and the disciples were filled by God with the presence of God- the Holy Spirit, and the sound of the commotion drew a crowd, everyone anywhere close came running to see what was happening, and when they arrived in the midst of the disciples what they heard blew their minds and staggered them with astonishment, the sound in the place was a wild chorus of languages, and it wasn’t nonsense talk or gobble dee goop, as the children say, each person in the crowd heard the disciples speaking in his own native tongue – (not the disciples native language but that of the individual strangers in the crowd.)

            And they weren’t just making small talk or talking about the wild weather - the disciples were talking about God in a multitude of languages, so that everyone in the room no matter where they were from, no matter whether from Egypt, Libya, Pamphylia, Mesopotamia, or Cappadocia, each had access by the power of language to the powerful stories of God.

As the story goes – all were amazed and perplexed.  Some were curious and asked honestly, “what can this mean?”

But many were dismissive saying, “ah these men are just drunk.”

            And isn’t it striking that they would think that the disciples were drunk?  Drunkenness after all is destructive behavior, and what was destructive about what they were doing? 

What is destructive about speaking different languages?  We just did it here.  A piece of our Acts passage for this morning was read in languages different from our native English. 

Was there anything destructive about that? 

Why did the crowd suppose the disciples were drunk? 

            Maybe what God did with and through the disciples on Pentecost was destructive….

We usually think of Pentecost as a birthday for the church, a day when we celebrate unity and cohesion – everybody understood - but maybe it’s time to view Pentecost as a day of great destruction, perhaps great drunken destruction. 

Can we look at it like this: On Pentecost, God went on a holy rampage destroying one of the walls that divided the people in the crowd.  He tore down the language barrier.  By the power of the Holy Spirit, God destroyed the language barrier that kept certain people from hearing the Gospel.

            Now one didn’t have to understand Hebrew or Aramaic to hear the disciples preach and teach about Jesus.  Like a drunk kicking a door down, God wrecked that dividing wall.

A brief aside --Whenever I hear political folks talk about how they think everyone in our country should learn English, I always think about Pentecost.  Everybody speaking one vanilla language is not the Pentecost plan. 

Pentecost is a day of destruction.  On Pentecost God took a wrecking ball to the wall that kept the insiders divided from the outsiders.  On Pentecost God smothered the world with the gift of his presence in the Holy Spirit.

You may have heard the Holy Spirit called the comforter, but I think we should call the Holy Spirit the un-comforter or the disrupter, because the Holy Spirit is a destructive wind.

The Holy Spirit leads us into dangerous unsteady places like service, sacrifice, and love of enemy.  The Holy Spirit causes soup kitchens to spring up in perfectly, comfortable, previously well kept parish halls.  The Holy Spirit causes homeless initiatives to begin to creep into perfectly pleasant communities that don’t need that sort of trouble.  The Holy Spirit leads law abiding citizens to the jail to visit prisoners, and respectable professionals to witness for peace on the courthouse steps.  The Holy Spirit wrecks and tears away at the great American myth that I can, will, and must do it all on my own, I can pull myself up, I can comfort myself, I don’t need a counselor, comforter or a friend, I can do it alone.

            When I say those things, the Holy Spirit hovers around whispering, “go ahead and try but without me you are a wandering self-   following fool.”

            See, the Holy Spirit sets fire to my favorite idols independence and individualism, and calls us to community, boundary crossing, and multilingualism.

            So, yes, Pentecost is a day of wonderful destruction.  Pentecost is a day on which we are called to stop leading ourselves through life and instead, pray for the windy guidance of God’s Spirit.

            Great, so where is the Holy Spirit?  When someone asks us where is the Holy Spirit, how do we answer?

            I have placed a single balloon in the choir loft as a symbol of how I reckon most of us would answer. 

When someone says, “Where is the Holy Spirit?“

We answer, “Um, I think he’s somewhere at church.  But you know they had a cleanup day there a couple of years ago.  Let’s see, I don’t think anyone threw the Holy Spirit out, did they?  No, I think they put the spirit in the back of the church behind the organ.  I think the choir is taking a break for summer, so I think they had room in the choir loft.”

Do we forget that the Holy Spirit is hovering around this place?  Do we forget or neglect to call on the Holy Spirit to guide our lives?

            Is the Holy Spirit for us a church symbol hovering around the back of our faith lives?

            The reality of the presence of the Spirit is more like this…. bring out a bunch of red balloons

The Holy Spirit is everywhere, available in every moment, this is the solemn promise of God, we are not alone, we are not orphans, we are surrounded by the love of God in the hovering presence of the Holy Spirit.

            Now, a warning - if we really give ourselves over to the Holy Spirit and truly become a Spirit led people, we will probably start tearing down dividing walls ourselves, disrupting comfortable norms and crossing cultural boundary lines, and folks will talk about us, they will call us names, they will say that we’re acting foolishly- like a bunch of drunks.

            Let ’em talk.  While they talk we will pray - Come Holy Spirit destroy our self-reliant walled off ways, give us more to drink that we might grow foolishly drunk on the love that you share as Trinity, Father, Son and ever-present, destructive Holy Spirit.

Amen.