A certain young man visited a certain church and made it as far as the narthex, where he found an usher who shoved a worship bulletin into his hand. The young man asked, When does the good stuff happen? The usher asked what the young man meant, and the visitor replied, You know, that stuff about rushing winds, tongues of fire, and the commotion over the speaking in tongues. The usher said: “We don’t do that in this church.” The young man left disappointed and never returned.

Somehow that young man had gotten hold of a Gideon Bible and opened to the passage in Acts 2 about the Spirit descending on the church with power at Pentecost. It must have been quite a scene! And no, I guess nothing like that has happened in this church since maybe when the fire alarm went off a few years ago in the middle of my sermon. People were running down the aisles that day, to the exits instead of to the altar. Guess that doesn’t qualify. And then there was the time the chandelier started swinging. People got the Spirit that Sunday. Oh, and the time the deranged man waving a gun came up the aisle yelling at Bruce while he was preaching. I always wondered what Bruce was preaching on that day, so I would be sure to avoid it. I guess wild things do happen in worship here once in a while, but we haven’t had any high wind conditions in here lately, and no tongues of fire resting over the heads of deacons who were talking in strange languages.

That Pentecostal phenomenon from Acts 2 defies explanation in human terms. It was, in short, a God thing. And whenever and wherever a God thing happens, it’s the Holy Spirit that’s back of it. The more settled in our faith we become, though, the more closed to mystery we are. Do you remember when the world was magical to you? When things that happened in cartoons or in children’s books didn’t seem impossible to you or farfetched? When is the last time something happened that you had no explanation for except a spooky sense that God might really be up to something that has something to do with you?

Well, even if you haven’t had any odd experiences like that lately, you should never give up on having them, because in the book of Acts, we learn the good news of what God did through the Holy Spirit by performing artificial resuscitation on a room full of well-intentioned bumblers and turning them into a force that changed the history of the world. The question … is whether we still believe in a God who acts like that. [Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Gospel of the Holy Spirit” (reference unavailable).]

There’s a Pentecostal scene in the second Harry Potter book, The Chamber of Secrets. Now for all of you Muggles out there that don’t understand the premise, young Harry is a wizard in training at the Hogwarts School. But the boy is a prodigy of sorts, with powers that amaze even him. Harry finds himself in a duel with young Malfoy, a devious snob of a wizard who resents Harry and wants to show him up at every turn. Malfoy plays dirty and spits a snake out of his wand that slithers over to Harry and prepares to strike. Professor Lockhart lamely intervenes and succeeds only in redirecting the cobra toward Justin Finch-Fletchley, fangs exposed, ready to strike. Harry yells at the snake, Leave him alone! And the snake slumps docilely to the floor. Oddly, the children are all shocked and a little afraid. Harry’s friend, Ron Weasley, says to Harry later: You’re a Parselmouth. Why didn’t you tell us? Harry didn’t know what that meant, but he learned that it means someone who can talk to snakes. Harry assumed others could do it, too, but he learned it was a rare gift. And then the clincher: Ron told Harry he had spoken to the snake in Parseltongue — that is, snake language. Harry thought he was speaking English, but the snake and everyone else heard him in this strange language that he didn’t know he could speak. [J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Scholastic Press, 1998), pp. 194-96.]

This gives us a side window from which to view the Pentecost miracle of speech in Acts 2. The power of the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples. They are aware something is happening, maybe even to them, but they do not know just what, or what it means.Yet they find themselves speaking in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability, Luke says. The Spirit of God gives ability to us to speak in languages that communicate — languages maybe that we do not speak by our own ability. Even if they are not foreign words, they can be words that connect in love — heart to heart if not mouth to ear.

And we know this must have been just such a miracle, because all the remaining disciples were Galileans, and Galileans were not by reputation learned men. They were mostly fishermen, and their language was likely limited, if not salty, don’t you know?! The whole crowd gathered in Jerusalem was amazed and astonished at their speaking, though. Are not all of these who are speaking Galileans? And yet they heard in their own languages: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappodocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and Libya and Rome — Cretans and Arabs even. How can this be? What does this mean? they wondered. Some said they were drunk with new wine.

They were only drunk in the Spirit, soused by the Holy Spirit, not by distilled spirits. Rather than impairing their senses, God made them more acute. Rather then dulling their minds, God sharpened them. Rather than making their tongues thick and slow, the Spirit loosed them to speak.

In the classic movie Cool Hand Luke, Paul Newman plays a convict on a chain gang who just can’t be broken. He cleverly escapes but is eventually captured; whereupon the warden, Captain, Road Prison 36, gathers the men in the yard, points to Luke and delivers this famous movie line: What we've got here is a failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach,

Failure to communicate is a problem for us but not for God. No men, women or children are beyond God’s reach. Some of us are better at helping than others by virtue of natural gifts. Some of us, however, have a difficult time putting into words what is in our hearts. It scares us even to try, for fear of being misunderstood and making things worse. When we don’t try, though, we don’t give the Spirit a chance to help. Pentecost teaches that when you breathe in the Holy Spirit, you are meant to breathe out again. As the eloquent preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor, puts it: Under the power of the Holy Spirit, shy people have been known to step up onto platforms and say audacious things. Cautious people have become daredevils; frugal people have become philanthropists and people who used to be sour as dill pickles have become rich with friends. There is no limit to what the Holy Spirit can do. You just cannot hold your breath, that’s all. [Quoted in Pulpit Resource (Apr-Jun 2003): 48.]

We get the Spirit in order to join Christ’s mission. Part of our mission is to open our mouths and speak the good news. The young man who was disappointed in the church that didn’t have “the good stuff” going on might have found a church down the road where they try to keep that Pentecostal Spirit going. I don’t fault them for that when our churches can be so reticent to give the Spirit due credit that we quench the Spirit instead of being drenched in the Spirit. And yet we can misuse of the gift of the Spirit for our own personal experience only. There’s nothing wrong with knowing that the Spirit has come upon you, but the Holy Spirit is not your private reserve. You have the Spirit for the purpose of astonishing witness. You have a mission. The Spirit gives you power beyond yourself to speak and be heard, even when you don’t know what to say or how to say it.

Many of you tell me how much you love your church. Nice of you to tell me, but have you told anyone lately who needs a church? Anyone who needs to know the power of Christ? We did a survey recently about our preschool and children’s ministry. Nearly 90 percent said they are either pleased or very pleased with it. Yet over 90 percent said that had never led them to invite someone to their church because of it. Go figure. Sometimes it starts that simple. You might start with VBS this week.

A friend told me this week of her visit to Boise, Idaho, to see her dying grandmother. Brenda was not sure whether her grandma had ever trusted Christ. Now that death was looming, trusting him with her life and trusting him with her death had become one thing. Brenda was scared of blowing it, but she had some time alone with her grandmother, and she just took a deep breath and let the words come out. Grandma, do you know that God loves you? “Yes, darling, I think I do.” Grandma, if you have never trusted your life to Jesus and thanked him for being your Savior, would you like to do that now with me here? They prayed together and she did. Brenda asked me if I thought it took, if she said the right things, if I thought her grandmother was now a Christian. I told her that was between her grandmother and God, but that I think she had done everything God asks of us and that it sounded like, yes, her grandmother could count on seeing God now when she died. We have to trust that the Holy Spirit has done with our words what we cannot do. Only the Holy Spirit can convert someone. Brenda e-mailed a couple of days ago to tell me her grandmother had died, but she was so grateful for the time she had with her and was confident God had saved her. [Brenda is a pseudonym for my anonymous friend.]

Listen, if you wait until you have rehearsed your lines so you will have the best chance of making the salvation sale to someone, you might not be trusting the Holy Spirit, who is not in the sales business anyway. This is give-away stuff, salvation. And even if we can improve our articulation of the good news, the Holy Spirit is still the only one that makes a heart trust and a soul believe.

Peter’s sermon on Pentecost, do you think he rehearsed that one? It isn’t elegant in style. But somehow he preached with power beyond himself. He connected his experience of the Spirit with Jesus the Christ, and Jesus the Christ with the God of the prophets who had promised all of this ahead of time. He just let fly. His words hit the fan, and instead of flying everywhere, the wind of the Spirit carried them right where they needed to go, and some 3,000 were added to the church.

God saved each of them by custom-fitting the words to each individual heart. God wants to save all of us, and the Spirit is still on the job translating and transforming. But can we get a witness?