A Sermon preached at Tonyfelin Baptist Church, Caerphilly, Pentecost 2024

I remember when I was a small child going with my parents to some special service. I don’t remember which church it was or who the preacher was, and I was too young to understand much of it, especially the sermon. But the one thing I still remember is the preacher's text. He kept repeating it from time to time in the sermon. It was “This is that”. I remember that even as a small child I was thinking, “What a daft text to take!”

When I was a bit older, I realised it was from the story of Pentecost in Acts 2: "But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel”. I also came to realise that choosing those three words for a text was not a silly gimmick at all. The words are actually very significant and central to the nature of our Christian faith. Peter was explaining to the people the meaning of this strange event that was happening – the excitement, the speaking in tongues, the joyful praise of God. He was reminding them of the words in their Scriptures and inviting them to recognise how that prophesy was coming true before their very eyes: “This is that”.

In a sense, those words express something essential to the nature of the Christian faith. It is a faith that looks back and at the same time looks to the present and the future. We read the Bible, and we look at the world around us and at our own lives, and every now and then there is a moment when we say, “Yes! This is that!” Whether it's the stories and the teaching of Jesus, or whether it's something we read in the Old Testament, we sometimes have what is called an “aha moment” when we say, “This isn’t just something that happened thousands of years ago – it’s happening now!” In a way every sermon is a “this is that” exercise – the preacher takes a story or a saying from the Bible and connects it with something happening now in the world or in our lives.

So, what does this story of Pentecost mean to us today? In what way can we say, "This is that"? Most of us don't understand this “speaking in tongues” business. What was it that really happened? Was it a miracle that everybody heard the disciples speaking their own language, or did it feel like that because there was a communication and a sense of sharing beyond words? We don't know. What we do know is that we don't see ourselves in the church today getting so wildly excited and telling the whole world about Jesus because we can't keep it to ourselves. For us, "witnessing", telling others about Jesus, is something we feel we ought to do but somehow don’t do for much of the time. This old story is just that – an old story, and we're not quite sure what to make of it.

I would suggest that its meaning for us today is very much connected with the bit we often leave out because we don't like it! Quoting the words of Joel about the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, Peter includes the verses that follow them: “… and I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

We sometimes forget that the early disciples were convinced that Jesus, who had been condemned to death by the religious leaders, was coming back very soon as a judge. Peter was appealing to the people to repent and acknowledge Jesus so that their sin would be forgiven. That's why he ended his sermon with the urgent plea, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation”.

That sounds more like the world we live in today – “portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and smoky mist. The sun turned to darkness and the moon to blood”. That doesn’t sound as far-fetched as it used to. So much of the news today frightens us: war in Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan, Yemen and so many other places; the terrible possibility of nuclear war; the extreme weather conditions threatening our life on this planet because of the way we have polluted the soil, the sea and the air; conflict in outer space. The day could soon come when there will literally be blood on the moon.

The numerous wars and civil conflicts going on the world, the ever increasing streams of refugees, the increasing bitterness and violence in politics and in society generally, make us wonder whether we are facing the collapse of our whole civilisation. If ever the world needed someone to save it, it's now.

Peter stood up courageously in front of the crowd and said, “God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified”. Here again we can look at today's world and say “this is that”. Innocent people are dying cruel deaths everywhere, killed by war and terrorism or starved to death by poverty. We can't just blame villains like Putin or Netanyahu or the terrorists or the big companies or the super-rich. It's the whole nature of our society, of the way the world is run, that is killing innocent people. We are all part of this and must share the guilt of it. We are crucifying Jesus over and over again. We are destroying the image of God in human beings.

The people's response to Peter's speech was to say, “Brothers, what should be do?” The answer was simple: “Repent and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”. The answer is the forgiving, loving grace of Jesus. And this is just as true today. God is alive and working through Jesus to save the world from its sins. Not in just the way it happened at Pentecost, nor in the way things happened in revivals in the past.  God is the same always and yet always doing something new.

New things are happening. There are many signs that we are not without hope. There are people in the world who are concerned about what is going on and who believe that things can be different. Some of them are very young and doing things that are inspiring and hopeful, challenging their elders and sometimes putting them to shame.  Yes, young men are seeing visions. Old men are dreaming dreams too – I like to think I am one of them.  The older I get the more convinced I am about the good news of Christ. It's not about getting more people to come to church, and it's not about me and my personal salvation. It's about the new world that God has promised to create, a world where, in the words of Amos, “justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”.

And it’s just not just about ministers, or clever people, or powerful people. It's all classes of society: “even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy”. People who have been ignored or downtrodden – women, children, people of different races, poor communities, disabled people – are finding their dignity and their voice and playing their part in changing the world. Yes, there are many signs in the world today of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit "on all flesh", if only we read the promises of God in the Bible and look around and say “This is that!”

And where are the churches in all this? Mostly it looks as if they are bypassed. God sometimes seems more active in the world than in the church. The people striving to change the world are often those who don’t go to church, those who say they are “spiritual but not religious”, and many who don’t believe in God at all. I believe the Holy Spirit is in them and God is using them. But I believe God still has a place for the church – only it must be a church very different from the one we see now.

The Church must change. And that doesn't necessarily mean having guitars and drums instead of an organ, singing modern choruses or changing the order of service. We need a church that is geared to demonstrating the kingdom of God by living in a radical new way, a church that has its eyes on the good of the whole community and not just its own members; a church that shows the love of Jesus by being inclusive; a church where people of different ages, races, nationalities and cultures, different sexuality, different life experience, can be together and demonstrate that human beings can be a family instead of a lot of divided tribes; a church where people whose lives are in a mess are not condemned or excluded but embraced with the love of Christ; a church in which people are willing to give sacrificially in order to make the world fairer and happier; a church that is a little colony of heaven on earth.

We need to recapture the vision of the early church, where all who believed were together and had all things in common and would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all who had need; a church where barriers were broken down, with Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, slaves and free people eating together. 
Being this kind of church won't change the world overnight, but it will light a candle in a dark world, and as more and more candles are lit, the dark world will become lighter.

And this is not all struggle and serious business. It is joy. The second chapter of Acts closes with words describing the life of the early disciples and saying: “day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” Of course, there was persecution to come. For us, too, the call to be the true church is not always an easy one. But there is something at the heart of it that is full of hope and joy. The church God wants to see is a happy church and an attractive one. Are you and I in it, and if it is still in the future, will we be in it?