Tattle-tale Spirit

Pentecost: Numbers 11 & Acts 2 & John 20

Don't you just hate tattletales, people who like to report on others’ misbehavior? Say you're a parent and your child comes to you to squeal on their sibling, for some rule they've broken, a minor injury they've inflicted or just because of a look they're giving. Or say you're a manager with an employee who informs on their coworker, or a teacher with a student who snitches on a classmate. I mean, yeah, what the reported rule-breaker is doing probably isn't good. But snitching on others is not the kind of behavior you want to encourage, either. It’s not good when you’ve got self-appointed policy police going around, looking to get others in trouble.

 Yet that seems to be what is going on in our first lesson this morning. In this obscure little story from the book of Numbers, a tattletale comes running up to Moses, complaining that two men who weren't part of the group were doing something they weren't supposed to, weren’t “authorized” to do: they were prophesying, without permission.

What led to this situation was the Israelites who had just escaped Egypt were complaining about the “lack of variety” in their travel meal plan: manna, manna every day. Moses had had enough of their bellyaching and told God to just put him out of his misery. Instead, God offered to take some of his Spirit—power and responsibility—that he had given Moses and share it among other elders of Israel. So, seventy elders were selected and they all gathered at the tent of meeting to receive this Spirit. All but two, that is, Eldad and Medad.

We aren't told why these two weren't there, but the fact that they weren't didn't seem to be a problem for God.  He just gave them his Spirit all the same. Which is what prompted Moses’ assistant, Joshua, to complain that these uncredentialed, unlicensed people were speaking in God’s name. Only, Moses’ response wasn’t to insist that they “go through the proper channels.” He replied, Would that all God’s people were prophets! If only everyone was a Spirit-gifted speaker for God!

Would that all God’s people were prophets! Moses's wish comes true, in a fashion, in our second lesson from the Acts of the Apostles. At this point in the story, the resurrected Jesus had just left, was taken up into heaven, and a hundred and twenty of his disciples were hiding out…er, waiting …in Jerusalem, waiting as they were told for “power from on high.” What that meant, they didn't know. But they found out soon enough, ten days later, on the Jewish feast of Pentecost. They were all huddled together in the Upper Room when, suddenly, they heard a holy hurricane headed their way. Before they could lash themselves down, a mighty wind blew through the entire house, striking sparks that burst into flames above their heads, each of them visibly on fire with the presence of God.

But then, these tongues of flame became tongues of speech. The wind which filled the house, the breath of God, filled up every one of them, filled them to gills. Then something clamped down on them, and the air came out of them in words they did not even know they knew: Parthian, Latin, Cappadocian, Phrygian, Libyan, Egyptian, Cretan….

Like a room full of bagpipes all sounding at once, they started up such a racket that they drew a crowd. People from all over the known world who happened to be there for the festival came leaning into windows and pushing through doors, surprised to hear someone speaking in their own language so far from home. Mesopotamians ducked their heads through the door expecting to see other Mesopotamians, Arabians looked around for other Arabians. But what they found instead was a bunch of Galileans, rural types from northern Israel, going on and on about the mighty works of God.

It was a crazy scene, one which provoked jokes from onlookers about their being drunk, on account of the strange words they were spouting. Not so!, protested Simon Peter. These Jews, he insisted, were not in the habit of “hitting the sauce” so early in the morning. They were “under the influence” not of spirits, but rather of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, in fulfillment of ancient prophecy.

Peter quotes the prophet Joel, who centuries ago foretold how, “in the last days,” God will pour out his Spirit upon all flesh, young men will see visions and old men will dream dreams. Even “the help”—housecleaners, waitstaff and lawncare workers—even they will get in on the action, speaking God’s words. In the past, the Spirit of God was given to a few chosen individuals called prophets, but Joel foresaw a day when this gift will be poured upon all.

That day, Peter announced, has now come, not as a calamity, as was expected, but as an outburst, an eruption of these truth-telling prophets, young and old, men and women, all declaring this amazing news: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

We are living in these “last days” Joel foretold. Pentecost isn’t over, you see. The Spirit-led work of prophecy hasn’t ended. Prophets didn’t all die out with the early church. Those prophets Joel predicted...they are us. When you and I were baptized, we were baptized into a ministry of preaching the truth. Not just us “professional” preachers, but everyone. We're all prophets now.

Now, before anyone gets too ruffled by that idea, we need to be clear what we mean by “prophet,” because we are often confused about them. A prophet is not someone who predicts the future, a fortune-teller. Nor is one being “prophetic” simply for criticizing the government. What makes a person a prophet is rather their submission to the truth, God’s truth, and their insistence on telling it.

Even with that clarification, I suspect the miraculous manifestations of Pentecost, the pyrotechnics and special effects, are in some ways easier for us to accept than believing that we are prophets, given a ministry of prophecy.  I mean, someone would have to be crazy, have delusions of grandeur, to claim to speak for God, right?

And yet, there are times, I’m sure, when you’ve seen something wrong and you were compelled to say something, you had to speak—you saw someone being abused, an injustice being done, an innocent being taken advantage of; or you were present as something sacred was being profaned, God was misrepresented and his ways disparaged; or you knew someone who was charged with authority but was not doing their job, letting bad things happen. Or maybe it wasn’t something bad at all, but something good—a beauty you’ve seen, an experience of God’s grace you couldn’t keep to yourself, a truth you’ve discovered that someone else needed to hear. It’s not “tattling” when you speak up in these times; that’s just what being a prophet means.

Now, I need to be careful here, because there are plenty of people who’d love to claim the title of prophet, to use God’s name in support of their own agenda. It’s very tempting to think that your concerns are God’s concerns. But the way you can tell a true prophet from a false one, is that a true prophet always points to Jesus and Jesus’s rule.

Prophets come in all shapes and sizes, men and women, young and old, rich and poor, from every tribe, race and ethnicity you can imagine. But no matter what a prophet brings to the conversation, the subject is always Jesus, the Jesus who gave his life for us and was raised to bring us into God’s good rule. A prophet points to Jesus, not to himself or any worldly power, as the answer, the one who saves.

Of course, we can be deluded, we can be blind to our own biases and assumptions. Which is why we need the church to check our prejudices. And I don’t mean just the congregation, or one denomination or nationality, or even the whole of the church living today, but the church that has existed across the globe throughout time. Because, fact is, we can all be blind to our own sins and prejudices, even as we can see clearly those of other people in other times and places. Which is why we need our brothers and sisters in different traditions, in different cultures, and across the ages. Because more often than not, our blind spots are not their blind spots, and so we can help each other be more faithful, to be better speakers and livers of the Gospel.

This is in fact one of the consequences of the Pentecost story. The Spirit that came down at Pentecost was not looking to call just a few special people but to create a prophetic community. No individual prophets are possible without their having been birthed and backed up by a prophetic church, a church whose life is vibrant enough and bold enough to produce a people who do not mind telling the truth to one another and to the world, no matter what. Charles Williams said of the church, "Her spectacles and her geniuses are marvelous. But her unknown saints are her power."

To see what I mean, consider the story of Grace Thomas. In 1954 Grace shocked her family by announcing that she wanted to run for public office. What’s more, Grace didn’t want to run for school board or city council: Grace ran for governor of the state of Georgia. Now, there was a total of nine candidates that year—nine candidates, and one issue. It was 1954 and the issue was Brown v. the Board of Education, the landmark decision that mandated the desegregating of schools. Grace Thomas was alone among the nine candidates to say she thought this was a just decision. Her campaign slogan was “Say Grace at the Polls”! But hardly anyone did, and Grace came in dead last.

Her family was glad to have Grace get it out of her system. Except she didn’t, and she decided to run for governor again in 1962. By then the racial tensions in the South were far more tense than they had been eight years earlier. Grace’s progressive platform on race issues earned her a number of death threats. One day she held a rally in a small Georgia town and chose as her venue the old slave market in the town square. As she stood there, Grace motioned to the platform where once human beings had been bought and sold like cattle and she said, “The old has passed away, the new has come. A new day has come when all Georgians, white and black, can join hands and work together.”

At that point a red-faced man in the crowd interrupted Grace’s speech to blurt out, “Are you a communist!?” “Why, no,” Grace replied quietly. “Well then, where’d you get all them goldurned ideas!?” Grace pointed to the steeple of a nearby Baptist church. “I learned them over there, in Sunday school.” Some Sunday school teacher had taught Grace and now she was saying things she never dreamed she’d be saying and she was called into places she never dreamed she’d be called.

The Spirit descended at Pentecost to create a people who look, speak, and act differently than the rest of the world. And He’s still at it, even here. The only question is whether we believe that. Do we still believe in a God who blows through closed doors and sets us on fire? Do we still believe in a God with power to transform us, as individuals and as a people? Or have we come to an unspoken agreement that our God is pretty old and tired by now, someone to whom we might address our prayers, but not anyone we really expect to change our lives?

God is not old, though, but ever new. Nor are any of us too old to be used by the Spirit. Did you catch the promise that Joel makes, that Peter picks up—“Your old men shall dream dreams.” God’s Spirit is not just for the young, but for elders too. God is not through with you yet, even if you might figure you’re past your good years of service. The coming of the Spirit means you can teach an old dog new tricks. You can still long for more. This isn't as good as it gets. God wants more for you and for others, and you are invited to be a part of it, to embark on one more adventure, if you're willing.

My hope for you, no matter your age, is that none of you rests until you have felt the Holy Spirit blow through your life, that even if things have been pretty calm, spiritually speaking, so far, you might yet feel the rush of the Spirit, that God’s Spirit may yet come among us, rearranging things, opening things up, and maybe even setting your own head on fire.

Would that all God’s people were prophets! Would that all of us were “tattletales” telling the story of God’s great deeds! Thanks be to God!