How many of you have seen the film American Beauty? It debuted in 2000, and won best picture, best actor, best director, and best original screenplay.
American Beauty is a story about emptiness. It features a middle class family in an affluent suburb: Lester, Carolyn and their daughter Jane. Lester and Carolyn struggle to give meaning to their lives. Despite their wealth, they feel empty inside.
The first scene opens with an aerial view of the family’s beautiful suburb. We hear Lester in a voice over:
“This is my life,” he announces. He then introduces us to his family. Carolyn, his wife, “used to be happy,” he says. “We used to be happy.” His daughter, Jane, is, he thinks, a typical teenager, “angry, insecure, confused.” “I wish I could tell her it’s all going to pass, but I don’t want to lie to her.”
He continues, “Both my wife and daughter think I’m this gigantic loser. And they are right. I have lost something. I’m not exactly sure what it is. But you know what? It’s never too late to get it back.”
This introduces Lester’s quest, the movie’s theme. But we won’t go into the story here. You’ll have to see it for yourself, if you haven’t already. Suffice it to say that beauty, at least as Lester and Carolyn have imagined it, proves to be a sham.
There is a neighbor boy named Ricky who represents another perspective.
Ricky has an abusive father who is an ex-marine sergeant and a near comatose mother who has been beaten into psychological submission by her husband. Ricky finds refuge in shooting scenes of everyday life with his camcorder (since they didn’t have smart phones then).
Jane, the daughter of Lester and Carolyn, soon notices him. Seeking an escape from her own loveless home, she forms a relationship with Ricky.
In his desire to grow closer to her, one day Ricky shows Jane the most beautiful thing he has ever videotaped. In a lengthy shot, we see a plastic bag, picked up by the wind and blown high and low among the red autumn leaves.
The movement of the bag is the beauty that suddenly, amid the folly and hopelessness of the adults, appears as a gift that the boy and girl can enjoy together with great delight.
We then hear Ricky’s voice as he and Jane together watch the floating bag:
“This bag was just dancing with me, like a little kid begging me to play with it. That’s the day I realized that there was this life behind all things and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever.”
The movie is more than twenty years old, but it still captures the mood of our age. In our world today, when Western societies have become doubtful about their values and pessimistic about their future, when the hearts of many have grown cold, it may seem futile to call attention to this wind, this life behind all things, this incredibly benevolent force, which for us all serve as powerful images of the Holy Spirit.
But we have to do it. Not because we expect the old cultural ideals to return in their former glory, but because we as the church are obliged to tell the truth.
The truth is that Christ reigns and his Spirit has been sent. And since that is so, the world is not empty. It is the space in which Christ by the Holy Spirit works and manifests himself against all falsehood, deception, and disorientation, which is so prevalent among us in our time.
This is the good news that we proclaim today, which is appropriate for us to do. For today is a special day in the Christian calendar, a day dedicated to the Holy Spirit. It is the Day of Pentecost, when we celebrate the Holy Spirit, the One whom Jesus promised to send to his disciples, the One who was to be with them and in them, to comfort, guide, direct and empower them to proclaim Christ to the nations.
Our first lesson begins by telling us that the disciples are together in one place.
Parenthetically, this in itself is significant in a post-covid world, in which public gathering has been replaced by technology that allows us to live without being with others. Food delivery, automation, remote work, and digital streaming, among other things, keep us apart today.
But despite these advancements, our need to connect with others face to face is demonstrable on a biological, emotional, and spiritual level, as more and more research shows. And if the public health advisory issued by the surgeon general earlier this month on the epidemic of loneliness is accurate, this need is critical today.
Staying at home is not an option for the disciples. Three times a year all ceremonially clean and able-bodied Jewish men went up to Jerusalem to participate in the appointed religious festivals. This was a requirement. These include the festival of Passover, the festival of Tabernacles, and the Festival of Weeks, also known as Pentecost.
The disciples are at the temple in Jerusalem observing Pentecost. Now Pentecost is a harvest festival, which marks the beginning of the wheat harvest. The first fruits of the harvest were brought to the temple in grateful acknowledgement of God’s generous provision.
But later, the feast was associated with the giving of the Law by God to Moses on Mount Sinai.
You will recall this event. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire (Exodus 19:18). And God spoke all these words: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). There follows the Ten Commandments.
Jewish people refer to this event at the Revelation. God reveals himself. He wants to be known. To make oneself known requires communication. I cannot know who you are unless you speak to me. If you are silent, you remain an enigma to me.
In the giving of the Law, God speaks to the people; in the giving of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, God speaks to the people in an eminent sense.
What is the primary manifestation of the Holy Spirit? It is speaking. When the Spirit fills the disciples, they speak about the will and ways of God. They speak about God’s deeds of power, above all about the salvation that God wrought in Jesus Christ.
Some made out what the disciples spoke about, because they heard it in their own language, but they were nevertheless perplexed. Others also heard it, but they did not understand it at all; it was gibberish to them.
Picture this scene for a moment. Does it not reflect to us our moral and social landscape today?
Thought leaders, including David Fuller, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Tristan Harris, and Robin Phillips talk about the crisis in sensemaking today. In a media saturated age, we are bombarded with information all day, every day.
Having access to all this information, it is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff (Robin Phillips). We cannot always tell the difference between information, on one hand, and misinformation and even disinformation, on the other.
If access to information has led to greater knowledge, it has not led to greater wisdom. On the contrary, the current glut of information has resulted in widespread confusion (Robin Phillips).
Amid the cacophony of voices, many give up completely on objective knowledge, and adopt some form of “post-truth” perspective, whether relativism, skepticism, or hive-mindedness.
No doubt one reason for this demoralization is that we are bombarded with more information than we can assimilate (Robin Phillips). Amid all these voices, how can we tell which ones represent objective truth anymore? Is it practical or even possible to sort out the myriad claims we encounter and do our due diligence on each one?
Robin Phillips reports that Christians are not exempt from this crisis in sensemaking. In a series of interviews from 2020 and 2021, he discovered that even they have given up on the possibility, and instead have adopted the various tropes that have become typical of our “post-truth” culture, including “it all comes down to who you choose to believe,” or “see if it feels right” or “the difference between real news and fake news is just your point of view.”
God does not want confusion for his people, but clarity. He does not want us to be deceived, but to know the truth.
That is why he sends his Holy Spirit. The Spirit of truth guides God’s people into all truth (John 16:13), so that they can discern truth from error.
Peter, standing with the disciples, exemplifies and embodies this reality. He raises his voice and begins to speak to the crowd. He dispels their false ideas about what is happening. He tells them that these men are speaking the truth about God.
Even though he makes this claim by the Spirit of truth, he does not speak in his own words. Rather, he refers his fellow Jews to the Word of God.
This illustrates an important principle, one that in fact has been stressed in the Reformed tradition, of which the Presbyterian churches are a part.
It is this: God’s Spirit and God’s Word go together. We will not find God’s Spirit apart from his Word. Nor will we hear God’s Word apart from the Spirit. Just as our breath carries our words, so does God’s Spirit carry God’s Word.
As I’ve pointed out in this pulpit many times before, that is why we pray for the presence of the Spirit before we read God’s Word. We are thereby acknowledging that we depend on God’s Spirit to illuminate our minds so that we can understand what is being read and proclaimed to us.
Now that does not relieve us of the obligation to work at understanding. God has given us minds and he wants us to use them. He expects us to make every effort at understanding his Word, and he promises to help us by his Spirit.
Peter understands God’s Word and refers the crowd to a prophecy in Joel. It is a book in the Jewish Scriptures, corresponding to what we call the Old Testament.
In the last days, God pours out his spirit on all flesh, on all his servants.
Peter interprets what is happening here by means of the prophet Joel. The “all flesh” is represented at this gathering. There are devout Jews from every nation under heaven in Jerusalem for Pentecost, representing all God’s servants.
And how does this great eschatological event manifest itself, according to Joel? Visions and dreams, to be sure. But to communicate these, one has to speak. “Even upon my servants, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy” (Acts 2:18; emphasis mine). To prophecy means to declare God’s Word.
This is what Peter and the 11 are doing on the Day of Pentecost. But there will be a day when all God’s people, men and women, young and old, will rehearse God’s deeds of power.
The prophecy of Joel contains symbols of power: blood and fire and smoky mist. Even the sun and the moon change in appearance.
This impresses on us that the declaration of God’s word is accompanied by power. This is cosmic power, the power of God’s own Spirit.
This ought always to borne in mind in the church. Especially in, but certainly not limited to, the Protestant mainline churches, we too often hear hand-wringing speech today, this “I’ve got more questions than answers” language, this “I wonder if” equivocating.
That is not at all how Peter speaks. On the contrary, he speaks with force and conviction, as should any preacher in the pulpit today. It is not on their own charisma or dynamic presence or good looks that Peter or anyone entrusted with proclaiming God’s word should rely, but on the power of the Holy Spirit.
Pentecost calls us to recover this confidence, this confidence in the gospel of the crucifixion, resurrection and exaltation of Jesus Christ. For it is a confidence inspired and supported by the Holy Spirit.
If we were to read the rest of the Acts of the Apostles, this is exactly what we see, beginning with the verses following the quotation from Joel. Peter goes on to proclaim this gospel with confidence, and 3000 of those gathered there accepted it.
This continues today. Our world is not empty. It is a space where God’s Spirit moves, leading people out of confusion to clarity, out of illusion to reality, so that they can truly hear and understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved (Acts 2:21). Amen.