Stockton Methodist Circuit

“Passing the Torch”

 

 

I feel like there should be a birthday cake or something just there in front of me at this point, because this is Pentecost, it’s the coming of the Holy Spirit, it’s the birthday of the Christian Church it’s a huge day to celebrate, though it may not look it when you listen to the account of the day. So let’s turn our attention to the disciples the day of Pentecost, you could be forgiven for having a little moment of Déjà vu here because it’s a familiar scene isn’t it? The disciples are all together in a room, they’re leaderless, Jesus isn’t there – sounds familiar doesn’t it? It’s the aftermath of the Crucifixion. Much like that time they’re not sure what they’re going to do next, for weeks they’ve yoyoed emotionally between the sheer euphoria of Palm Sunday, the despair of Good Friday, the joy of Easter Sunday and shall we say the heartbreak of the Ascension. They’ve been all over the place and now in a very strong feeling of familarity here there are again asking themselves what happens next? Can life ever go back to normal after everything they’ve experienced?

 

The answer is it can’t go back to normal and it doesn’t because all of those conflicted emotions give way to what can only be described as clarity, understanding. “I will make you fishers of men.” Jesus says to the sons of Zebedee when he calls them to be disciples, with every lesson, every parable, every miracle he teaches them, shapes them into those fishermen and now here with the coming of the Holy Spirit it is graduation day, and speaking as someone whose graduated university this has a familiar feel, the nervousness, the tension, the surreal nature of it all. Pentecost is perhaps one of the stranger accounts of a specific day in the Bible and it’s hard to explain quite why, perhaps it’s because it feels sort of normal and everyday, after all where else in the Bible do you hear the words “they’re not drunk it’s not even nine o’clock in the morning?” it’s also quite amusing that across over two thousand years the social response to people acting strangely is they must be drunk. But let’s walk it back a little, the disciples are in that room, they’re on their own and then the Holy Spirit comes down on them, suddenly they’re not lonely, suddenly they’re confident, the promise that Jesus made is fulfilled, though I’d suspect that that realization wasn’t actually going through the disciples minds, because let’s be fair they’ve got form for not quite understanding things. But here’s the thing now they’ve got a purpose again, now they know what they’re supposed to do, take everything they’ve been taught and teach it to the world, in effect the student becomes the teacher, and the professor on this occasion is Peter. “I will make you fishers of men.” Says Jesus well here you go Peter this presumably public square in front of you is your pond, your stream, your river, your lake, your ocean, your words are the net, it’s time to cast out and catch your fish.

 

Before we get to the speech let’s take a moment to look at Peter and ask the question – what must be going through his mind as he gets ready to speak? As far as the biblical narrative to this point goes he’s got a pretty colourful history, he’s a huge repeat offender when it comes to not understanding things, he’s very much a stick in the mud, he’s got his own views on who the Messiah is and more importantly how the Messiah will do what he is sent to do. So much so that he near constantly disputes Jesus’s prophesising of what is to come, a natural consequence of not quite getting what he is being told. Jesus tells him that he is the rock on which his church will be built there’s no debate no room for Peter to question it’s happening whether Peter likes it or not, I wonder whether Peter wondered about the meaning of those words in the weeks after they were spoken, did the rock crack during those three denials? Did the foundation shake? Maybe. Was the foundation rebuilt stronger than before by Peter’s declaration of love, his redemption? Well surely here it’s in the strongest possible terms yes, the man who Peter betrays through denial forgives him, if nothing else it must give him a confidence boost. Does he finally get this rock business all in that moment as he goes to speak? Whether knowingly or not he’s assuming the leadership role, he’s fulfilling that which was said about him, if anyone’s seen the Lion King it’s like that moment where Simba looks up into the clouds and see’s his father, Mufasa’s, face it’s the whole “Remember who you are.” Moment. So Peter’s stood there and he speaks.

 

And what a speech it actually is but that’s only half the wonder, the other half is found in the crowd because it’s full of people from different countries, speaking different languages and yet all of them hear the message Peter speaks in their own language, now imagine being in that crowd, imagine hearing it and understanding it and then looking at the person standing next to you who’s from a different culture and speaks a different language and they’re muttering something that links to what’s been said the big question “How is that possible?” You are the fisherman now Peter, the net is cast and you have caught your fish, you have passed on that which you have learned – the baton, the torch, the fire whatever you want to call it is passed on to the crowd and they carry it home and they tell their family, their friends, their whole communities what they have heard and so the message spreads.

 

The point here is that the world around us is like that crowd it’s full of so many different languages, different cultures and so on, and each of us today is like Peter we have the message to proclaim, we may not be as eloquent as Peter in how we say it but we have the message to proclaim nonetheless, so let’s go and do it for as the late American poet Maya Angelou once said “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Let’s continue to pass on the message we know to those that don’t know it.