Pentecost: When Peter Found His Voice

The Holy Gospel according to John the 20th chapter. When it was evening on that

day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples

were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said,

Peace be with you. After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then

the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, Peace be

with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. When he had said this, he

breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive

the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they are

retained. This is the Gospel of the Lord. May we be seated. Would you pray with me?

Holy God, on this Pentecost, we ask that your Holy Spirit be known to us, that it

inspire our hearts and open our ears to your will in our lives. Amen.

Yesterday, this is fresh news, my oldest daughter Eliza came running into the

kitchen, and she goes, You'll never believe it. Peter just said dada.

Frankly, I don't believe it. I don't. I don't. I don't believe it, because you know

what? He didn't say it. It's not true. The story is true. Eliza did say that, but

it's just facts. He couldn't have said it. Little Peter, I know many of you maybe

haven't seen him in a while. He's four months old. Four months old. And I

realized that I haven't actually read a baby book since before we had our first

kids. So that was six years ago. That's when you read them all. You know, after

that, you're just like, Oh, we'll figure it out. So I'm a little fuzzy on the

timelines of when babies do what. But at child number three, I can

confidently say up here to all of you that first words are still months away.

You know, I'm sure Eliza heard something, and I could tell Peter was making noise

in the other room, but it was more likely a grunt or a really loud gas bubble. You

know, it wasn't dada. No signs of child development would point to the

possibility that Peter could say something like this right now. And don't

get me wrong. I think the world of little Peter. He has plenty of other

amazing gifts and characteristics without ascribing to him

unrealistic ones. At four months old, he's a pretty great sleeper. He's got a

better head of hair than I do. He lights up with smiles when he sees you. When you

know this move, you pull his arms over his head, and you go, How big is Peter? So

big! And he lets out this little giggle. You know, sure, he cries. Yes, his diapers

stink. He is a baby after all. He's definitely a four-month-old baby with, I

think, a lot of wonderful special qualities. But no. No words. Yet. And this

is how I feel about another Peter, the Apostle Peter, and what he is reported to

be getting up to in the second chapter of Acts in our reading today. Up until

the book of Acts, we have had four gospel accounts of this man. And throughout his

journey with Jesus, we get to know through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John

certain aspects of this beloved Apostle. Right? We learn about his maybe

impulsive outbursts. We learn about his doubts in key moments, but also his

profound moments of faith. We hear a lot about his leadership. When we first meet

him, he's the owner of a little fishing business on the Sea of Galilee with his

brother Andrew. Another story we hear is when he famously tries to walk on water

to move out to Jesus. He climbs the Transfiguration Mountain with James and

John, only to propose a half-baked idea to set up lodging up there. Yes, he makes

the amazing confession that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, to

only a few verses later be rebuked by Jesus for suggesting that Jesus doesn't

need to give his life. That famous, get behind me, Satan line? That's directed at

Peter. Peter famously denies Jesus three times during his trial and crucifixion,

but is also present at the resurrection in some of the accounts of the Easter

stories. And finally, in a wonderful moment at the end of the Gospel of John,

a moment of redemption along the Sea of Galilee, the risen Christ appears to

Peter and tells Peter that if he loves him, then Peter should feed his sheep.

These are all great stories about Peter spread throughout the four Gospels, and

yet nothing in those Gospels is quite like what happens in Acts 2. This is how,

so midway through our reading at Acts 2.14, when Peter finally pipes up, this is

how it begins. It says,

And what Peter says, what follows, is almost 20 uninterrupted verses of him

preaching about the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus while quoting

extensively from the Old Testament, from the prophet Joel, and a couple of

different Psalms. All of this adds up to a thoroughly researched, powerfully

delivered servant, which by the time he finally gets to the end of it, converts

3,000 people to join in fellowship with the apostles. And like I said with little

Peter, I will say this about who I will now refer to as Big Peter. You know,

I think the world of Big Peter. He has plenty of amazing gifts and

characteristics, but he's still a humble, strong-willed, faithful, sometimes

impulsive follower of Jesus who has never, across any of the rest of the

story leading up until this moment, shown any signs of being able to pull this off.

It's unprecedented, right? He's a fisherman from Galilee. In Acts 4.13, when

Peter stands before the High Council in Jerusalem, he is quickly identified, and I

quote,

None of those things would make it seem, within the realm of natural

development, that he could do what he does then in Acts 2. All of a sudden,

quoting long passages from the prophets and Psalms, while stringing together long

and passionate speeches to crowds of thousands. Like a baby saying dada at

four months old, what Peter is doing, just taking into consideration everything he

has done leading up to that moment in his development, it's pretty

unprecedented, to say the least. But unlike little Peter, who definitely did

not say dada. I don't want you coming up to me at the end of this church service

and being like, I don't know, Pastor Dan, are you selling little Peter short? He

didn't say it. He didn't do it. I do think, though, that Big Peter has a much more

compelling case to make for what he says. And the reason why I feel so confident

is of what happens in the 13 verses that lead up to his speech. I feel so

confident because of Pentecost. The amazing story of Pentecost and what we

celebrate today is that there was something so divinely powerful

that happened on that day 2,000 years ago. Something so holy and earth-shaking

that happened 50 days after Jesus rose from the dead, that it could shake, or

sorry, that it could take a fisherman from Galilee and turn him into the

unquestioned vocal leader of a world-changing religious, social, and

political movement that we know today as Christianity. And that, my friends, is

because Pentecost is about a power that comes from beyond ourselves. A gift of

God that we call the Holy Spirit. This rush of wind that would start to shake

the very foundations of the world. A burning fire that refined the hearts of

people from distant lands to make them understand each other despite their vast

differences in language, their differences in culture, their differences

in customs. And if this Holy Spirit can do that, then it only makes sense that it

can also be the breath that fills up the lungs of even the Peters among us

and gives them words to speak and truth to confess so powerfully out of nowhere

that it can change the world. It's really fun to come to this Pentecost story at

the end of our 50-day long study of the book of Acts, which we've covered in

Bible Studies, Senior Seasons Academy, guest lecture, and sermons. Because as we

worked our way through the rest of Acts, we saw how Peter grew more and more into

this role as a vocal leader, as a clear-eyed moral guide, as a theological

pillar for the early Christian Church. But here we are kind of rewinding it all

to see where it actually began. Here on Pentecost is the reason why all of that

could happen. That's why today is considered one of the holiest days in

our church year. That's why we call this the birthday of the church. It's because

something new happened on that Pentecost day 2,000 years ago. Something

unprecedented happened. Something holy and powerful and life-changing. Something

world-changing happened. And we and that big Peter guy and the whole world are

the inheritors of that story. Which makes me think, and I'll leave you with

this, if the power of Pentecost can make a fisherman from Galilee the most famous

preacher in the world, if the power of Pentecost can take the story of a

crucified carpenter from Bethlehem and use it to unite people all the way from

Rome to Parthia and Egypt to Pontus, then why not let ourselves be open to that

Holy Spirit, inspiring us so that, like Peter, we might do things and proclaim

truth that no one thought we would be ready or willing or able to do? Because

these days our world needs more of what Pentecost was all about. We need people

from different walks of life in different parts of the world to be able

to understand each other better. We need to be able to see visions and dream

about what God might actually will for this world and our lives. Visions and

dreams that are greater than the narrow ones we often give ourselves. And who knows, in some

length of time from now, maybe it's 2,000 years or maybe not that long, and maybe

it's in some distant far-flung reaches of the globe or maybe just in your

little corner of the world, maybe someone you know will run into the kitchen and

for all who have ears to hear say about you, you'll never believe what I just

heard. It's on Pentecost that those types of miracles become true.

Thanks be to God. Amen.