Sunday of Pentecost : Genesis 11:1-9; Psalm 104:24-34, 35b;r Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, (25-27)

My mother used to look forward to listening to the inspiring sermons of the distinguished American Methodist evangelist Stanley Jones at the Maramon Convention, largest annual Christian gathering in the world. Jones in his book, A Song of Ascents, wrote: ‘The Holy Spirit has been the working force in my life. I have done what I have done because of Him. A power not mine has been and is working in and through me.” Over the past three decades, I have reflected over those profound words on several occasions.

In our world of political instability and power struggle, giant corporate mergers, financial take-overs, economic domination of a few nations like the USA, Japan, China and India, ‘power’ is a scary word. But, I admit when my favorite hockey team gets an opportunity for power-play, I get all hyped up in front of the television set! Both ‘dynamite’, that which is hazardous or dangerous, and ‘dynamo’, the affirmative and productive word, derive from the Greek word dunamis. Of all different words to describe the Spirit of God, such as ‘ruah’ (Hebrew), pneuma (Greek, from which we have the word pneumonia), wind, breath, spirit, and so on, I prefer St. John’s use of ‘paraclete’ (comforter, helper, advocate, counselor, go-between, mediator etc) for the Holy Spirit.

Today being the birthday of the Church of Jesus Christ, the holy, catholic, apostolic church, it is an opportunity to reflect on the day of Pentecost or literally the 50th day. The Jewish Feast of Weeks is mentioned under its Greek name. The Jewish people celebrated the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai. For us Christians, it is beginning of the establishment of the original community where a special style of worship, teaching, sharing of gifts, goods, tongues and miracle of hearing and healing began.

Some of the homiletic teachers misguidedly taught their future preacher-students to leave the “I” out of their sermons; in fact, the 21st century listeners look for authentic personal experiences shared by the preacher. Every time the Good News is proclaimed from this place, whoever stands here becomes for the people of God a conscientiously convincing collective and common communication of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. I agree with the observation of James Forbes of Riverside Church in Manhattan, “that most mainline sermons sounded about as compelling as a CEO’s annual report to the stockholders”. (Editorial, page:3, Christian Century, May 6, 2007)

If I am afraid to disclose to you, my friends and listeners for the past 24 years, how and where the Spirit of God has been nudging me in my life, no matter how terribly tormenting task that could be, if I don’t believe enough to say so, and if you can’t sense God working in and through me, how on earth can I expect you to believe in what I have to share?

It is helpful to distinguish between the Day of Pentecost when the Spirit of God came upon those from a number of places from Libya to Arabia, from Rome to Egypt – from different religious persuasions and cultural and linguistic backgrounds, gathered in one place.

In my younger days, I was a bit confused with the celebration of Pentecost once a year in my denomination and the feisty presence of the independent, marginalized groups called Pentecostal churches or Assemblies of God, where the people did everything contrary to the established ways of worship. For example, these spunky neophytes would sing, pray and speak in tongues all day and night – they became almost a civic aggravation similar to the meddlesome Jehovah’s witnesses in our neighborhood. One tricky but essential feature of this tradition is the conviction in their gift of speaking in tongues or what is known as glossolalia or ecstatic speech.

I have attended their worship services in different parts of the global church; certainly their abnormal freedom, sloppy informality and impulsive spontaneity during these fairly lingering spiritual work-outs can be intimidating to traditional Christian folks, who are used to a prescribed, predictable, traditional neatly organized form of worship. They would visit our homes arguing and discussing their new brand of spirituality and even try to proselytize the gullible, especially many women and a few men into their lively churches known as Faith Homes! They would do things you and I would not…shouting Halleluiahs in the street corners…telling the whole world, ”Jesus is coming! Hurry! You need salvation, right now! Repent and be baptized by the Holy Spirit; etc.”. I used to watch their baptismal ceremony for exclusively adults in the local river, which was quite different from the emphasis on the sacrament of infant baptism conducted in the local church presided over by the priest. They defy ecclesial hierarchical authority of traditions, espouse a cordial form of democracy and depend on their own homespun literal interpretations of the Scriptures without the aid of theological scholarship. Pentecostalism, the most surprisingly increasing subdivision within Christianity, at a rate of 13million a year or 3500 a day needs to be taken seriously. It is sad that it is a fractured family of almost 200 clusters. In fact, the largest Christian congregation in the world is a Pentecostal church in Korea with a weekly attendance of 240, 000!

The 19th century global Protestant movement called Pentecostalism is a fairly modern branch of conservative, fundamentalist Christianity, which grew out of the American Holiness movement with deep roots in Methodism. Charles Fox Parham, a Methodist from Topeka, Kansas, William Seymour in Los Angeles, W R Spurling and A J Tomlinson in the south, swayed by an expansive apostasy in American Christianity were the founders of this unstoppable movement. The teachings of the Wesley brothers (John and Charles), in particular, that sanctification was a bonus work of grace apart from salvation, together with the notion of holiness as another extra experience of baptism by the Holy Spirit and fire might have mesmerized the early Pentecostals to divine healing and euphoric speech and xenoglossolalia, the speaking of a unknown language by a person who by and large has no knowledge of it.

"33 A.D. -- the Day of Pentecost!" Millions of people have "dabbled" in tongues. And in 1899, religious excitement was high as they looked forward to the 2nd coming of Jesus and the end of history! Charles F. Parham, a Holiness preacher and the principal of the Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas conducted a revival meeting in that city. Agnes Ozman, a Methodist, stunned the meeting by speaking with poise in a number of foreign languages that she had never previously learned. This happened on January 1, 1900!. This event is often regarded as the founding of the Pentecostal movement. Many individuals, including Parham spoke in tongues.

An African-American student at Parham’s Bible College named William Seymour started a home church in Los Angeles CA . In April of 1906, Seymour's friends Edward Lee, and Jennie E. Moore spoke in tongues. They borrowed an empty warehouse on Azusa Street in Los Angeles and started the Apostolic Faith Mission.

The movement spread to other cities in California. Many churches were organized among the new immigrants. Some Holiness churches became Pentecostal churches. The movement afterward spread across North America, and finally has covered much of the church. After the first World War the Church of God in Christ became the Pentecostals’ first denomination. Eventually the White clergy left this movement to start the Assemblies of God.

Besides, there has been a focus on what is called the Oneness Pentecostal Theology, which teaches the existence of only one God in the universe and the divinity of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, this theology denies the traditional Christian doctrine of Trinity of one God who reveals to us as three unique, coexisting persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Can the Holy Spirit work beyond the different human races? You remember Driving Miss Daisy? Ms. Daisy, a typical Southern prim and proper woman, resented the Black man who was her driver. Their story is the story of Blacks and Whites in Atlanta in the last century. The driver was an accommodating and exceptionally kind man. Ms. Daisy was growing older and she was not coping well with her frailty. Ms. Daisy moved into a nursing home. The black man, his name is Hoak, one day went to visit Ms.Daisy with her son. A poignant scene is inescapable at a dining table in the nursing home. The faithful servant takes a fork and starts feeding this once conceited Southern woman a piece of pie. She opens her mouth like a small kid from the parent.

I believe that the Holy Spirit can make us loving, happy, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled ( 9 Fruits of the Holy Spirit – Galatians 5:22). Then we have 28 gifts of the Holy Spirit. Pamela Fickenscher repeats an old story (Off-road Ministry, 2023, Christian Century March 6, 2007) about a monastery in a small valley near a remote hill where a few monks lived and prayed away from the villagers. One curious boy approached them asking, “What do you people do here?” What do we do here?, replied a monk. “Well, we fall down and we get up; we fall down and we get back up.”

That is what the church is all about.

FELICITATION TO AUTHOR REV. DR. JOHN T. MATHEW - LOL

[It is a great pleasure to the LOL ecumenical fellowship of St. Thomas tradition Christians to felicitate our distinguished Author Rev. Dr. John T. Mathew, Canada who is honored with a Doctorate Degree in Theology]

John Mathew: Religious Studies
B.A., M.A. (University of Kerala), M.Div. (Queen's), M.A. (St. Paul's, Ottawa), Dip.Th. (Free Church of Scotland College), Th.D., Summa cum laude (Graduate Theological Foundation)

The Rev. Dr. John Mathew teaches the World's Living Religions (RLST 2205) and The History of Religion and the Arts (RLST 3215) at Huntington University. His research interests include ecumenism, missiology, interfaith dialogue, and religion in the twenty-first century. He also is currently writing a book on Asian Christianity.

An ordained minister in The United Church of Canada, he currently serves at St. Mark's United Church in Sudbury. He also was recently appointed by the United Church General Council Excecutive as a member of the McGeachy Scholarship Committee. In 1993, as a member of the United Church's National Interchurch-Interfaith Committee, he represented the church at the 100th Anniversary of Chicago World's Parliament of Religions.

He was born and brought up in the first-century Mar Thoma (Apostle Thomas) tradition in Kerala, southwest India. He studied at the University of Kerala's University College and Loyola College of Social Sciences, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala; Free Church of Scotland College (Edinburgh, Scotland), Queen's Theological College, Queen's University (Kingston); St. Paul University (Ottawa) and at the Graduate Theological Foundation, South Bend, Indiana, with residency at Christ Church College, University of Oxford, England. He also was the recipient of the Merrill Fellowship at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Pastor-Theologian at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey.

Rev. Mathew and his wife, Joyan, have one son, Bram, who received his B.A. and M.A. degrees at Laurentian, MA from the University of Manchester, England and is currently pursuing a doctorate at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.