8. “The Power of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1 and 2)

Acts 1 and 2

I don’t know about you, but I’m always fascinated by origin stories. It doesn’t matter what kind of origin story—fictional origin stories like Batman—my kids will tell you I love the movie Batman Begins. I like marriage origin stories of how a couple met. I even enjoy business origin stories. I recently listened to a 3-hour podcast episode on the story of how Costco came into being, and it was awesome.

Origin stories are fascinating. More than that they can be valuable, because when it comes to our own origin stories, they can help us remember things about ourselves. We recount the birth of our country to recall our sense of national identity. We tell our children the story of how they were born and how we felt to help them understand how much we love them. We tell others and ourselves stories of how we came to faith to remember how God worked in our lives. We learn about ourselves through our beginnings.

Acts gives us the origin story of the church. Which means that if we pay close attention to it, we can recall, or sometimes even discover for the first time, things about who we are. This morning I especially want us pay attention to one aspect of that beginning: how we, the church, find our beginning in prayer.

Unexpected Waiting

There’s a detail that is often easy to overlook in the opening chapters of Acts: between the time Jesus ascended into heaven, entering into the presence of the Father to rule at God’s right hand and the coming of the Spirit that Jesus promised, there was waiting. 10 days of waiting.

I imagine that would have been a bit of a shock to the system for the apostles. When Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to them, they had to have been experiencing an overwhelming emotional high. In just a few days they went from the worst thing ever to the best thing ever. And then for more than 5 weeks they just got to hang out with Jesus. No extended exhausting ministry campaigns, debating with opposition, trying to feed crowds. They ate with Jesus, walked with Jesus, talked with Jesus and—most of all, they listened to Jesus.

• Jesus talked to them about the kingdom of God, how he was going to bring the glorious future God had promised. As he taught about what that meant, they could almost taste it. 
• And he didn’t just speak of the kingdom: he promised them heavenly power. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.” Which I imagine might have felt both mysterious and exciting—what will that feel like to receive the heavenly power of God? 
• And in addition to speaking of the glory of his kingdom and the power of his Spirit, Jesus gave them an extraordinary task to do—to gather people from everywhere: “You will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth!” 

Hearing these things day after day for more than a month, I imagine the apostles would have felt like a football team in the locker room just waiting for the moment they were supposed to run out onto the field and trounce the opponent. Let’s go!

But during these days, Jesus also said one other thing: a simple instruction. Verse 4 “He ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait—to wait for the promise of the Father.” Jesus told them to wait. 

Now I’m not sure how well they heard that, because they seem to have been caught off guard one day when they’re outdoors and Jesus raises his hands and blesses his disciples, perhaps with the words “The Lord bless you and keep you and cause his face to shine upon you.” And when he finishes those words, he was “lifted up”—in a very visible fashion his heavenly Father was taking hold of his Son and welcoming him to his heavenly throne. And we’re told that the apostles are stuck there just looking at heaven—not just for a moment or two, probably, but quite a while—perhaps hoping that this heavenly enthronement was more like a brief errand Jesus was doing before coming right back. Which is why eventually God sent a couple of angels to say, “Why are you still watching?” with the implication being, “get on with the business you’re supposed to do.” And that business was waiting.  

If you think about it, Jesus didn’t have to do it this way. He could have just sent his Spirit down right after he ascended into heaven and sat at God’s right hand, and started all the awesome stuff that fills the rest of Acts. But instead, there’s a delay. So the somewhat bewildered apostles and other followers of Jesus slowly walk a couple of miles back to the large house that they’re staying in; they look at each other, and they say, “Well, I guess now we wait.” 

Imagine how unsettling that was—to have such significant things going on and now to be left a bit in the dark. For how long—Jesus didn’t give them a specific time—a few hours, days weeks? What were they supposed to do with this time? This wasn’t their home where they could just go back to normal life. And why, why was Jesus making them wait?

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably found yourself asking similar questions—maybe that’s even something you’re feeling right now. Why am I being made to wait? If you are a Christian, you believe that God loves you as a Father loves his child—he hears your prayers and is watching over every detail of your life to bring about your good. But how often do we find ourselves waiting to experience this reality? We’re in a tough spot where we don’t know how we’re going to make it financially; we find ourselves facing a frightening diagnosis; we have a child who is really struggling, and so we pray. And we pray. And we wait. And in the middle of that we find ourselves wondering deep down—if God really loves me like he says he does, why do I have to wait so long? We understand some of the confusion the disciples were feeling in these moments. 

I think after spending a lot of time with this passage that we’re meant to recognize that something very important is actually happening here in the waiting. I think in these verses we’re meant to see an undoing of Babel.

Babel Undone

Do you know the story of Babel? It’s something that happened very long ago, near the very beginning of human history, in a time when the entire human race all still lived very close to each other and even all spoke the same language. It’s a story of people who felt the vulnerability and dangers of this life, like we do, doing what people often do in response: they sought to exert control.

Look, they said to each other: we really need to stay together, because we’re weaker when we’re far apart from each other. What’s more, we want to have a name that is remembered long after we die. And we want to find a way to overcome our weakness and human limitations. So here’s what we need to do: we have to build a tower, a ziggurat (which was like a pyramid). Because that will offer a uniting focal point in our city to help keep us together, it will be a monument to our greatness so that everyone remembers what we did.  And it will be so tall that we will be able to break through the heavens themselves and become like God.

And as Genesis relays these events, there’s a simple phrase that’s repeated. “Come, let us.” Come, let us make bricks. Come, let us build a tower.” Come—if we act, if we take agency, if we exert control, maybe we won’t feel so vulnerable. Maybe we can fix the problems in our lives. 

Which, if you think about it, is a very human response to the feeling of vulnerability. I mean, that’s the impulse that drives wars: let’s consolidate power and pursue greatness by taking control. It’s what often fuels technological development—if we can just harness the power of the atom or create artificial general intelligence, if we gain more control, we can solve the world’s problems. Honestly, it’s what I often try to do when I’m stressed out or feeling unsafe. When I’m in a conversation with someone that I care about and something happens to make me feel defensive, what do I do? I raise my voice; I try to save face by showing why I’m right. I exert control.   

The same was happening in Babel. And if you know the story, you know what happens next. God sees what they’re doing, steps in and thwarts all their plans by confusing them. He causes people to begin speaking different languages, so that suddenly they can’t understand each other. In their frustration at all of this they stop building; they stop even living in the same city. The people are scattered, the tower is left unfinished, an ongoing symbol of failure. And the way they end up being remembered, the only name for themselves they got out of this was “Babel,” meaning confused. 

And God didn’t do this because God was threatened by the idea of human beings having power or unity or a great name. God actually desires all of these things for us. No, he did this because of the way they were going about seeking those things—the way we often go about it when we feel vulnerable. Because the approach of trying to fix our problems by exerting greater control does not work. 

Because it has a fatal flaw. Whenever we or any human being say to ourselves, “I can fix this if only I have more control.” Whenever we say, “It’s up to me. It’s up to me to make myself safe, to make myself whole, to make myself happy,” we are acting as if we are self-sufficient, meant to do this on our own. And we’re lying to ourselves. To state the obvious that perhaps isn’t that obvious sometimes, you and I are not God. We are not meant to be soloing this whole thing, running the show. As long as we try, we will be stressed out, miserable, and confused. God thwarted the efforts of Babel because he knew that we need something better than “Come, let us.”

Prayer

And I wonder if in the days before the ascension the apostles still had a bit of the Babel instinct in them. “Let’s charge ahead. Let’s do this Jesus. Come, let us take the kingdom right now—I’m ready for the power!”  

But Jesus says, “Wait.” Because the kingdom he is establishing is not a Babel kingdom. It’s a heavenly kingdom, which works very differently.   

And so after Jesus ascends, and after they walk back to Jerusalem, they wait.

What do they do with the time? Well, we’re told that during these ten days they have a meeting where they figure out who should take Judas’ place among the 12. And presumably also every day they still do the chores needed to make sure they can eat together, wash their clothes, all of that. But most of the time what they do from one day to the next is the very thing I think Jesus intended for them to do in these 10 days.

Verse 14 “All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer.” For 10 days they devoted themselves together to prayer. Perhaps some of the time it was a bit more organized, where the 120 followers of Jesus might take turns reading a Psalm, or leading in singing, or praying out loud. Some time maybe they would pray together in smaller groups of 3 or 4. Perhaps other times people would go for walks and just silently talk to God. 

They probably often found themselves praying confused prayers. They didn’t know how long they were supposed to wait or what exactly would happen next. In this they were learning to surrender control: “I don’t know God, but you do.” And yet even with this confusion were also learning in these days to pray with a newfound confidence. Because here’s the thing: their best friend whom they knew intimately, a human being with human flesh like their own had been welcomed into heaven by God. And that meant that any prayer raised to heaven, raised to the God who welcomes Jesus, raised to the throne where Jesus now sits—you know prayers are going to be welcomed and heard! 

And so in these days there’s a shift. Instead of looking at the problems they faced and taking the Babel approach of saying, “Come let US do this; Come, let us take control, Come, let us fix this,” they found themselves more and more instead learning to say openhandedly, with expectant hope, “God would you do this. God, would you make things right.”

Because, that’s what prayer is for. Praying, done rightly is all about letting go of control and placing the weight of our lives and our troubles into the hands of God. It’s about learning not to live as solo-self-sufficient people, but as those who rely on God to be faithful and kind. And that is what the disciples do. As they wait, they learn to entrust themselves to the grace of God.

And so on Pentecost morning, 10 days after Jesus ascended, as they were praying together, “God, would you make things right,” they audibly hear a response—“suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind,” which is pretty scary when you think about it. People who have experienced being near a tornado will tell you that it sounds like a freight train, with a low, loud rumbling of sheer power that makes you shake. That’s the sound of what is coming from heaven; it’s coming from where Jesus now sits on the throne, and the sound descends until it comes into the room deafeningly loud. How they must have shook.

And then as apostles fearfully looked around, trying to understand what was happening, they saw a mass of flames hovering in the air in the middle of the room, maybe it looked a bit like the burning bush Moses encountered centuries earlier. Like the glory of God filled the temple, now it’s filling their room—except this time, the glory doesn’t just stay in the room. This fire divides into smaller “tongues” of fire going to each of the apostles, entering them, and then, it says, they, like individual temples are “filled with the Holy Spirit.” 

“You will receive POWER when the Holy Spirit comes upon you” Jesus had said. What would that have felt like? Paul helps fill in the picture a bit when he recounts to the Thessalonians what it was like when they heard the gospel. He says it didn’t just come like an ordinary message: he saw how it came with the power of the Spirit, so that, Paul says, it came with deep conviction that went so deep that who they were became noticeably different. 

Many centuries later the evangelist John Wesley speaks of a similar experience—of a moment when, even though he had heard the Bible taught many times before, this time it struck differently. “I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” The power of deep conviction in the Spirit—that’s what the apostles were experiencing: the power of knowing in a new way that they were loved sons and daughters of God, forgiven, secure. It’s a power that changes you and heals you and makes you whole. It’s a power that fills one with joy.

And so they began speaking, with tears in their eyes, praising God because they couldn’t help themselves, speaking as it says in verse 11 “the mighty works of God.” 

And something else takes place that is also extraordinary. 

People have come to Jerusalem from all over the world to be here for Pentecost. As you might imagine, a sound as loud as a tornado has gathered quite the crowd outside, people wondering what’s going on. As the disciples walk out of the house praising God, these people are amazed to realize that when they listen to the apostles speaking, they hear these words about the great things of God with a clarity they never would have expected. Because whatever their native language: Egyptian, Greek, Aramaic, Latin, they hear at least one of the apostles speaking to them in their own tongue enabling them to perfectly hear about Jesus.

And to add just one more detail about this moment, as we will go on to see next week, after Peter preaches, many thousands of these hearers will be baptized—and when they are baptized, they are given a great name, for they are baptized into the name of Jesus, the Son of God.

Which means that—and perhaps you’ve caught on by now—everything the people of Babel grasped after and failed to attain: heavenly power, unity and togetherness as a people, and a great name—those very things being given on this day. And the power and the unity and the great name are coming to them, not by way of a tower that people erect through their own efforts and control, “Come, let us do this.” No, it’s all coming through a person: it is Jesus who enters heaven on our behalf to give us the heavenly power of the Spirit. It is Jesus whose Spirit bridges the divide and brings people together under his rule. It is Jesus who gives us the name above all names that we bear as those baptized as those who are not called “Christians.” And, to put it another way, all of these things are coming by grace. 

The disciples and all the crowd who receive these things are being given the name of Jesus, the power in Jesus, the unity as the people of Jesus, not because of anything they had done. It’s a gift—a wonderful, indescribable gift flowing from a generous God where they come to realize that in spite of all the wrong they have done, all the mistakes they made they are forgiven. More than that, they are loved, they are secure. The pouring out of God’s Spirit was a pouring out of his grace.

This is why sometimes in Acts when it talks about the power of the Spirit at work we are told that “Great grace was upon them all.” 

This is what Babel was so tragically missing. Human instinct is to think it’s our job to climb up to God take control and be like God. But the reality is that God has come down to us and desires to share everything with us: to share his love, to share his wisdom, to share his beauty, all through Jesus, by the power of the Spirit—to share it with all who ASK.

This is why Jesus has them wait. So that the disciples could learn to turn from self-reliance and instead utterly depend on and rest on God’s grace. 

And this isn’t just about them. This is about us. This is our origin story. We need to understand that our beginning is not the apostles first doing something awesome after Jesus rose, some massive building project or worldwide evangelism campaign or military crusade. No, the church begins with a bunch of people hanging out in a room, and basically doing nothing besides waiting on God in his own timing go give. And did God ever give!

To me this is one of the easiest truths in all of Christianity to lose sight of, to forget. The tendencies of Babel still come so naturally: you and I still regularly can fall into the trap of thinking the solution to our problems is if we take more control. And then when we fail to believe there’s no hope for us.

But that’s a lie. Your hope and mine is not in our hard work, our cleverness, our ability. It’s in the fact that we have a God who delights to give to the undeserving like you and me. A God who in his love gave his Son, and through his Son gives us joy and wholeness and even power. And the more that we understand this the more we will find ourselves praying, and watching, and waiting.  Let’s do that now.