Hermeneutics and the Holy Spirit [*]

Photo of the Rev. Canon Sue Sommer by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer

The heat wave last week sent 2/3 of the Sommer family out to purchase a fan. Our air conditioning system actually cools every room in our house quite splendidly, with the one exception of Cady’s bedroom. But as it turned out, Rick and Cady ended up returning it the very next day. Seemed that the rush of a violent wind that it produced, even on “low” setting, was way too loud for the purposes of getting to sleep.

Couldn’t prove it by me. But then again, I’ve lived more years now with a hearing loss than with perfect hearing. Back in the early '80s, I contracted Swine Flu and my temperature soared to 105. I survived, but a great many of the nerves that transmit sound to my brain did not. Digital hearing aids make a huge difference, but I am nonetheless aware that there are many things which I simply do not hear. Hence, my odd habit of routinely answering questions I haven’t actually been asked.

If you’ve ever had your hearing tested, you know the drill. In my case, I sat alone in a soundproof room, listening to disembodied words through headphones. My task was to repeat the words I heard. It was a hermeneutical nightmare! Without the context of a complete sentence, without facial expression or lips to read, I couldn’t tell if the word was, “graceful” or “grateful” or “grapefruit.” I could hear sounds. But I could not interpret meaning.

Today we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. Long before Luke detailed the events we heard in our first reading, long before Christians marked the Grand Opening of the Church on that day, Pentecost was a Jewish feast day, occurring 50 days after Passover which commemorated the giving of the Law to Moses. In its even older iteration, it was a harvest festival, celebrated at the close of the harvest of spring wheat. By the time of Christ, Pentecost was one of the great pilgrimage feasts of the Jewish calendar, which meant that Jews from throughout the Diaspora would have been in Jerusalem. As Luke details it, the disciples were gathered together when the Spirit descended upon them. And they were filled with the power of God and began to speak of God’s deeds of power in languages in which they, unlettered Galilean fishermen, likely weren’t fluent.

Luke tells us that the people who heard it were bewildered. No surprise there. Imagine being in a crowd, with everyone around you talking in different languages, some of which you recognize, most of which you don’t. Then suddenly, you hear a voice speaking in your own language. You understand the words, but you are completely confused by the context. Why is this happening? And more importantly, why is that Jews from Palestine are talking for the benefit of Jews from the Diaspora? It was unprecedented, in more ways than one.  

The crowd could hear, but they could not understand.

It took Peter, of all people, to make meaning. The fullness of God’s creative and redemptive power was being unleashed on the world and because of that, everything was changed. Old loyalties, old ways of being were be shattered in real time.  He quotes the prophet Joel, reminding the people that God promised to pour out the Spirit upon all flesh. Meanwhile, we, who know Peter to be the most impulsive and clueless of the 12 disciples, are further amazed. Where did these amazing rhetorical skills come from? How was he, of all people, able to address this sophisticated, learned body of devout Jews with such authority, such fluency?

Such is the power of the Holy Spirit, giving voice to those whom we wouldn’t expect, transforming a bunch of followers into apostles who found their voice and a calling far beyond anything they could have envisioned for themselves.  

Because, you see, the transformative power  of the Holy Spirit wasn't for the benefit of the disciples. It was for the benefit of the world. The words they spoke, and the ministry of healing and restoration upon which they then embarked was not some exclusive, arrogant, I-have-the-truth-and-you-don't kind of faith, but rather, an interpretive framework for  see the world through the lens of God’s gracious love – an interpretive framework which they shared with the very people with whom they normally would have avoided.

Which brings me back to the moment when the audiologist handed me hearing aids programmed for my specific hearing deficits. The door to her office was closed, but I could hear the voices of people in the hallway. I could hear the rush of the violent wind of the ventilation system. And I heard things that I could not identify, that puzzled me, that needed interpretation.

In a few moments, Charles and Tressa will commit themselves to Christ through the baptismal covenant.  And every baptized person here will re-affirm those promises as well. One of those promises is to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ. And yet we live and move and have our being in a culture where the fastest growing religious affiliation is, “None of the Above.”  Without having the context of seeing lives transformed through the fullness of our baptismal faith, those religiously unaffiliated folks  most likely hear the words but do not understand.

And so we, like those first disciples, are called to proclamation. And like theirs, our proclamation must not simply add to a babble of competing meaningless voices, but compassionately and persuasively, in word and especially in action, make meaning of how God acts and has acted in the world around us and in our lives. And maybe not in miraculous foreign languages in the midst of a rushing wind, but certainly in ways intelligible to those whom God places in a our path day in and day out.

May we, in whom God has breathed the Holy Spirit and quickened our hearts, be makers-of-meaning in a world that hungers for life-giving interpretation, both in the words we speak and in the lives we live.

[*]  Because you were probably wondering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutics