A Harvest – Acts 2:14, 36-41

A text – Acts 2:14, 36-41

¹⁴ But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Fellow Jewsand all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say.

³⁶ “Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

³⁷ Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” ³⁸ Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹ For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” ⁴⁰ And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” ⁴¹ So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added.

A reflection:

Picture the scene. It is the traditional Pentecost Festival, the Festival of Harvest in Jerusalem, when lots of Jews came from neighboring cities and countries to the temple to worship. It happened every year, exactly seven weeks from the second day of Passover. People brought items from their fruit and grain harvest to the temple to offer to God. Since Jesus’s death and resurrection had occurred less than two months earlier, Jerusalem was probably still abuzz with the stories, and the authorities were probably still trying to squelch those stories. A crowd had gathered where the disciples were.

There were so many people from different countries present that in order for Peter to be understood, the Holy Spirit had to perform what some scholars call a linguistic miracle – the disciples speaking in tongues – in order to be understood by the gathered crowd. Once that had happened, our text for this week begins. Professor of Preaching, Dr. Jerusha Matsen Neal from Duke Divinity School, offers this word of interpretation:

“Peter does not mince words contrasting the action of God with the action of humanity. ‘God made him both Lord and Messiah,’ Peter says, ‘this Jesus whom you crucified’ (verse 36). It is important to note that Peter’s you is addressed to those gathered from many countries and social locations. Weeks have passed since Jesus’ crucifixion. This Pentecost crowd is not the same crowd that had chanted, ‘Crucify him!’ (Luke 23:21) during Holy Week. And yet, these people do not justify themselves. They do not bluster about who is really to blame or wash their hands of responsibility. Their hearts are convicted of complicity. Given our contemporary proclivity to avoid accountability of any sort, the crowd’s response seems as much a sign that the Spirit of the Crucified One is in their midst as the disciples’ speaking in tongues!”

The Holy Spirit is working overtime at this festival of harvest – creating understanding of language and creating understanding of human beings’ participation in the evils of the world, leading to repentance and baptism on a scale that John the Baptizer could only have imagined in his wildest dreams. I am sure that John and his cousin Jesus were present in some way that morning as Peter preached and his hearers allowed themselves to be affected and changed. What an amazing day. The crowd numbered in the thousands. And since they were from everywhere, the host of believers was about to multiply again once they returned home. I am thinking of Jesus’s observation when he sent out the 70 to towns and places he intended to visit: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” The Lord brought the harvest of folks to the Festival of Harvest, placed the disciples in their midst, and on that one day began the journey of the gospel to you and to me. It’s our origin story. Our lives of faith begin right there.

A prayer:

Lord God, thank you for loving us. Thank you for the Holy Spirit and Peter and the disciples, for telling the story. Thank you that 3000 people listened to it and took it in and were baptized. Thank you for the thousands who came after who brought it to us. Keep the story at work in our lives too, bringing it to more people. Amen.