On Pentecost Sunday, this sermon considered a painting by the artist Sawai Chinnawong. Chinnawong’s painting and life story helped us to see Pentecost as a story that is at once unsettling and empowering. Listen now to this sermon.
Second Scripture Reading—Acts 2: 1-18
I want to begin this morning with a question, “If you were to paint a picture of Pentecost taking place right now in this sanctuary, how would you paint it?” This might be an almost uncomfortable idea at first because this could mean imagining that a tongue of fire is currently resting on top of every one of your heads. That would be a more literal artistic interpretation of the scripture, but there is another way of approaching this artistic task. One way is to first realize that the book of Acts was written in the language and metaphors of its time. In the cultural world of Acts, a tongue of fire was a visual metaphor for the divine presence. Thus, if we want to translate the meaning of Pentecost into our world today, we might want to choose a visual metaphor that is more in keeping with our own time and place. I dare say that for many of us the light streaming through our stained glass skylight metaphorically represents the presence of God shining upon us. If we were to paint a picture of Pentecost, we might instead choose to replace the divided tongues of fire mentioned in our scripture with a burst of sun rays streaming down upon us.
Once we have completed that part of the painting, the next part to paint is the effect of those light rays on each one of us. Do the rays make us look upward as if angel has appeared or do we look around to enjoy how the light has brightened the room? Do the rays make us smile with wonder and awe or do they make us shrink in fear and fright? Do we become so filled the Holy Spirit that we stand with arms raised or do we fall down as if stunned or possessed? Perhaps, we might open our mouths to speak or sing? Or, perhaps, our mouths go silent as if we were suddenly struck dumb by the power of it all? Or, maybe our faces and bodies look like they always do during a worship service. Because this is such a spiritually happening place, every Sunday is like Pentecost! We are always filled to the brim with the presence of the divine. Hopefully, in your picture, everybody is at least awake. There are countless choices we could make for how we imagine the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives on Pentecost.
An internationally regarded artist named Sawai Chinnawong once did something very similar to what we just did in painting Pentecost. He imagined Pentecost in his home country of Thailand. He decided to keep the flames of fire in his painting, but he put a twist on it. In keeping with a culture that has historically been dominated by Buddhism, he placed a large flame in the center of the picture in the very place that Thai paintings traditionally place the Buddha. Ten adults and a child look upward to the flame with expressions of compassion and delightful gratitude. The open palms of their hands are facing upward as well. One disciple touches his index finger to his thumb to suggest a gesture of wise teaching. The hand gestures combined with a sense that they are dancing around the flame evokes Buddhist paintings of flying deities and holy men. The bright red and gold that dominate the painting are also reminiscent of traditional Buddhist paintings.
In a way Chinnawong’s art not only depicts the Pentecost experience but embodies the Pentecost experience. Like those gathered for Pentecost, the message of his faith can now be received in his own native tongue. Furthermore, there is another way in which his work evokes the original Pentecost and that’s in its potential to disturb others. Chinnawong’s art has been known to unsettle both Buddhists and Christians. For Buddhists, it is unsettling to see the Buddha replaced as the object that instills holiness, enlightenment, and the sense of being fully alive. For Christians, it is unsettling to see their faith expressed through symbols long associated with another religion. The cultural dynamics that Chinnawong faced might not have been that different than those at the Jewish festival of Pentecost depicted in Acts. Imagine how those gathered on that ancient occasion reacted to the idea that the Holy Spirit was not only falling upon Jews and proselytes but also Cretans and Arabs. Elsewhere in the Bible, we are told that the Cretans were “liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons.”
In a similar set of circumstances, Chinnawong himself has had to live in the tension of Pentecost. Earlier in his life he even stopped painting when the pastor who baptized him at age 23 told him that his artwork was Buddhist and that he needed to completely change his approach to painting now that he was Christian. With his painting career brought to a stop, Chinnawong went to seminary. He didn’t return to painting until he attended a lecture by a Sri Lankan artist that featured Asian examples of Christian art. One might imagine how liberating it must have felt for Chinnawong to discover that he could embrace the part of him that was Thai while also embracing the part of him that was Christian.
We might often think of Pentecost as being a moment in which we say, “Wow, look at all these people of different cultures and nationalities embracing each other.” But, we might also think about it as a moment in which one says, “Wow, I can actually embrace that part of me that I used to keep repressed and hidden. Wow, I can be proud of ethnic heritage.” Or, “Wow, I can embrace that I am gay or transgender.” Or maybe, we say, “Wow, I can embrace the part of me that’s funny as a clown or as serious as a duck.” The poet Robert Bly once talked about the somewhat Jungian idea that we are all born with a “360-degree personality,” but as we grow up we are taught or shamed into putting away slices of that pie. On Pentecost, we might discover we can pull those pieces back out. That might be a comforting idea, but an unsettling idea might be this: What if part of the Pentecost experience was saying, “Wow, I can be a Christian and openly embrace the part of me that’s Democrat or Republican.” Or, “Wow, I can be a Christian who openly likes Obama or doesn’t like Obama.” Oh, you might be going a little too far with that one, Brooks. You’re ruining my Pentecost picture of our church if you start including everybody like that. Some of us might want a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it comes to certain political persuasions. “You can be a right wing libertarian or a left wing anarchist. Just don’t tell me about it.”
It might seem unsettling to think about the Cretans among us or to realize that others might view us Cretans if they only knew, but the story of Pentecost is also a story of empowerment and possibility. As our scripture says, when everyone starts speaking in different languages, the conversation is about “God’s deeds of power.” Maybe one of those deeds of power is that we are all in this together and that might seem a bit crazy to some. It seemed a bit crazy for those watching the apostles. Remember others thought they were drunk on new wine—wine that had a higher alcohol content than the more vintage vinegar flavors. Peter, however, sets them straight. It’s too early in the morning to be drunk. (Maybe in a few hours, but not yet!) Peter also explains that what people saw among these odd souls was precisely what the prophet Joel spoke about when he spoke of those who dream of a world to come.
What’s additionally important to remember is that this crazy, diverse bunch of dreamers was doing a dress rehearsal for what is to come. As a whole, Acts is the story of the Jesus movement spreading from Jerusalem to Rome. It’s the story of a movement that expands from land to land regardless of who inhabits it, regardless of their language or nationality. What if we thought of Pentecost today as being the beginning of our story? What if we thought of this is church as our rehearsal stage? Or, perhaps, you might prefer a different metaphor: our training ground, our experimental lab, our flight simulator. Whatever the case may be, we go out into the world better equipped, better trained, better prepared for life. The image on the front of your bulletin this morning might help you to think about this. Our denomination provided this image unfortunately without any additional information about it—who painted it or where it is from—but what I like about it is that instead of flaming tongues on top of everyone’s head, each person in this painting has a lit candle in their hands. I like to imagine us as carrying candles with us as we leave this place. We leave here knowing that the presence of God is with us and that presence can help bring light into the broader world. We are all bearers of light, and today is just the beginning of our story. Amen.