All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Acts 2:4

The problem is that the star is now gone, ascended into heaven as stars do. So we find them here in Jerusalem, not having moved an inch since he left them. What's happened, though, is that they've been joined in Jerusalem by thousands of other Jews who have come to celebrate Pentecost, a holiday which commemorates the giving of the Law to Moses.

And that's when everything changes; when events take a most dramatic turn.

We read this passage, this account of the first Pentecost in Christian history, and we're left with one overarching question: Is this a story of incarnation or conspiracy?

I do think that is the question this story asks us to resolve. Is this a second kind of incarnation - a moment in history when God takes on human flesh for the second time?

Or is it rather the story of a divine conspiracy - a coup attempt ordered up by God, designed to overthrow the powers that be and usher in nothing short of the reign of God?

Those are admittedly big questions, but then again this is a big event. The heart of the action comes to us in just the first four verses of this chapter. Which is shockingly short when you consider what's going on here.

Listen again to what happens on that day:

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

In formal terms what we're talking about here is the advent in world history of the third member of the Trinity. In simpler terms, it's all about the coming of the Holy Spirit and the melee that follows.

So, incarnation or conspiracy?

It's got to be the former, don't you think? I mean it's got to be at least a kind of incarnation. Maybe a small "i" kind. Because there's no mistaking what happens here. In the form of the Holy Spirit, God takes on human flesh, again.

According to Luke, the author of Acts, it is the very Spirit of God that fills these women and men. And we know it's got to be God's spirit not just because the text says so, and certainly not because they're accused of being more than a little tipsy at 9:00 on the morning. We know it's God's Spirit because of what happens right after that wind blows through the house and knocks the shutters off their hinges.

This small group of bumbling, hayseed hicks from Galilee suddenly begin to act like world citizens. This bunch of cowering, powerless scaredy-cats begin to speak publicly with dynamic power. And I use that term specifically.

For the word "power" here in Greek is "dunamis," from which we get "dynamic" in English - a power that changes things. Changes lives. Changes institutions. Changes history.

And not only do they begin to speak with power, they somehow begin to speak in other languages, communicating across cultural and language barriers. They begin to preach with power so that by the end of the day 3000 people had opted to be baptized and join the team.

They began to love with power, embracing and welcoming people who looked and sounded nothing like themselves. And they began to minister with power, healing the sick and challenging the power structures of their day.

Now who does that remind you of? If you're thinking, Well, it reminds me of that first Incarnation guy, the one of capital I fame, then you would be right, for this sounds exactly like that guy.

So, yes, this has got to be a kind of incarnation.

But it's gotta be a kind of conspiracy, too, don't you think? Especially when you consider what that word actually means. Con-spire, to breath with.

Church life in general and the NT in particular is full of these "with" words. "Congregate" -- with flock , that is, to gather together, usually for a purpose.

"Compassion" to suffer with . "Companion" with bread -- the person with whom you share the things that sustain you.

And here, now, "conspire" -- to breathe with .

It's a shocking ideas, isn't it? That God would choose to breathe with, to share God's very own breath, with the likes of Peter and James and John, and maybe with us, too.

But we need to be clear here. This is not like in Genesis when God pinched Adam's nostrils and breathed the breath of life, the ruach of God, into humanity.

No, indeed, this is more like Katrina - more like a hurricane than like CPR. Which is why Pentecost is such an awkward day for Presbyterians, for church-going folk in general, I think.

After all, we're not a people who make a fuss. If we dance, we certainly don't do so in church. If the wind blows, we shut the windows. We like things done decently and in order - well, most of us do, most of the time.

And there ain't nothin' decently and in order about Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit. As I think about the hurly burly of this day, I'm always reminded of this great quote from the writer Annie Dillard:

"Does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are [filled with] children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats . . . to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews" (from Teaching a Stone to Talk).

We'd like to think that God is big and powerful, and that we gather here Sunday after Sunday to worship, perhaps even encounter, or be encountered by, this great big God.

But at the end of the day, all this nonsense about the Holy Spirit, this whole business about speaking in tongues and shoutin' hallelujah - that's for the folks down the road a spell, isn't it? That's for the snakehandlers and the holy rollers shoutin' and stompin in those little bitty churches up in the mountains.

Yes, maybe it is for them. And maybe it's for us. And maybe it's for the whole world.

See, here's the problem. Progressive-minded folk - and I think it's safe to say most of us come from that point of view - progressive minded folk, we don't just find Pentecost awkward.

Some of us find what follows to be equally awkward. According to this story, many different people from many different cultural contexts - all Jews as it turns out, but still from many different countries and cultures - they all agree to be baptized here.

Whatever's going on with the disciples, whatever is filling them with this power, they want a piece of that action. So much so that some 3000 of them agree to join the team.

And then the movement spreads still further. It spreads out so as to include Roman centurions and Ethiopian eunichs. And then it spreads still further, out to Samaria and the ends of the known world.

Nowadays most of us think that the business of spreading this faith of ours, of evangelizing the world, is best left to the Baptists. Even more than that, doesn't that idea kind of offend us? Shouldn't we leave people and cultures alone, to experience God in the ways that are best for them?

Well, yes, we probably should.

But imagine yourself - yes, you yourself - imagine yourself approaching a peasant family in Calcutta, members, say, of an untouchable caste. And assuring them, as hard as this may be to believe, that in God's eyes, they are every bit as important, they have just as much value, as the ruler of India.

Or imagine yourself approaching a factory worker in Honduras. Let's say one of the many young women who work in those sweatshops where they make shirts for Banana Republic or Gap for, like, 19 cents a day. The kind of place - and this has actually been documented - where the floor supervisors make the female workers take birth control, so that they don't become pregnant and unproductive.

Imagine approaching this young woman and telling her the story about the Jews in Egypt. The story of God's chosen people, about how they themselves lived under this same kind of economic oppression but that God liberated them from such servitude and God wants her to be liberated too.

That's a pretty far-fetched scenario, huh? Not likely to happen in a million years.

Except that it did. Just this kind of thing actually happened not too long ago. A church - a Presbyterian church somewhere in Brooklyn, I believe - appears to have become possessed by Pentecostal power because they did this very thing.

One of their members read somewhere about how these major clothing chains exploit their workers. And so he and his family asked their church to do something about it.

And so they did. They marshaled their dunamis - their Pentecostal power - and they made a difference.

As I recall the story [which I first heard on NPR some years ago] a delegation from this church went down to Honduras and made surprise inspections of these factories.

And then they flew to San Francisco and met with some of the executive officers of the Gap, and reported what they found in their factories. They then threatened to organize a national boycott unless these officials did something to improve the working conditions for their employees.

And you know what? It worked. These ordinary people, not all that different in the end from Peter and James and John, or from you and me, they made a difference. Filled with Pentecostal faith and Pentecostal power, they made sure these vulnerable workers were paid a fair wage and were protected from abuses like having to take birth control.

* * *

Before the wind came up on that first Pentecost, before the hurricane blew in and the flames leaped to life, 120 women and men were gathered together trying to figure out what they heck they were gonna do now that their leader was gone, now that the light seemed to have gone out of their program.

But then the wind did blow, and the flames danced. And by the end of the day 3000 people signed on. And I'll bet they did so cause they saw in these people the same thing they saw in that first incarnation; they saw love embodied - a love for humanity, a love for God and a love for peace and justice.

Only now they saw it embodied not just in one man, one human being; they saw it embodied in a community, in what later came to be known as the Church.

And so these citizens of many nations from many different cultures all joined the team. And on this special day they became one people under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.