St. John’s United Church of Christ
May 11, 2008
A Sermon by the Rev. John Krueger
Filled With New Wine Acts 2:1-13
I have always been envious of people who are fluent in more than one language. In the course of my studies I have taken Latin, German, Greek and Hebrew. I can get by in German for a sentence or two, if I think it all through before speaking, but that is about it.
In 1989 Pat and I took a trip to Germany, Poland, the Soviet Union and three of the Scandinavian countries. Our guide was from Albania, the bus driver from Belgium, and although both spoke a number of languages they discovered that it was Italian that proved to be the language they both could use most fluently with the most vocabulary. What a gift, to be able to communicate with people and share important information no matter where you are.
We just returned from the countries that once were united in the country of Yugoslavia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia/Herzegovina, and Slovenia. There is a common Slavic base to the languages used in each country but each has a distinctive way of speaking. Our guide was amazing, being fluent no matter where we went. What a gift, to be understood, to speak, to use language to connect with people who share this earth with us.
The text for this Pentecost Sunday is that first Pentecost, the gathering of people in Jerusalem for a Jewish holy day that became the birthing of the Christian Church. This cosmopolitan gathering of people from all of the corners of the known world began to hear something of God’s intervention in Jesus of Nazareth. Somehow that message overcame language barriers and they could understand something wonderful had happened.
The impediments what usually keep us apart and make us suspicious of each other were overcome by this ability to relate and understand. Instead of being identified by where we were born or where we were living, they are united in hearing the Good News of the Gospel. God has done something unusual, something great, something history-changing, and we want you to know about it – and they could! Some people are just amazed, perplexed, dumbfounded, struggling to understand what is going on. Others adopt the easier position of scoffing, sneering, dismissing what they could not understand out of hand by saying, “They are filled with new wine.”
Most of us have experienced someone who has had too much to drink, too much alcohol to drink. My family has known the disease of alcoholism, and many others have as well. For us, being filled with new wine is not necessarily an admirable quality.
In Jesus’ day wine was the customary drink, usually in moderation, not used to produce altered states of consciousness but to provide daily liquid refreshment. Jesus talked about the expansive qualities of new wine, fresh wine, wine still in the process of becoming better wine. “Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”
Matthew 9:17
On Pentecost the first followers of the Jesus Way were so transformed that some thought they were under the influence of new wine. The caution of Jesus is important: New wine requires new containers. New Christians filled with the Holy Spirit will need to be transformed. It cannot be just business as usual, repeating the patterns of the past and the routines that so easily define us. Pentecost Christians are those who are willing to be changed, allowing God’s Spirit of renewal to reshape us into a more perfect representation of God’s intention for us.
God wants each of us to be transformed, changed, filled with the new wine of God’s Spirit. Our young people need to be encouraged to grow into the gifts that God has given them, amazing potential, not to be wasted or thrown away. Children have lives yet to be molded by God’s Spirit and there is no greater opportunity for mothers, and fathers, than to guide young lives into God’s new saints.
But the emphasis is not only on children and young people. We never outgrow our opportunities to be filled with new wine. People in mid life and people in retirement are prime candidates for God’s foolishness, being changed yet again by the new wine, God’s continuing gift of renewal.
The fruit of the vine we will share this morning at this table is the symbol of this new wine, this drink of exceptional importance. Sharing these elements of Holy Communion has sustained Christians for centuries, providing hope and nurture for those who before us have enriched the Christian community. Sharing these same elements can also enrich our lives, prodding us to live into our potential as saints in the making, dispensers of God’s gifts to others.
What if people actually became convinced that we were filled with new wine, that we were transformed people, seeking to transform God’s world? What if? What if?