I’m sure many of you remember specific things about the year 1994. One thing that stands out for me is what came to be known as the Toronto Blessing. The Toronto Blessing refers to some very curious happenings at an eccentric charismatic church that met in a large warehouse near Pearson Airport. This congregation was originally affiliated with the Association of Vineyard Churches, a network of congregations that emphasize “signs and wonders,” healings and other miraculous nature-defying phenomena. At the church by the airport these signs and wonders exploded into unprecedented religious ecstasy. Revival services were held every night of the week, beginning at 7pm and often going until the wee hours of the morning. It became a global sensation. People from all over were flying to Toronto for the chance to attend these services. An issue of Toronto Life magazine declared the Toronto Blessing to be the most outstanding tourist attraction of 1994.  

A Greek Orthodox friend of mine, who was quite skeptical of this kind of charismatic faith, convinced me to go and check it out. We weren’t so much interested in participating; we were simply going as observers. We arrived late, about 9:30pm, because we were told that’s when all the action really got underway. When we entered the massive warehouse space, which was already filled with thousands of people, it was a frenzied scene, something most Anglicans would have trouble recognizing as church. The noise was deafening—people speaking in unintelligible tongues, people rolling around in “holy laughter,” others excitedly lined up for prayer, and others who had passed out after being “slain in the Spirit.” All of it was eerie, and by 1:00am my friend and I were done.  

The hype of the Toronto Blessing continued for another year of so, and then things began to calm down. Many people who participated in the Toronto Blessing look back on that time as a new Pentecost, a revival of the same kind of thing that we’ve heard today from the book of Acts. But this past week, as I contemplated today’s readings, I concluded that the story in Acts is very different from what I observed of the Toronto Blessing. The biggest difference is that people at the Toronto Blessing were uttering random, unintelligible sounds—a kind of ecstatic speech, if you will—and it was directed to no one in particular. It was simply their own individual experience of ecstasy. The book of Acts, however, recounts real understandable languages being spoken. It was truly a linguistic marvel. We’re told that many people living in Jerusalem actually hailed from other lands, some far away, and now they were hearing their native languages being spoken by a group of Jesus followers. We’re led to assume that, up to this point, these earliest Christians had very little multilingual fluency, but Acts tells us that they now spoke in other languages “as the Spirit gave them ability.”  

What does Pentecost mean for our time? I’m pretty certain it doesn’t mean we should revive the Toronto Blessing. We could take the Acts story very literally and try to embrace a Spirit-filled life by enrolling in language courses at the local community center. But I think that misses the fundamental point. Pentecost is not so much about the languages themselves, or other phenomena like visions and prophetic insights. Instead, Pentecost is more about all those around us who might view the world differently than any one of us might—whether that’s because of their language, ethnic origin, race, age, sexual or gender identity, economic standing, faith commitment or no faith, or any other factor. The wonder of Pentecost is that God’s Spirit empowers all of us to embody the liberating Good News of Jesus in such a way that we are able to connect with others and live out Jesus’ vision of a new creation in compelling ways that we might not even imagine right now.  

This doesn’t just happen spontaneously, as though it’s a one-off event. Pentecost is an ongoing reality. And it takes work on our part. It starts with stretching ourselves beyond our comfort zones, reaching out to those different than ourselves, being aware of what makes them tick. It’s about learning their “language.”  

There are many “languages” that we could take the time to learn, but let me highlight three. The first is the language of youth, of teenagers. Youth are the generation of all things fast and digital. For instance, if we’re not tuned in to social media—at least to understand how it works—whatever divide that exists between my generation and teenagers is only going to widen. Climate change is a reality that weighs heavily on many teenagers, more so than it does on people my age. We’re still in denial, or finding ways to shift responsibility, but youth see things with far more urgency. As Greta Thunberg put it so directly, “Our house is on fire.” We need to learn this language. Before we know it, all our kids downstairs will be teenagers. That’s not lost on us here at St. Aidan’s. We’re already beginning to explore what a vibrant youth ministry might look like.  

Another “language” is that of those who have no faith commitment, who may define themselves as “spiritual” but suspicious of institutionalized religion, even antagonistic. This demographic is growing, and I’m certain that we all have family members who fall into this category. We must learn how to embody Jesus’ liberating Good News in such a way that it will be welcomed by those without any specific faith identity and without expectation on our part that they will become baptized participants in our Sunday morning services. If Anglican churches will have any future, it will be a future of decentering our Sunday morning activities. For centuries, church has been defined by what happens on Sunday, and all other activities or programs are derived from that. I’m convinced that Sunday morning needs to be reimagined as just one facet of the church’s life, with a range of other activities occurring throughout the week—activities that appeal to the doubters, even as they retain their suspicions of institutionalized religion. Can we envision this, right here at St. Aidan’s?  

Let me mention one more “language,” that of the experience of racism and white supremacy. Our city, indeed Canada as a whole, is filled with people who have endured exclusion, hostility and harassment because of the color of their skin. Some of this is blatant, but micro-aggressions are often a daily occurrence. Learning to speak the “language” of anti-racism starts with acknowledging how so many of us are implicated in the superiority of whiteness. Privilege and comfort has come at the expense of racism. We’ve begun to scratch the surface of this awareness here at St. Aidan’s. But there’s still lots more to do.  

So … while Pentecost is certainly a celebration of God’s Spirit at work within us and among us, it’s just as much a challenge to learn “languages” we don’t know so well, to communicate God’s love and justice to all in new ways that we must be open enough to explore. We don’t do it alone. The lesson of Acts is that the earliest Christians were always together. And so in our day it is through our life together that God’s Spirit is poured out so that we might accomplish the work before us.