"Your Hair is on Fire!"

One of the oldest advertising tricks in the book is the “before and after” picture. Show something the way it looked before a new product was applied to it and then show the same thing, now dramatically changed and improved, after applying the product, and, by golly, you’ve got a sale!

I had an object lesson in this basic truth about twenty years ago. My wife and I moved to Miami and bought a house in Coconut Grove. Now when you think of Coconut Grove you think of bright colors, palm trees, and tropical views, right? Well the house we bought was painted dark tan and had chocolate brown shutters. The inside looked the same – walls painted dark colors, dark wallpaper, brown shag carpeting, heavy brown drapes.

The owners were from upstate New York where brown must be the favorite color – Plattsburgh, not Rochester – and their house was decorated the way you would expect to find a northern house decorated, not a Miami house.

So we pulled up the carpeting and threw it out along with all the curtains and drapes. Then we just painted the interior white, and the outside we painted a pale peach color with white shutters. That’s all we did – nothing structural – just a little paint. And a year later we sold that house at a net profit of $30,000.

The “before” picture said “northern old house” and the “after” picture said “Miami new house.” Everyone was amazed at the transformation. It didn’t look like the same house!

Pentecost was like that, only more so. In fact, I want to suggest that the “before and after” pictures of the disciples of Jesus was the most dramatic transformation that anyone ever has ever undergone in human history, and that this transformation actually altered the course of human history. I say this because without this transformation, Christianity would have quickly died out as a marginal Jewish sect.

We must remember that these were the very same disciples who just a few weeks before had fled in terror when Jesus was arrested. And then they hid until the dust cleared, well after the resurrection. They were also the same disciples who earlier in the gospels never seemed to understand a blessed thing Jesus was talking about and could not seem to grasp who he really was.

And now they are, quite literally, on fire! They are no longer afraid. They are no longer inarticulate about Jesus. They are no longer confused about who Jesus is. They get it! They really get it. And because they get it, they can’t contain themselves. Instead of hiding in the upper room where they’ve been for weeks, they burst out into the streets and begin to tell everyone the amazing story of Jesus – the man who was, and is, actually God who chose to share our humanity with us, to share our lives with us, motivated only by a desire to draw us close to himself and to share the life of God with us. By the coming of the Holy Spirit to them the disciples suddenly recognized everything about the reality of Jesus and had to go tell the whole world the good news. Their hair was on fire!

They went on from there to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the entire Mediterranean basin and tradition holds that one of them, Thomas the Twin, even went as far as India with the gospel. And, far from being the cowards they once were, most of them willingly faced torture and death rather than pay allegiance to the Roman emperor instead of to the God of Israel and his Son Jesus. This was an amazing transformation!

So what came over these people? What changed them?

What changed them was the very Spirit of God, the breath of God, the wind of God. It was the inbreaking of the Holy Spirit that made them realize that it was all true – everything that Jesus had told them and promised them was for real.

And for us this “before and after” transformation is a powerful testimony that something incredible really did happen to them. That’s why their hair was on fire.

Well, what about you? Has something incredible happened to you? Could your hair be on fire? Could your hair be on fire without your knowing it? Could you be filled with the Holy Spirit so that you can build up Christ’s church in this broken, messed up world, in this world where the good news of Jesus Christ is needed more desperately than ever before?

Earlier we heard the first lesson from the Acts of the Apostles read not only in English but in other languages as well. This is a common practice in parish churches since the reading tells of how the disciples, now filled with the Holy Spirit, are understood by everyone in their own language. Now there’s a powerful symbol in how we just experienced this custom here today, and I’m sure most of you noticed it.

In most parish churches when this is done you’re likely to hear languages like French, German, and, most common of all, Spanish. But here today we heard the lesson read in such exotic languages (at least to us, that is) as Hebrew, Arabic, and Turkish as well as in the more commonly heard languages of French, German, and Spanish. “Well, of course,” you might say, “this is Princeton, after all!” And that’s precisely my point. You have been given extraordinary gifts of intelligence and education. You have been raised up to be leaders in whatever you do. To those to whom so much is given, much is also expected and required.

Your hair is on fire!

In the passage we heard from Acts there is an obvious connection between the inbreaking of the Holy Spirit and the imperative to proclaim God’s good news. Proclamation is the end; the Holy Spirit is the means. But there’s even more. The scholar Robert W. Wall points out that “…Luke’s symbolism of the Spirit’s fiery presence not only signifies the power to speak the word of God effectively but also to think about God in fresh and ‘inspired’ ways (New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. X, 54).”

They all go together, don’t they? The Holy Spirit suddenly breaking into our lives, thinking about God in fresh and inspired ways, proclaiming this amazing reality to others.

Many of you have worshipped here faithfully on Sunday nights. Many of you have prayed together and enjoyed good food and one another’s company on Wednesday evenings at Procter House. Many of you have given of your time to serve others in the name of Christ while you were here at Princeton. And many of you took the time to go more deeply into the Bible and Christian traditions by taking on Bible study or confirmation class. Many of you have developed an intentional, regular prayer life. You have gathered around God’s table week after week and tasted the sweetness of Christ’s Body and Blood.

The cumulative effect of all that is that your hair is on fire.

There’s a great scene from a Seinfeld episode that first aired in 1992 when Kramer is smoking a cigar. Somehow, the cigar ignites his hair and as he realizes his hair is on fire he jumps around the room trying desperately to put the fire out. A very funny scene.

I want to suggest to you that your hair is on fire in ways you cannot even realize. And I want further to suggest that the last thing you should be thinking about is how to put the fire out.

Instead, let it burn brightly. Let others see, if not by word, then by your actions, what your encounter with the risen Christ means to you. As I have said to you many times, each of you is on the hook for ministry. By virtue of your baptism, your extraordinary gifts of education and intelligence, and by virtue of the place you will hold in society as leaders, you are on the hook to exercise a ministry of service and witness to the world – a ministry rooted in a relationship with the risen Christ. Your task now is to prayerfully discern what form and shape your ministry will take.

As I mentioned earlier, quoting from Luke’s gospel, “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded (Luke 12:48).” One of the things that is required of you is proclamation. After Jesus relieved a man of a demon earlier in Luke’s gospel he said to the man “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” Then Luke records. “So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him (Luke 8:39).”

Perhaps you have not had demons from which Jesus has relieved you, although maybe, in a way, some of you have. But it is clear that God has done much for every one of you and has given you much. It is not enough simply to be thankful. You are required – and I now charge you – to turn your gratitude into action, into proclamation, in word and deed, that testifies to the loving power of our God made known to us in Jesus Christ.

The message of Pentecost is that God’s Spirit is with you and in you to build you up and to sustain you in all you do so that as you go forth from this place you can do all that God expects of you.

As you go out from this place, may God breathe upon you and may that same Spirit of God remain with you forever.

Amen.