About This Sermon
On the evening of June 5th, 1944, men of the French Resistance huddled around illegal radios in farmhouse cellars across occupied France — waiting. For four years they had been hiding weapons, memorizing maps, and staying ready for a signal that hadn’t come. Then at 11:15 PM, the BBC broadcast the second half of a Paul Verlaine poem: “Blessent mon coeur d’une langueur monotone.” That was the call. Within hours, an underground army was in motion.
Acts 2 opens the same way. One hundred and twenty men and women. Ten days of waiting in Jerusalem under orders from the risen Christ to stay put. And then — at the appointed hour, not a moment early, not a moment late — a sound from heaven that nobody could stop.
This Sunday we open Acts 2:1–13 and ask: Why did the Spirit arrive the way He did — loudly, publicly, unmistakably? What does it mean that the first thing the Spirit did was cross every language barrier and open every mouth? And what does it demand of us today?