Saturday, Dec. 30 am

Ken Fong

Acts 2:1-47

Wearing an orange McGill University sweatshirt and a black cap that read "Canada," Ken Fong walked onto the stage amidst cheers from the crowd and shared with us about the second great kiss from God, the kiss of Pentecost.

At Pentecost the Holy Spirit of God was sent by Jesus to believers, who began shouting and praising God in languages they had never learned. Observers came to two different conclusions. Most were simply amazed and bewildered, but a few sneered and claimed that the apostles must have been drunk.

What was it about Pentecost that caused the cynics to accuse the apostles of being drunk? Drunkenness leads to loss of inhibition and self-consciousness. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit came upon the believers, and in front of a crowd of strangers, they proclaimed the wonders of God boldly and without self-consciousness. No wonder those who did not understand accused the apostles of being drunk.

According to Ken, Peter's response to the accusers was basically, "We're not drunk with new wine; we're drunk with kisses." The first kiss is the kiss of creation; the second is the kiss of re-creation, the kiss of the Holy Spirit. In the first kiss God created life; in the second "God's Son recreates us with the kiss of the Holy Spirit," bringing new life.

Pentecost was the fulfillment of what God had already promised, the pouring out of his Holy Spirit. However, God did not send the Holy Spirit merely for our own enjoyment. He sent his Spirit in conjunction with our being sent out to serve him in taking his good news all over the world. Due to the work of the Spirit, we are enabled to worship the Lord in ways that are beyond our comprehension. We are willing to go wherever God leads us, because he has anointed us with his Spirit.

Who is the second kiss for? It is for every one of God's "preloved prodigal orphans." It does not matter how young or old we are, what our gender is, or what our circumstances are. This anointing is for all who will respond to it. We must surrender our inhibitions to the will of God and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Spiritually intoxicated people do strange things. Even going to Urbana seems crazy. Students give up their Christmas vacations and pay money to travel to a bitterly cold climate, with little or no knowledge of what will happen while they are there. The same Holy Spirit poured out at Pentecost has been poured out continuously to all who believe and empowers us to do "crazy" things for God.

Many who were present at Pentecost were "cut to the heart" by Peter's words. When the gospel was revealed to them, they longed to receive that second kiss from God. "What's next?," they asked? And Peter said, "Repent, and be baptized" (verse 38). Repentance is "a turning inside-out, a radical change." When we turn to God in repentance, we do not know what will happen to us, but we can be certain that if we turn to God in this way, we will partake in God's timeless promise (verse 39), and the Spirit will spread like wildfire.

Through the Spirit, as a result of this second kiss of God, God formed the early church as a worshiping community of believers. Even outside this faith community, its members were held in high esteem, because everyone could see that there was something different about these people. God had kissed them and set them ablaze with a spiritual intoxication.

Spiritually drunk people are without inhibition; they do seemingly crazy things. Ken concluded, "We may be drunk in the Holy Spirit but in some ways it's the only way to be sober."

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