Pentecost, this day we call the birthday of the church, was in the times when Luke and Acts were written, celebrated fifty days after the Passover Sabbath. It was a significant festival in the life of Israel.

Then the Feast of Pentecost, or weeks, as it is known in the Old Testament, marked the end of the celebration of the spring harvest, during which devout people thanked God for God’s gracious and bountiful blessings. It also was the beginning of a period, lasting until the Festival of Booths in the fall, when the first fruits of the field were given to God. And among some devout people the Feast of Weeks was a time of covenant renewal.

In the church, we know Pentecost now as the time when the Holy Spirit came upon the gathered disciples and the church of Jesus Christ was born and began to grow. We celebrate Pentecost fifty days after Easter, and we know that as we live after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our spirits are being renewed daily.

We can also celebrate that the first Pentecost after the resurrection of Jesus continues the story we heard last week when Jesus instructed his disciples, before he went up to heaven to wait in Jerusalem until they felt the full force of the Holy Spirit. They needed that Spirit and we need it too. We get tired, the Holy Spirit energizes us; we get bored, the Holy Spirit keeps things interesting; we can let our emotions get the better of us, the Holy Spirit helps us keep our perspective. Our spirit’s are thwarted but we can know the truth of the song that declares that "sometimes that we feel discouraged, and think our work’s in vain, but then the Holy Spirit revives our soul again" (African American spiritual, Chalice Hymnal, 1985. #501).

Imagine you are one of the twelve disciples in an upper room in Jerusalem. People from everywhere Jewish people have gone to live are in town for the Feast of Pentecost. You share their heritage and you share their praise to God for a good harvest. And you share this one more thing with your companions. You have named Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of your life, you believe he will save and redeem the world, and your highest loyalty and obedience are to him.

Think of those disciples then and of us now, as Christ’s own ministry team, and think of yourselves as members of that team, waiting for the Holy Spirit to come in a way it never has before. As the Spirit came upon them, the disciples felt the power of the living God and the risen Christ. William Willimon puts it this way:

"The community, rather than taking matters into its own hands, getting organized and venturing forth with banners unfurled, has withdrawn to wait and to pray. The next move is up to God. It is up to the risen Christ to make good on his promise to bestow the Spirit and to restore the kingdom to Israel. In a sense this is what prayer is – the bold, even arrogant effort on the part of the community to hold God to God’s promises.

In praying, ‘thy kingdom come, thy will be done,’ we pray that God will be true to himself and give us what has been promised…and praying that we shall receive the Spirit, the kingdom, power, and restoration is in fact the deepest humility, the church’s humble realization that only God can give the church what it desperately needs" (Interpretation series. Acts. William Willimon. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1988, p.27).

God has given us what we need, we have received a four-fold gift from the Spirit this Pentecost Sunday. First, we have the gift of reward. The Spirit rewards our patience. "Wait", he said, "right here, right now. Wait for the Holy Spirit to come to you. Then while we wait, the wind blows in ways that sweeps away every barrier between us and the very breath of God. Claim the promise. Let the wind of the spirit blow. The fire rests, heating up our souls, burning away all that keeps away from each other. Let the fire of the Spirit glow. We have been waiting and today the promise is to those disciples and we disciples have been fulfilled.

Christ Jesus promised power when the Spirit has come upon us (Acts 1.8); At Pentecost, the gift of the Holy Spirit fulfills the promise (2.1-13).

He promises that they and we will be his witnesses in Jerusalem; the preaching of Peter and others in Jerusalem brings about the witness there (2.14-8.3).

We are witnesses right where we are in every way we share his good news – welcoming the stranger, sharing at the communion table, through a firm handshake, a warm hug, through laughter and tears, with open hearts and minds, by how we treat the haves of our world and the have-nots, and the sometimes I’m doing great, other times, not so much. Every time we proclaim by word and deed that we belong to Jesus Christ and are led by the Spirit of God we bear witness to the life of Christ in us.

He promised that our witness would spread to all the world; persecution in Jerusalem forced Christians into Judea, and the mission to Samaria soon followed (8.4-25).

They weren’t stopped by hard times, unpopularity or people who just didn’t want to hear it, they moved out beyond where it was comfortable and familiar to where there were people ready to hear their good news.

And he promised that the witness of the faithful would stretch all the way around the world and so it has. Today we share this Christian faith of ours with people of every race, nation, and continent around the world. The book of Acts tells of the spread of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the ‘ends of the earth’ and to make point, tells the story of the Ethiopian, who comes from a great distance (8. 26-40), and Cornelius, the first acknowledged Gentile convert (10.1-11.18), and to the arrivals of Paul in Rome (28.14). From our doorsteps to the end of the earth by the power of the Holy Spirit, the good news is shared and celebrated and Jesus Christ is praised. The spirit fulfilled the promise.

As it did, it must have been some sound coming from that room, because all of those people from all of those places, people hearing these Galileans speaking in Arabic, and Farsi, Greek and Latin came to see what was going on.

The answer lies in the second gift we receive. The Spirit releases our ministry team’s power. Emboldened by the Spirit, freed from fear, utterly undeterred by accusations of being drunk at 9 o’clock in the morning, Peter, himself redeemed and forgiven, refreshed and ready explains it for them.

"What you see and hear is the Spirit at work. What is happening is not inebriated babble. It is the indwelling of the Spirit of God." It is the Spirit that makes understandable all of these different languages, it makes liberal and conservative Christians, the mega church evangelical and the small mainline Protestant believer look beyond their own point of view. Why? Because this wind blown, fire baptized Spirit transcends the differences so important to us, and not so important to God.

Peter knows that his power comes from God and he finds his voice and says that what has broken loose is what the prophet Joel said would happen. Men and women, no matter their position in society are speaking of what God has done for them.

Then the prophet Joel’s vision of the coming Spirit was fear filled. But in Peter’s patient, powerful speech, those same words were faith-filled. "For Joel the signs of the outpouring of the Spirit area a prelude to disaster, but for Peter these wonders have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ, himself the greatest of God’s wonders, and their purpose, Christ’s purpose, is nothing less than the redemption of humankind. Again the Spirit has invaded human life in ways that shatter old expectations. It is not death that is the aim of the Spirit’s visitation, but new life – sudden, unmerited, irresistible new life! ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved’ (v. 21 in Texts for Preaching, Year B. p. 348).

We can hear the voices too. Listen. There is that hard working parent, often struggling to get by who is praising God for the children who are a constant source of joy. If we listen carefully enough and look closely enough at the face of someone nearby, we will see a friend, at one point sick in mind and body who is standing before God whole and healed. Can you hear that special voice raised up, the one that was scared into silence convinced that no one cared to listen? Now she has courage, now he has confidence, now they can declare for themselves that God’s Spirit has come upon her and she will be silent no more! The Spirit has empowered them. Praise be to God.

The third gift comes as the Spirit refines our purpose. It was simply to tell the story, the story of how God came into the world in human form, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, who lived and loved, taught and healed, changed lives and changed the world. The disciples’ purpose was to make of this harvest festival a salvation festival. It is our purpose too because Pentecost means that the joy of Easter is now given to all believers to proclaim. God reigns, Christ lives, the Spirit moves among us. They waited and we wait. Their patience was rewarded, their power released, their purpose refined and so it is for us.

The church was born those fifty days after the resurrection and it continues to find its life as we find our lives through the Spirit moving in us today. We are witnesses to all that Christ has done for us. It is up to us now to tell the story, to live the story, to be the story as we teach and learn, worship and work and care for each other, reach out and act as good stewards of this building and all of our resources, and treat each other and ourselves as the beloved daughters and sons that we are. This we can do.

Let the Spirit move among us. Let the wind blow, let the fire consume us until we explode in power and purpose and turn our world upside down. Then what our reading from Romans suggest will be true. We will know that "in hope we are saved, that the Spirit helps us in our weakness, intercedes for us, and guides us into all truth. We can know that God seeks to restore us to the fullness of life, to offer us hope, to assure us of our worth and value. And we feel the flames of God’s love resting on us, empowering us to love and serve in Christ’s name" (Gathered in Love. Lavon Bayler. Cleveland. United Church Press. 1996, p.105).

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Dr. LaTaunya M. Bynum
Senior Pastor