May 19, 2002
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On The Wind Pentecost Sunday Prayer: Powerful God, whose ways are beyond our knowing, we long to grow spiritually. We are thirsty for the living water you have promised to those who seek. We are eager to catch the Spirit, to be set on fire with confidence and trust to use the gifts you have given. Let Pentecost happen again in this gathering of your people. Inspire us to witness to love and prophesy in your name. Give us courage to speak of your deeds of power, and to take the risks of being disciples of Jesus. Amen. (Invocation for Pentecost Sunday, Taught by Love, Lavon Bayler, 1988 United Church Press, p.104) There are four observances in the Christian year on which the message remains the same year after year. On Christmas Sunday the message is about the birth of Christ. Palm Sunday’s readings are about the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and the beginning of Holy Week as we move to the third of the major observances at Easter. Today the message is about the fourth observance, Pentecost, which occurs 50 days after Easter.Pentecost has been called the birthday of the church because in a real sense, the church was born that day. What had been a small sect of a crucified rabbi whose followers claimed he was alive by God’s miraculous resurrection power. God gave birth to the church that day as the Holy Spirit came and made itself known in a way no one had seen before. Pentecost was not a new observance. In the Old Testament, Pentecost came 50 days after Passover. It was a time to relax and thank God for the spring harvest. Pentecost has a stewardship element to it - the first products of the field were offered to God. There was a worship element, during the season people often would renew their covenant with God. They reviewed the commitments they had made to God, and pledged themselves again to keep the promised they had made. The first Pentecost after Easter was significant because it continued the change and transformation the disciples were experiencing. Change occurs when we find ourselves in a circumstance different than what we have known before. Transformation occurs as we internalize or own the change. There was a wedding here yesterday. The young couple know that their circumstances have changed. But they will be transformed as they make the adjustment from being an engaged couple to being a married couple. Pentecost is about being changed and transformed as we are carried on the wind of the Spirit. But that does not mean that change is always smooth or that transformation always come quickly. I shared at last weeks board meeting an acronym for change developed by Karen Takos our deacon co-chair. She developed them to support colleagues on her job. Karen says change is: Chaotic Harmony Anticipating New Growth Experiences. The movement of the Spirit can at times look and feel like chaos. How else would we describe the scene. There the disciples are in one place waiting as Jesus commanded them for the Holy Spirit to come. All of a sudden there is the sound of rushing wind. If it had happened in the Midwestern United States, they might have thought a tornado was coming. In Southern California, it might have felt as if the Santa Ana winds were blowing. The Santa Ana’s are hot, high, dusty winds that blow our of the desert and become trapped in the city. On the great plains, the rushing wind might have reminded people of the Chinook winds which blow east out of the Rocky Mountains. This was no gentle breeze. It was what a friend of mine calls God’s “rough and cleansing wind” which blew through the house where the disciples had gathered in prayer. Along with the chaos of the sound of wind, there was a vision of fire, flames resting like brightly lit candles on their hands, and because the promised Holy Spirit had come, to them they began to speak. These simple Galileans were able to speak in other languages - as members here did last year - when the story was signed, read in English, German, and Spanish, all at once. It looked and sounded like chaos, and yet from that chaos came harmony. People outside the house, those who heard the noise, people gathered from all over the Jewish - Greek world for the festival heard the prayer and the praise going up and ran to see what the commotion was about and they were able to understand what was happening. God can bring harmony from chaos and did that days as the Holy Spirit made itself known. Think about that time in your life when it all felt like chaos. Too many things were coming at you at once - you couldn’t hear yourself think, the swirl of stuff around you really did feel like a tornado, the language for what you felt seemed foreign, it was not clear to you at all. But then you felt the spirit of God move into your being, and people came to you who didn’t quite know why, but they understood what you were going through, and suddenly the picture got a little clearer and what seemed like chaos became harmony and then carried on the winds of the spirit, what had caused anxiety became eager anticipation. The people then were filled with amazement. Imagine you are in that crowd. “Listen, we don’t speak the language of these Galileans, but we can in our own language hear them telling the mighty acts of God.” What did they hear? I believe they heard the disciples saying that God through Jesus Christ has kept some sacred promises. The promised Holy Spirit has come, we are not left alone. We can by our faith become living witnesses of Jesus Christ to people who do not yet know who he is. Because we trust the one who stood with people who are called to be the salt of the earth and a city on a hill, we can do the same. Our God has performed some mighty acts in our lives - here we are still living, still growing, still changing, still being transformed by our relationships with each other and with Jesus Christ, by the gift of the spirit in our lives. What a mighty God we serve. However, as we celebrate what God has done for us, while we thank God for times when what appeared to be chaos was really harmony, some will dissent. They will not understand and will not join the praise or the celebration. Among those present that Pentecost day - and maybe on this one were a few people who could only think in the worst terms. They missed the point altogether. “What have they been drinking?” Unfortunately, we live with the reality is that “the power the church proclaims as a gift of God the world explains as inebriation. The inbreaking of the Spirit is profoundly unsettling and deeply threatening to the crowd in the street, and so it must devise some explanation, some rationalization for such irrationality.” (Interpretation Series, Acts. William Willimon. Atlanta, JKP, 1988 p.30) “Look at them carrying on like that. They must be drunk.” The crowd that does not like what they are seeing can only mock and sneer. We hear them. “Look at them. They seem to believe that a multi-racial, non-fundamentalist, anti-racist, welcoming congregation can grow. They think they can serve this neighborhood and the world. Their vision is too big, they are too small, but they insist on acting like God can do anything. What is wrong with them? They must be filled with new wine.” A response is called for and it is Peter who rises to do so. Peter whose own life has been transformed comes to the door and looks at the curious crowd. No longer seized by the fear that led him to deny knowing Jesus, or the guilt that seized him afterward, he speaks. He tells them that the disciples are acting out of the gift of the Holy Spirit in their lives. They have been waiting for days for this moment, they have been prepared for it by Jesus himself. It’s not new wine, it’s a cleansing, hot, spirit filled wind. This is not early morning drunkenness, this is the prophesy fulfilled, this is the renewal of life for a young church which just for a minute seemed defeated. Joel, the prophet Peter quoted, sounds like he is talking about death, with all of those words about last days, and the moon turning to blood and so forth. But Pentecost is not about that. This spring harvest festival has become a festival of hearts and minds and souls. Pentecost is about life. “That which in the prophet’s writings appears as a prediction of destruction and death has become as Peter speaks it a declaration of new life. For Joel the signs of the outpouring of the Spirit are 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. Once 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 will be saved.’” (Texts for Preaching Year A, WJK 1995, p. 330) This same life, sudden, unmerited, irresistible, is available to us too, right now. Like those at that long ago Pentecost, we too can live in the joy of new growth experiences with God. I believe we expect good things to happen here. We are anticipating that God will do great things. We are ready for Pentecost to break out in our church and in our lives over and over again. We want to find new ways personally and as a church to experience God’s presence in our lives. Peter continued talking for a while, and at the end of the sermon, the people asked what so many of us ask as we feel that God is doing a new thing in our lives. They responded by asking, “What should we do”? (Acts 2.37) How do we respond to the movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives? Peter says, “repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. You will become a beneficiary of the promise of God, not only you, but your children will too.” (Acts 2.38). He is saying in essence, “join us. Join the church, come to the place where like-minded people gather to worship God and to offer ministry in the name of Jesus Christ. Come to the place where we can be carried on the wind of the Spirit blowing throughout all we do in this place in a way that truly inspires us and others who will see what we do, and how we do it and will be moved to join us.” Thousands responded, then and continue to respond because Pentecost is not only about feeling the Spirit, but living as if the Spirit’s presence makes a difference in our lives. They did repent, they were baptized, and then and as we have heard before, they gave themselves to the tasks of learning, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer (Acts 2.42). The church of Jesus Christ became from that day a growing community of faith and here we are in that same tradition, standing as God’s gathered and gifted people doing together what we cannot do alone. They became a living, breathing Spirit-filled church. Praise God. May we each know our own Pentecost and join ours with each other’s. Then we can use the gifts of gathering, listening, repentance, and salvation along with those that Paul mentioned in I Corinthians, and the ones that we know are in us, and put all of them to use in the church. When we do, we will be changed and we will be transformed. From chaos, harmony will emerge. Our anticipation of good and great things will bring a renewed awareness of what is possible and we grow as we embrace what is possible and do what seems impossible, embracing each new experience as we go. And the one in whom we confess our hope, the living Christ himself, will be pleased. Praise God for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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Broad
Street Christian Church
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