First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS
May 15, 2016
Sermon Text - Acts 2
(Note: during the reading of Acts 2, "flames" made of red, orange, and yellow ribbons that were tied to our balcony were cut loose and fluttered to the floor.)
As we begin the sermon today, I'd like to invite you to go ahead and pick up any remaining flames from the floor. For the rest of the worship service today, if you feel the movement of the Spirit....if you get a little tickled, if you have an aha moment, if you notice God, if you feel....I don't know, SOMETHING, you're invited to wave that flame around in the air. You might be the only person waving. That's okay. You might end up dancing. That's okay. Just let yourself be open to what God is doing in our midst.
Okay. Logistics aside: what's this whole Pentecost thing about? Did you think it was just for Pentecostals? Nope. The spirit of Pentecost is for all of us who are trying to follow Jesus. Pentecost is a once-a-year celebration of the movement of the Holy Spirit in our midst, a commemoration of the day the Church went public, and an opportunity to recommit ourselves to nurturing a Pentecost spirit here and now.
Before Jesus died, he promised his followers that they would not be left alone after his death. In John 14 he explains to them that God will send the Holy Spirit to teach them and remind them of everything Jesus said and did while he was on Earth. The word that gets translated into English as "Holy Spirit" there is the Greek word "Paraclete" - comforter, advocate. And so we learn that we will not be abandoned after Good Friday - instead God will do a new thing, sending the Spirit to comfort us, advocate on behalf of Jesus, and continue to teach us and help us remember.
In some parts of Christianity, the Holy Spirit is referred to as the "shy member of the Trinity" because it seems that Jesus and God get all the airtime. I don't know who you pray to when you pray...Jesus, God, the Spirit, someone else entirely. And I don't know how often you think about the Holy Spirit. I think about her pretty much every day because she is the way I most acutely feel and notice God's presence in my life. When I am down and out and need someone to wrap me in a hug, I feel God's arms through the Spirit present in a kind word or gesture from someone dear to me. When I am pumped up, excited, on top of the world, it is the Spirit's adrenaline rushing through my veins as I whoop and rejoice and give thanks for our Stillspeaking God.
And one thing I can tell you for sure: the Spirit is alive and well here at First Congregational UCC. Before I came here, I asked the members of your search committee to tell me about a particularly meaningful moment they had experienced in worship or another setting of the church - a "Holy Spirit" moment. They were all able to reflect and remember a time they had felt the Spirit moving in this place. And since I have come and joined you, I have often felt that I actually wouldn't mind if the Spirit would chill out for a few minutes or perhaps take a small vacation. The Spirit is so present here in our worship, in our shared ministry....I often feel a little out-of-control as if I'm not sure whose really in charge at all. Opportunities to love loudly pop up and we grab them. New people come through our doors and we embrace them. The Spirit moves and we do our best to grab on and follow. I experience our congregation as a Pentecost-Church...and it can be both exhilarating and disorienting.
Mostly, though, I'm incredibly thankful to be serving alongside you...you who are open to the movement of the Spirit in our midst, you who are always ready to get out there and try something a little nerve-wracking or outside of your comfort zone. I give thanks for the Pentecost-flavor that bubbles to the surface every day in our congregation.
And so....this Spirit that whispers and moves and breathes even now. Where did it come from? The Holy Spirit arrives in grand style in the 2nd chapter of Acts. It is described as a mighty wind, a violent wind....I'm guessing those of us who live on the Great Plains would already be ahead of the game if the Spirit showed up as a mighty wind again today. We're no stranger to violent gusts and the transformations they can cause.
So the Spirit arrives in a giant gust and the entire house is filled with new air: fresh oxygen for life and growth. Next comes fire. The imagery here is odd. If you have no idea what a "divided tongue of fire" looks like, you're not alone. I think this is one of those situations where no one could quite describe what happened on this mystical day, so they just did the best they could and it kind of comes out in a nonsensical way. As far as I can tell, there's no trick to the Greek here. It's literally just "tongues like fire."
So it's hard to establish a visual in my head for what's happening here, but the ramifications of the Spirit's actions are clear. The wind - the word for it in Hebrew is ruach (breath) - that same breath that blew over the water of the deep at Creation - the wind breathes new life into this gathering and then the fire comes. Fire is a refining force. Fire burns away the old and makes space for the new. Fire tests and tries and what emerges after a fire is stronger.
And so these disciples - those who followed Jesus and learned from him - now begin to live ever more fully into their role as apostles (teachers). Filled with the new, fresh breath of the Spirit, set ablaze by these mysterious flames, they begin to dream, to prophesy, to preach. They speak in words that, at first, sound a bit like gibberish....but people from all over the city begin to flock to the house because they hear their own languages being spoken. The apostles have been given the gift of relevancy! They can share their experience of God through Jesus Christ in ways that can be heard far beyond their own culture.
Peter, the head preacher of the group, stands up and begins to do his thing. He captures everyone's attention. He tells about how he believes they are living in a unique time. A time in which the old, the young, the children, those who are enslaved, and people from every walk of life will be called upon to dream aloud, share visions given to them by God, and tell bold truths that will bring about justice. He shares the story of Jesus's death and new life. And when he finishes, the people present were "cut to the heart" and wanted to act. They asked what they should do and Peter told them that they, too, could be baptized and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Peter tells them that God's extravagant love is for them, their children, for everyone everywhere....that means you and me, too, folks.
And so, here comes the water - the waters of Creation, the water that Jesus turned into wine, the water that bubbled in the Jordan as Jesus emerged after his own baptism and the Spirit descended on him like a dove....the waters of baptism.
Of those who had gathered in Jerusalem that day, about 3,000 people were baptized and devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to shared fellowship, to breaking bread together, and praying with one another.
So you can see how Pentecost has been come to be known as the "birthday of the Church." It was our debut, our initial public offering. It was the moment when the Church really solidified as something new and different and began to wrestle with what it might be like to have a real diversity of people come together to live and move and breathe and minister in the Spirit together.
Living in diversity sounds like a grand idea. But, eventually, when the fire fades and we forget how to speak one another's languages, it's a whole lot harder than it sounds, am-I-right? The folks in the Early Church were no stranger to this. Acts 2 ends with this beautiful, hunky-dory scene as they are all living together and sharing everything they own. But it doesn't last long. By the fifth chapter of Acts they are back to living in fear, some of them hoarding their possessions and all fighting over who gets to serve at table and who's in and who's out. Come, Holy Spirit, because you KNOW we still need you in our midst or we will always fall back on who's in and who's out. Sigh.
But when we are filled with the Spirit? What we are able to do in God's holy name is beyond the bounds of our wildest dreams. As Jesus said in his opening sermon in Luke:
The Spirit of God is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
To proclaim the year of God's favor. (Luke 4:17, NRSV)
That's all some pretty major stuff. And Jesus told his disciples they would carry on in his absence, doing the same through the power of the Spirit.
The disciples were really not all that different from you or me. They were trying to follow Jesus. And when they opened themselves to the power of the Holy Spirit on that Pentecost day, their worlds were rocked. They were broken clear open....filled with new breath and life, tested and refined with fire. Through the cool waters of baptism, they were baptized into a a diverse community. A community that walked together and held together, even when it seemed to be stretched to the point of breaking. And they did it all with the assurance that they were never alone. They were accompanied by an Advocate, a Comforter, the Holy Spirit.
That same Spirit accompanies us today. Breaking us wide open. Filling us with new life and breath. Testing and refining us with flames. Calling us into communities throughout our baptism. Communities that aren't always comfortable and are sometimes challenging to maintain. And doing it all so that we, like Peter, can continue to testify to the things God has done in our own lives...the ways we have been transformed and saved....and offering that hope, that new life, that transformation to others who may need it.
Thank God for Pentecost. Amen.
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