"The Promise of Pentecost"
Acts 2:1-21
One of my
Lutheran colleagues, Nadia Bolz Weber, was the mission developer for House for All Sinners and Saints, an urban
liturgical community in Denver, Colorado.
Nadia told us that a few years ago a
neighboring church gifted House for All Sinners and Saints a full set of gently
used paraments. Their church—a new
church development-- is like every other church’s little sister, so they get a
lot of hand-me-downs. As a group of them
went through the beautiful altar cloths, they came to the red set and found one
with an image of a descending dove with completely crazy eyes and claws that
looked like talons.
As Nadia said, “Yep.
It was as though the Holy Spirit was a raptor.”
“Man, someone said. We
can’t use this one! It makes The Holy
Spirit look dangerous!”[1]
Well, the story we
just heard from Acts is no sweet, sentimental birthday story. At the so-called birth of the church, there was
no organ. There were no pews fastened to
the floor. There were no greeters
handing out bulletins. There was little
resemblance to what the church has become in the early part of the 21st
century.
On Pentecost, the disciples were gathered together in
Jerusalem, on the day of Pentecost-- fifty days after Jesus was raised from the
grave., waiting and hoping for the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise: “You will
receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in
all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
What was it that happened on that
Day of Pentecost? Although this holy day
is often called the birthday of the church, we’re not celebrating the birth of
an organization today. Pentecost is the
story of how the church came alive by the power of the Holy Spirit. On that day, followers of Jesus Christ received
the power to take the gospel to the streets there in Jerusalem... and eventually throughout the earth.
What happened that day was such a
powerful experience that the people who were there had to turn to dramatic metaphor
to describe what happened. They said it
was like a fire falling on them. A
sense of community and understanding transcended all the differences of
language of those who were gathered there.
On that day, a mighty wind from
heaven blew the fire of the Holy Spirit into those followers who were gathered
together. When something like tongues of
fire danced over the heads of the apostles, they seemed to be quickened by
unseen forces. They were shouting... preaching...
speaking in a variety of languages so people from a lot of different
countries could understand each other...
and generally making such a commotion that the people of the city had to
stop and wonder: what on earth was going
on?
The Spirit blew into the apostles an
awareness that-- just as Jesus had promised--
the presence of the Holy Spirit was with them… and was at work in and through
them.
The sound that came from heaven--
that rushing violent wind-- was the exciting sound of old barriers being broken
and glass ceilings shattering. The
divisions within humanity were being overcome.
The church was empowered to take to the streets with the good news.
On the day of Pentecost, the
disciples acquired a holy boldness that they’d never had before. The difference in them after Pentecost was as
dramatic as those before-and-after pictures that weight loss programs use in
their advertisements.
Before Pentecost, on the night of
Jesus’ arrest, Peter cowered away from a servant girl’s questions and refused
to admit that he knew Jesus. After Pentecost, Peter preaches the first
Pentecost sermon to the confused and questioning crowd, boldly proclaiming that
Joel's prophecy is being fulfilled, as people are having dreams and
visions. The Spirit gives him the power
to witness to the crowd.
Before Pentecost, many of the disciples
felt doubt and despair. They may have
felt, like their ancestors had, like “dry bones.” After Pentecost, the apostles went out into
the streets and into the community, and people’s lives were changed. They touched the lame and they walked. They were imprisoned and flogged... yet they showed no signs of doubt or fear. Prodded and empowered by the Holy Spirit, the
once disheartened disciples moved out.
Who would be in this new community
of faith? Jews, of course. That's what the first disciples believed. But, not long after the story of
Pentecost in Acts 2, there are other stories.
Peter has a vision in which he sees a great sheet being lowered with all
kinds of animals. He heard God's voice saying, “Don’t call anything I create
unclean.”
Peter came to understand that the
vision wasn’t about unclean food, but about unclean people. He met the gentile Cornelius and baptized
him. The church could have become a sect
within Judaism-- a gathering place for disgruntled Israelites. But no-- the promise of God was sent even to Gentiles-
to outsiders. The early church struggled
with the issue of who to include, just as we do today. But the Holy Spirit prevailed.
Fifteen hundred years later, the
church that began at Pentecost languished.
There was widespread corruption...abuse of power by the church. The church had become wealthy... complacent.
Would the movement begun at Pentecost go the way of so many other organizations
that mature and then die?
An Augustinian monk in Germany,
Martin Luther, nailed a list of 95 theses on a church door and called the
church back to its biblical roots. You
know the rest of the story of the reformation: the Holy Spirit prevailed.
Eighteenth-century England and the
United States were going through the trauma of urbanization and the first
industrial revolution. In this time of turmoil, people of faith-- especially
Quakers and Evangelicals-- worked for decades for the abolition of slavery, as
well as for some other basic human rights. Eventually, the Holy Spirit
prevailed, as slavery was abolished and other progress was made, although there’s
still a lot of work to be done and the Holy Spirit keeps prodding us. Through
struggles for human rights and for justice, the Holy Spirit continues to work
in and through God’s people.
Today we are
living in a time of huge change:
technological, cultural, political, and religious. So, it’s no wonder if
we feel bewildered… disoriented… and afraid.
But I think we’re in a time when God is trying to do amazing
new things, through us. It’s a time when we need to open ourselves to the work
of the Holy Spirit to help us discern what the good news is for our time and to
empower us to proclaim it. The Spirit is
on the move!
The feast of Pentecost reminds us that the Holy Spirit--
still blows into our lives, to justify us by grace through faith, to set us
free to accept ourselves and to love God and neighbor.[2]
The same Holy Spirit who inspired
the prophets and apostles and
gave
birth to the church continues to prod, cajole, and urge us forward. It’s been this way since the beginning of the
church. Just when we get settled down,
comfortable with present arrangements, our pews bolted securely to the floor,
all fixed and immobile-- there comes a rush of wind, or a still small
voice... a breath of fresh air... tongues of fire-- and
the Holy Spirit comes to us, to give us courage to pray without ceasing, to
witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in
Church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work
with others for justice, freedom, and peace.[3]
Come,
Holy Spirit!
Rev.
Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield
Presbyterian Church
Dearborn,
Michigan
June
4, 2017
[1]
Nadia Bolz Weber, “The Sermon I Preached at the Festival of Homiletics.” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/05/the-pentecost-sermon-i-preached-at-the-festival-of-homiletics/
[2]
This wording is excerpting from “The Brief Statement of Faith” of the
Presbyterian Church (USA), which was adopted and added to the Presbyterian Book of Confessions in 1990. https://www.presbyterianmission.org/what-we-believe/brief-statement-of-faith/
[3] Ibid.
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