Pentecost

May 23, 2010
Romans 8: 14-17; John 14: 8-17

The first disciples gathered in a room to worship together on the morning of Pentecost. Perhaps, in the back of their minds, they were thinking about the Spirit Jesus had promised – about when would it come and what would it be like? They were given no time line for when, so they really had no idea. It was all very vague, so all they could do was to go about their lives as faithful followers of their Lord until then. Today their lives called them to worship.

They were celebrating the Jewish festival of Pentecost, also called Shauvot, the third of three major festivals. It is a celebration of the harvest and the giving of the first fruits to God. It’s significance in Acts is its connection to Jesus declaration that “the harvest is plenty but the labors are few” (John 10:2) and to Joel’s prophecy that “the threshing floors shall be full of grain.”

It is Pentecost, where the first fruit of the community proclaims a renewed covenant and commitment for all people. Those in the room were faithful Jews looking for a Jewish messiah, and John tells us when the Spirit came, they all became representatives of a more universal experience of God and what it was to be a follower of Jesus. The first Pentecost, brought about a rebirth – not a new covenant, but a renewed covenant – that would change the hearts and minds of those present and renew the face of the earth.

This is good news for us today because the same Spirit of God that warmed the hearts of those first disciples in Jerusalem is looking to inspire a rebirth within us. The same Spirit that led Isaiah to envision the holy mountain for all people, and John of Patmos to witness a city with no walls and no temple, is breaking into our small circles and sending us out as agents of a renewed earth.

In her book, The Great Emergence, Phyllis Tickle (a founding editor of the Religion Department of the PUBLISHERS WEEKLY) reflects on what she sees as the regular "garage sale" that the church experiences every 500 years or so. Looking at the church today, she and others see the possibility we may be in the middle of one of those cosmic inspired, rummage sales - when we can refocus our hearts and minds on what the good news means today, while honoring the contributions of those who have gone before us. For her and others, this can be a time of great renewal for the church and an opportunity for a re-examination of fundamental questions and a re-commitment to a renewed living of our faith. They see this as a time for us "to dream dreams and to see visions," and for an outpouring of the Spirit that calls us to set aside our preconceived notions and neat perceptions in favor of an expansive and inclusive reign of God?

Our reading from Acts says such a “day had come.” The time was fulfilled; it was actually lived out for the early disciples who were gathered together in that room. A sound, like a violent wind, filled the house. The wind saturated everything, the house and everyone in it. The entire house and all the people inside were “filled by the Spirit.” This Spirit “rested on each of them.” No one was left out. Imagine the Spirit doing that here, today. What an overwhelming impact on the people who would be inside.

It was so overwhelming that it spilled out into the streets. People outside had noticed something was going in the house and they began to gather close by. It was a crowd of people of all nationalities – Parthians, Medes, and Elamites just to mention a few – formed outside.

When the Spirit came upon those first disciples, they started speaking, but the language they spoke wasn’t Roman or Greek or Hebrew, nor were they speaking in tongues that only their fellow disciples could understand. They spoke in the native languages of all the people in the crowd outside so that they could hear the good news of rebirth and renewal spoken in their own native language – a language they could really understand. Thus the Holy Spirit makes possible the sharing of the gospel to all people, everywhere. Thus on Pentecost the driving force and mission of the church are spelled out.

Even in an age of mass communication, the Internet and social networking, we are not in any less danger of acting more like the Roman Empire than the renewed Community of God. In our lives and in our churches we can experience a kind of hardening that comes from a faith that is stuck in time. It is just as hard for us to find a way to be faithful to a covenantal relationship we first entered into, while inviting and seeking a new experience of Spirit that would save us from our having put on a pedestal the thought and expression we have become accustomed so to. The Spirit breathes new life to the community. Tongues touched by the Spirit can now be heard in a language people understand. We can rejoice that God has chosen to speak to us in the deep and many languages of our hearts, and not the monologue of a world marching in lock-step?

For us, then, what might a Pentecost moment look like? Would it include our “hearing” God in a way we would understand? And would that message go viral as each of us shared it in ever widening circles. After all, we are not unlike those who were gathered on that Pentecost day. The Spirit can enter into these church walls blowing among us and settling upon us and unsettling our thinking, empowering us to be renewed and bringing renewal for the world – just like she did in John’s account. We believe that, don’t we?

19th Century theologian Friedrich Nietzsche wrote concerning a life lived in the Spirit: “A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.” Perhaps, if we have been sitting for too long, it is time to now get up and start walking.

On this day of Pentecost, may all of us within these walls find our hearts singing with the Spirit of God, our ears humming with the Spirit’s voice reaching deep into our souls, and wisdom dawning in our minds to set us free. May this community and this church experience the coming of God's Spirit, now. And may we welcome it with joy and hope, give in to it with love, so that when the day is over, the entire world will know the love of God because of us!