Park United Methodist Church

John 14:8-17, 25-27

Acts 2:1-21

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We sometimes call Pentecost the birthday of the church.  It was a harvest festival where people would bring their best, first crop of food as an offering at the Temple to celebrate the Holy gift of the law on Mount Sinai (Torah).  So, how does that all work to become what we know Pentecost as today?  Jesus tells the disciples the kingdom of Heaven is within you in Luke 17:21, he also told them in John that he was leaving an Advocate for us.  During the Ascension, they were to get this Advocate, so what is happening here?  What is going on?  There were tongues of flames on their heads earlier (John 20 and in Matthew 3.11 and Luke 3 we were promised a baptism of the spirit by water and flame), remember in the upper room, and then they all froze and stayed locked behind the doors while they figured it out.  So what is different now? 

How did they “wake up”?  What woke up? 

  

That is the thing with the Holy Spirit.  It had always been around.  It wasn’t like all of a sudden it showed up when Jesus ascended.  The Holy Spirit is written all over the Old Testament (Gen 1.2, Job 26.13, Is 32.15, 1 Sam 10.6, Judges 6.34),  but usually it is reserved for being poured out onto the prophets and the Kings, sometimes a judge or two.  This is different.  This is a rush ingto everyone.  The Spirit isn’t holding back anymore.  It isn’t neatly trying to urge us into the blocks.  It is letting loose.  Peter uses the scripture from Joel 2.  It was a passage where the prophet “compared the coming of the day of the Lord to that of a devastating army.”  Peter sees this as that day.  The devastation is different - it is devastation of empire, devastation of hatred, devastation of power over people being wiped out for the new Kingdom - the Kingdom of God to begin to take root.  He reminds people that the Spirit will be poured out on all men, women, and children.  That there will be no separation, and it happens!!!

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This was a gift of full inclusion for all of those outside of the Jesus movement up to this point.  Amy Oden explains that in that moment, the disciples spoke 15 different languages to cover all of those who had been dispersed by the diaspora and were now either living in Jerusalem or there for the Pentecost celebration.  They could hear in their own language this message of God’s love for them.  This message of promise.  No one was excluded, and they could understand it.  We don’t get to this part, but 5000 people understood this unleashing of the Spirit and were baptized that day.  This was not a gentle little moment.  This was rushing wind, crashing sounds.  It was suddenly hearing your own language in a foreign land.  I am not sure if you have ever been to a foreign country where your language is not spoken, but when you hear it…suddenly you are pulled in.  It is a comfort, and you listen carefully because they know.  They know you, they know you in that situation like no one else does.  

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This message is not just for them, though; it is for all of us. Paul helped us to understand it wasn’t just for the Jewish people.  Even today, when we teach about our baptism and confirmation vows, we explain, “We resist evil, injustice, and oppression because of the power of the Holy Spirit at work within us.  Our resistance to these forces is not a passive activity.  We are joining in God’s work of reconciling the world, which is actively seeking to free people from the forces that bind them, so that they are freed to experience God’s grace and love, and abundant life.”

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The unleashing of the Spirit on the world is not for the timid.  We are asked to step boldly into our faith, but never alone, always fueled by the Spirit.  We are the hands and feet of Christ, and the Spirit lives inside of us.  When we say yes, watch out, you never know what the Spirit is going to do.  I love the quote from Annie Dillard on the power of the Spirit:

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“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”  

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So, my question is are we ready to unleash that Holy Spirit in the church?  Are we ready to unleash it in our lives?  Are you willing to go where you will never return, to forever be changed and transformed?