Originally preached on May 23, 1999

Pentecost

Text: Acts 2:1-21

 Today is Pentecost Sunday, and we often say this is the birthday of the Christian Church. It was on the day of Pentecost nearly two thousand years ago when the frightened followers of Jesus – about 120 of them in number – received a gift Jesus had promised. At about nine o’clock that morning, they were gathered together in the upper room in Jerusalem. While they were praying, the stale air of that upper room suddenly moved. It was as though a slight whisper of wind had filtered into the room from outside. And then it subsided. No one probably noticed. But moments later, another almost imperceptible breath of fresh air circulated through that upper room. And then the almost unnoticeable breath became a very noticeable gentle breeze, and people began to look up from their prayers, and at each other. And suddenly, Luke tells us in Acts, chapter 2, there came from heaven a sound like the rush of a mighty wind filling not only the little room where they were gathered, but the whole house!

And as this unexplainable interior windstorm swept through this one little house in Jerusalem, another strange phenomenon occurred. Perhaps it was similar to what scientists call St. Elmo’s fire.Individual tongues of flame appeared above the heads of each person in that room, and as their prayers became louder and more intense, the language began to be transformed. Suddenly, the guttural sounds of Hebrew prayer transitioned into the many different languages of the world. And outside, in the streets of Jerusalem, pilgrims who had come from all over the world for the feast of Pentecost, heard their own native languages being spoken! And what they heard in their native tongues were declarations about the goodness and the greatness of God!

And you know the rest of the story. When the people outside complained about all the commotion, they thought it was because the people in the house were drunk. But Peter stood up, and now in the power of the Holy Spirit, preached his very first sermon. He explained about the promised Holy Spirit, and told them the story of Jesus – how he lived, and died, and is risen. And when the people heard the story, they responded with faith. And that very day, about 3,000 people committed their lives to Christ. And that was the beginning of what we refer to as the Christian Church.

So, happy birthday to the Church! And happy birthday…to US!

Although birthdays, you know, can be dangerous things.

On each of their birthdays, Sandy and I call our children on the telephone and terrorize them with the stories of their birth. Although they loudly protest these stories – as though they’ve heard them a few times too many over the course of their lives – we nonetheless force them to sit through a play-by-play description of everything that happened on those special days. The onset of labor pains…packing Sandy’s suitcase…me running into the bathroom to throw up… the mad dash to the hospital…Sandy’s glaring at me while at the peak of labor, saying, “I hate you, you’ll never touch me again!”, and all the various other circumstances that surrounded the kids’ grand entry into the world.

And the kids will groan, “Oh no, not THIS STORY again!”

But the protests of our children over being repeatedly reminded of their birth-events has a solid basis in human psychology. Each time we retell the story, we return our children to those moments in life they have spent a lifetime trying to get away from. You see, the job of a kid is to grow up! To get away from the cradle and behind the wheel of a 350-horsepower primer gray painted Trans Am with no muffler and a great stereo. To screech away from dependence upon the parent. To become their own person. To become an adult. To spread their own wings and fly away from the nest.

And each time we tell the birthday-stories, kids inwardly sense that what we are really doing is trying to reassert our dominion over their lives. And although they inwardly enjoy the stories and value their family heritage, kids are almost obliged to protest – if for no other reason than to make sure that mom and dad don’t get the idea that we can ever go back to those days!

Parents and kids see birthdays differently. For Sandy and I, our kids’ birthdays represent beautiful memories of the past. But for Peter and Bethany – and most kids – the day of birth represents their opportunity to step into the future.

So what does Pentecost – the birthday of the Church – represent for you? A reason to look back with fondness? Or the receiving of power to move ahead?

Oh, this is no ordinary wind that begins to blow on Pentecost Sunday! It is a wind that shakes the foundations of everything the followers of Jesus knew and believed. It is a wind that tears down old ideas, and causes bold new initiatives to be undertaken. The Holy Spirit, you see, is not just a gentle, refreshing summer breeze, but a powerful windstorm of aerodynamic turbulence that pushes things forward and shakes things up!

Now, one of the new initiatives the Holy Spirit led these followers into was reaching out to the Gentiles – non Jews. Their Bible, you realize, taught that God despises Gentiles. That salvation is for Jews only. Don’t you remember how the disciples scolded Jesus for speaking to a woman from Samaria? Jews hate Samaritans and have no dealings with them. In fact, that’s simply a core Old Testament principle that applies to all non-Jews. It was a normative, widely-accepted principle of Jewish religious family values. Salvation is for Jews only!

But when the Holy Spirit came, a storm brewed. A fight broke out over this idea. There was aerodynamic turbulence! If salvation is only for the Jews, thought some, then why are we miraculously speaking in all these foreign languages? If salvation is for Jews only, why are the Gentiles responding to the ministry of Paul? If salvation is strictly a Jewish thing, why is Peter reporting that the Holy Spirit has fallen upon a Roman centurion named Cornelius, and the other Gentile members of his family?

And it took a number of years for this family fight to be resolved, but finally – because of what the Holy Spirit was doing in its typically turbulent way – the Church had to change. Had to leave the cradle of its Jewish parentage, and get behind the wheel of a jalopy it wasn’t real comfortable with. But it was God’s jalopy. And it was the vehicle that would bring them into the future where God wanted them to be. And within 100 years, there were more Gentile Christians than Jewish Christians.

The Holy Spirit is a Spirit of aerodynamic turbulence! It shakes the old foundations, and bounces us – sometimes despite our protests – to the new places of God.

Another of these new places was in the role of women in the Church. Why, you’ve heard the Biblical teachings about women – teachings reflecting the family values and religious understandings of Judaism. Women remain in the outer court of the Temple, and are prohibited from getting any closer. If they want to learn what’s being taught inside, they can ask their husbands at home. Women must keep silent. Women have no role in leadership.

And yet, within fifty years of Pentecost, women like Priscilla had risen to prominent places as teachers in the Church. Women like Phoebe were ordained into diaconal ministries. And Romans 16 tells us that one woman, named Junia, had actually been elevated into the position of apostle – and was highly regarded by all – including St. Paul.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of aerodynamic turbulence! And for the disciples, the arrival of the Spirit meant that the relatively simple and safe world they knew was about to change. They were going to have to learn to speak new languages, think new thoughts, and form new values.

They were going to have to climb out of the cradle of their underdeveloped, infantile faith and get on board God’s hot rod and lay down some rubber on their way to greater truth. That’s what the Spirit does.

I’m not sure today’s Christians understand the role of the Holy Spirit.

Some time ago, someone came up with the idea of developing a Bible study that is accompanied by watching videos of the old Andy Griffith Show. In fact, just the other day, I heard about a nearby church that’s offering a similar kind of program. It’s very popular. The thought behind it is that the values expressed in the lives of Andy and Aunt Bee and Opie and Goober and Gomer and deputy Barney Fife and all the others are reflective of wholesome, Biblical family values. Without coming right out and saying it, the Bible study is an attempt to convey the thought that – after two thousand years and a couple of trillion miles on the odometer – God’s family car finally came to a complete stop in the little town of Mayberry. And it hasn’t budged since. And if we want to find the world as God intends it to be, we need to go back to Mayberry RFD.

Now, it would be almost un-American to not like The Andy Griffith Show. It’s one of my personal favorites. But its very easy to forget some things about the world that show represents. The series, for instance, was born on October 3rd, 1960. Its idyllic portrayal of life in the South, however, ignores the fact that, in 1960, it was still illegal for blacks to eat at lunch counters at five and dime stores. In fact, a number of blacks were arrested and beaten at a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina that very year, but you’d never know it by watching the show. The Andy Griffith Show had an 8 year run, but in the course of those eight years, no hint is given about how in 1963 a bomb blew up three little girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Or about how, during the so-called Summer of Love in 1967, more than 3,000 American kids were killed in Vietnam. Or that, despite the new rumblings of the ecumenical movement, Protestant kids and Catholic kids faced tremendous resistance from both sides if they fell in love and married. They were often disowned by families and excommunicated by churches who also considered their children to be illegitimate.

I don’t know how you see it, but it seems to me that the Holy Spirit had a lot of work to do in the America represented by Mayberry, RFD. And, thank God, we don’t live there any more.

In the 14th chapter of John, Jesus tells us two things about the Holy Spirit that many Christians simply ignore. The first is that he gives us the Spirit to lead us into all truth. In other words, you and I have an awful lot yet to learn about God’s world. And second, John reports that Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit to be with us forever. That is to say, this process of learning the whole truth about God’s world didn’t stop in the upper room in Jerusalem – didn’t stop at the end of the New Testament – didn’t stop at the Reformation – didn’t stop at Gomer Pyle’s gas station in rural Mayberry – and will not stop with the arrival of Y2k. Oh no, the world of God’s truth will take the rest of our lives – and then some – to fully discover!

And today, in 1999, the Holy Spirit is still at work! Have you noticed there’s a lot of aerodynamic turbulence around?

Non-Christians look at the breakdown of traditional values in our society today, and want to go back and recapture them. Christians must take another course. We prayerfully pause, and consider where the Holy Spirit may be at work in this changing world. You see, some of the change going on in America today is God’s change. Some of our most cherished values are crumbling in order to make way for God’s better values.

For example, none of us is comfortable with the shifting sands around the issue of homosexuality. But I suspect that, somewhere within the turbulence of our day, the Spirit is at work, teaching us some important lessons about loving your neighbor even when your neighbor’s lifestyle may lay beyond God’s will. All around us are people who live in the frightening shadows of life. Often, they are mistreated and abused. How can we be better at reaching others with the love of Jesus?

And the winds of violence that blow all around us! What can the Spirit be revealing to us in this evil time? Is there a relationship between school shootings, and shooting cruise missiles that fall on hospitals? Is there a relationship between the sin of abortion, and the sin of capital punishment? Is there a relationship between violence perpetrated against women, and the roles women have been forced to play in our society? And what do all of these things say to us about how we have lost the Christian commitment to the sanctity of life? And, if we could begin to face up to the violence we ourselves endorse, support and even pay taxes to underwrite – might the Holy Spirit show us a better way?

Oh, the wind is blowing! And it’s not a gentle summer breeze! It comes with the sound of rushing wind! And it’s aerodynamically turbulent!

Many people today are upset about not being able to pray in schools…or hang out the Ten Commandments in courthouses…or erect nativity displays on city land. Many react to this as though it is the reason our society is experiencing so much moral decay. I’m not so sure we were all that moral before these things happened. But even more importantly, perhaps the Holy Spirit is involved somewhere in this. Maybe the Spirit is telling the Christian Church in America that its time to get off the federal payroll.

We live in a time of momentous change. Some look at these changes with great despair, as though evil is winning the world. But you and I who are Christians, need to take another view. Yes, evil winds DO blow in our world.

But so does the wind of the Spirit!

The Holy Spirit has come!!

And you and I have a choice about how we look at life and respond to it. We can look back and fondly remember how good it was way back then on the day of Pentecost, or back then in the New Testament Church, or back at ol’ Floyd’s barbershop in Mayberry.

Or you can climb out of the cradle of immature spirituality, and into the passenger seat of God’s hot rod Lincoln, and let the Spirit bring you into a world of truth so deep you can’t even begin to imagine.

Happy birthday to the Church! Happy birthday to us!

May the wind of the Spirit make our lives – and our world – turbulent with the truth of God!