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Sunday May 15, 2005 - Pentecost Regional

It was a morning just like any other. The disciples, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James, all of the chosen twelve except for Judas the betrayer. And there was Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brothers,
and some other women,
and then a whole bunch of others who had followed Jesus,
from the time of his Baptism until his resurrection,
they all gathered together
as they'd been doing every morning
since that terrible day
when their Lord had been crucified,
gathered together as they had continued to do
after they had seem him raised,
gathered together as they had been commanded to do
just before he disappeared once and for all
caught up in a cloud with angels standing by.
They'd gathered together to pray,
and share memories, and because they simply didn't know
what else to do.
They chose a replacement for Judas, Matthias was his name,
and then they waited again.
What for, they didn't know,
but he had promised, he had promised,
and so they kept on waiting.
A morning just like any other.

There was no warning when it came. A sudden gust of wind, it sounded like
a tornado had touched down right outside, shaking the whole house,
about to suck them all up in its path,
and then, almost before the first lurch of fear
and well before they had time to wonder what the noise was,
something that looked like flames of fire appeared, crackling among them,
and they found themselves talking, not about this strange things that was happening,
but talking about
the good news of God in Christ — and what's more, they were speaking in strange languages,
ones they'd never learned,
but somehow, when they opened their mouths
that's what came out.

And people began to gather in the street outside, peering through the windows and pushing in the door, trying to hear what these people were babbling about, trying to see
what was going on.
It was chaos;
it was the Holy Spirit.

It took a while
for the commotion to settle down, a while
before they began to get some idea what was going on. It seemed that the languages they were speaking
were the languages
of the people standing outside in the street. People who hadn't heard
this story of Jesus, except second-hand, just stories passed along
sometime the important bits
lost in translation. The rule had always been
that if you wanted to hear about God
you had to learn God's language — Hebrew in this part of the world, or sometimes Greek — but now the people could hear it for themselves,
in the languages they'd learned as children,
now they heard the stories
of the powerful work of God.

Some were skeptical. They already spoke Hebrew, and Greek. All these other supposed languages
just sounded like meaningless babble to them. Sounded more
like these people
were drunk.

But then Peter got to preaching.
"Don't be stupid,"
he told the doubters.
"It's nine o'clock in the morning — hardly likely
that all of us
could be drunk already. And not just us, here in the house, but all those people out there in the street, do you think they are drunk too, enough to confuse alcoholic ramblings
with their mother tongues?
Not likely.
No, this is something new, something you have never seen before.
The is the spirit, the spirit of God. The prophet Joel
warned us
that something like this would happen — and the prophet's words
are now fulfilled. The Spirit has been poured out on us, on young and old, male and female, slave and free. And we can't help but speak
of the wonderful deeds of God."
And Peter went on to tell the story, the great story of Jesus,
of his prophetic life, of his terrible death, of his glorious resurrection. Of how Jesus is the one, the Lord and Messiah, and the proof of it all
was in the gift that they themselves witnessed
the gift of the Spirit.

And it changed their lives. All of their lives. This gift of the holy spirit
changed the lives
of the people who'd been listening at the windows and doors and out in the streets,
it changed their lives as they heard the message
they had been waiting for
since the time they were born.
They welcomed it with their whole hearts, and they were baptized — three thousand of them — on that one day.

And it changed Peter's life, this gift of the Holy Spirit. Remember Peter? We first heard of him, way back at the beginning of the gospel of John, when he was still called Simon,
when Andrew his brother
brought him to Jesus,
and Jesus gave him a new name, Peter, the rock.
And again and again he appeared in the gospels
as one of the three
closest to Jesus, the inner core, leading the disciples.

But then came
the day of Christ's death. Peter was there again, but this time
he was no leader. Huddled in the shadows, keeping his distance,
he denied his Lord
three times.
A failure, a traitor even.

And then we found him, early Easter morning,
bent double as he tried to see inside the tomb, see if this story was really true, Jesus resurrected.
And by the lake, the risen Jesus
recommissioned him,
a leader again,
but saddened, chastened, no longer as sure, as brash, as confident.

He led the disciples
in those days of waiting,
but it was not until
the Holy Spirit came
that Peter became
the leader
the rock
on whose shoulders
the church could be built.
It changed his life.

And it changed the lives
of the one hundred and twenty.
The ones who had been faithful
even after Christ's death, when others with second thoughts
had crept quietly away,
these ones had stayed, praying, talking, waiting.
And the Holy Spirit had come upon them, and
suddenly
they were thrust into leadership. There was no choice, no planning. The twelve simply couldn't do
everything.
They were needed
to speak the good news, to teach and encourage and pray.
To be models to the newcomers
of what disciples looked like.
Their lives were changed.

And the life of the community
looked different too. With three thousand odd,
it could no longer be an informal group where everybody knew everybody
gathering in the quiet of the morning to pray,
escaping the notice
of all but the most observant around them.
Now they were public, gathering in the temple day by day, sharing meals and prayers and lives.

From a small group of believers, touched by the Spirit, something new had been born. The church.

It's hard for us to imagine that very first Pentecost. The sense of excitement, of newness, and a little bit of fear. Where would this Spirit lead them, where would it take them? They had no idea. But there was one thing for certain. They had to leave the past behind, leave their failures, their damaged dreams, their security, all they had ever known, they had to leave it all behind
to follow the exciting, overwhelming, somewhat fearful
lead of the Spirit.

We know where it led them.
From Jerusalem, they spread the gospel, throughout Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, across the Mediterranean,
and from there to Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, the Pacific. Over the last two thousand years, the church,
prompted, led, pushed
by the Spirit
has reached across the globe
fulfilling the promise of the gospel spoken in so many languages
that very first Pentecost.
We've seen the church
ebb and flow, established with great success in some places,
struggling in others.
The church is part of our lives; the Spirit is something we kind of take for granted.

And sometimes I think
we forget the danger in that. We as twenty-first century Christians
so easily become complacent, doing things as we have always done them,
assuming that what we are already doing
is what we should do
without really asking where the Spirit is leading us.
We believe in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
but sometimes I wonder
if the Spirit we believe in
is only half the Spirit. We're quite happy with the Spirit
that Jesus talked about the night before he died, the Spirit of truth, the advocate, the comforter. But we are a little more uncomfortable with the Spirit of Pentecost, the one that comes like a hurricane and a forest fire,
the one that prompts and leads and pushes people, the one that will not allow them to just stand still.

I recently found a collect for Pentecost
that catches something of this Spirit, something of the excitement and surprise and fear
that greeted that first coming of the Spirit:

"Spirit of truth
whom the world can never grasp,
touch our hearts
with the shock of your coming;
fill us with desire
for your disturbing peace;
and fire us with longing
to speak your uncontainable word
through Jesus Christ, Amen.
(Collect for Pentecost
Janet Morley, All Desires Known)

What would it look like
if we, as the people of God worshiping in the Episcopal tradition
in this little corner of New Jersey, what would it look like
if we were to take on this prayer for ourselves?
What would it look like
to allow the Spirit to shock us, to disturb us, to fire us?
Are we willing, like the people at that first Pentecost, to
leave the past behind, leave our failures, our damaged dreams, our security, all we have ever known, are we willing to leave it all behind
to follow the Spirit?

It's perhaps the easiest
and the most difficult question,
we can ever ask.

It's easy — a no brainer — from a logical perspective. After all, it's simply reiterating our baptismal promises, to put our whole trust in Christ's grace and love, to follow him with all of our being. Of course we'll follow the Spirit's lead.

But in reality, it's more difficult than that. Because what we are being asked to do, is to take risks. To let go of the things that make us feel safe, the things that are part of our identities and memories, to leave all that behind,
and to move into dangerous, uncharted ground.

To follow the Spirit
is no easy thing.
But it's the only thing, the way that our God lays before us,
a way that leads to such wonder and joy and exciting newness
that we could never imagine or dream of on our own.
That is where God is inviting us
by the Spirit, that is where God promising us,
that is where God is leading us.
To be worshipers of God, followers of Christ, blessed by the Spirit,
people of hope
for our world.
Are we ready to say,
"Come Holy Spirit, lead us, renew us, recreate us"?

 

Sermon ©Raewynne J. Whiteley 2005