Scripture:
Early Christians experienced the Spirit as a living power of God, given to them in community and converting them into the communion of Christ's body -- from isolated individuals into an organized body. For John, the Spirit is a gift from the newly risen Christ, bestowed on the disciples as he commissioned their carrying on the work he had begun. The ultimate concern of this gospel is with God; its good news is the revelation of God in Jesus. After Jesus' death and resurrection, the Spirit continues the revelation of God begun in the incarnation. Listen for what the Spirit is revealing as I read John, chapter 20, verses 19 through 23:

John 20: 19-23


When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." [20] After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. [21] Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." [22] When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. [23] If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

Thus far the Gospel for this morning.

The Book of Acts is concerned with the church; the church in Acts exists as the church has always existed -- as a people who claim to know something that we would not have known except as it was given to us. Acts opens with the community waiting for something to happen, listening for a word. Our church today exists in the same situation -- as the result of the dialogue between a talkative God who refuses to be silent and a community that tries to listen. Hear Acts chapter 2, verses 1 through 21:

Acts 2: 1-21


When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. [2] And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. [3] Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. [4] All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.


[5] Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. [6] And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. [7] Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? [8] And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? [9] Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, [10] Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, [11] Cretans and Arabs--in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." [12] All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" [13] But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."
[14] But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. [15] Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. [16] No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: [17] 'In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. [18] Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. [19] And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. [20] The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. [21] Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'

May God bless this reading to our understanding.

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable unto you O Lord; our strength, and our Redeemer.

Amen


Sermon:


This past week I had the opportunity to meet Rev. Harry Thompson, interim pastor at Shaker Heights Community Church, at a party honoring the volunteers who staff the Hunger Center located at that church. (For those of you who don't know, members of Plymouth are the majority of those volunteers.) Rev. Johnson has been in church ministry for over 30 years and he passed along a bit of unsolicited wisdom: "Churches today are no different from churches in the time of the apostles...we're just driving cars now, is the only difference. We're still struggling like they did." He must be preaching today, too! The Pentecost drama we just heard speaks to us-as-church about what it is to be church. This is no personal love letter from God, but a challenge that promises the greatest reward.

There they were, waiting. "All together in one place." Safety in numbers, they stuck together. Not seeing themselves as individuals in the first place, they had given up former affiliations to join together with Jesus. After his death they had only each other; after his resurrection and ascension they had each other and their hope for the restoration of God's kingdom. They held on to one another for dear life. What did it take for the Spirit to come? Earlier in Acts, Jesus "ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father...you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now" is what he explained. "You shall receive power to be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth."

They waited and they prayed, ready for anything, having no idea what this "Holy Spirit" would look like. Can you imagine what it was like being together at that time? Anxious, scared, wondering what Jesus meant, that he was sending them just as his Father had sent him. Sending them where, to do what? They were probably struggling about it with each other. One of them -- maybe Peter himself -- may have insisted that they focus their efforts on spreading the good news right there, in Jerusalem. Someone else may have debated that as being too tame, maybe even ineffective (what had Jesus said about being a prophet in your hometown?); the word that the prophecies were fulfilled and God's promises were met in Jesus Christ, the Messiah, had to be spread beyond Palestine! Should they be bold, talking at the market, by the city gates, during the day? Or should they play it safer, gathering under night's cover, in rooms behind locked doors? In the course of their arguing, their praying, their eating together,... they remembered Jesus, achieved a consensus, hammered out a sense of mission, a purpose that considered all their various understandings and points of view -- and with that the inspiration of the Holy Spirit was felt, unifying them in their vision, strengthening them, catapulting them into the world, out of the place they were staying. Giddy with relief and the sense of power they had together. They were unstoppable! Speaking fluently the languages of the Jews who had gathered for Pentecost from around the region. Seemingly drunk!

How unlike Elijah's experience of God is the disciples'. No still, small voice, this! This was the YHWH, the spirit of God that swept over the face of the chaotic deep so long ago. This was the life giving spirit of God that moaned the birthing of a new creation, the church ... tornado warnings come to mind! And then the tongues of fire at each head, and the cacophony from their joined voices. What a scene! How literally do we take this? Did tongues of fire really appear? Were the disciples really speaking in foreign languages? Luke, author of Acts, may have been using literary devices to describe the completely unexpected, strange and "other" events of that Pentecost's encounter with God. His imagery conjures up the Creation story, Moses and the burning bush, and refers to the words of John the Baptist: "Christ will baptize you with the Holy spirit and with fire." In any case, we are left dizzied with the image of the Spirit's presence and power.

Some talk cutely about Pentecost being the birthday of the church, sing themselves Happy Birthday, letting balloons go up, as if the day of birth was a once-and-for-all event. Rather than a process. This simplifies and further institutionalizes the power of the happening. What happened that day? It was the disciples' first experience since Christ's resurrection and ascension, of the Holy Spirit. They experienced the hoped-for-yet-miraculous, prayed-for-yet-unexpected, irresistible presence of God in their midst and the first fruits of their encounter was the ability to proclaim. What they were telling -- the mighty acts of God -- is what makes this birthday a work in progress. Also the fact that the Spirit came to them as they waited and prayed in anticipation: we-as-church are a work in progress since the Spirit did not come once and for all. As were the disciples, so we-as-church need to be prayerful, vigilant, hopeful, and bold that we may have life as a church, that the Holy Spirit's inspiration may continue to be experienced..

We hear in this passage an abundance of forms of verbs related to speech and hearing: "All of them...began to speak, ... each one [of the crowd] heard them speaking ... they asked ... we hear ... we hear them speaking ... saying ... Peter raised his voice and addressed them ... this is what was spoken ... God declares ... your sons & your daughters shall prophesy ... and they [my slaves, both men and women] shall prophesy." Herein lies the seed of the church's mission: simply put, we-as-church need to be about communicating. The truth in love. It takes at least two to do so. Jesus promised that wherever two or more are gathered, there he would be, too. We will be empowered in that setting -- our fear will become courage, our woundedness healing. Maybe the Spirit will overwhelm us with the gift of speaking Croatian without benefit of study; more than likely the Spirit will give us the languages of justice, of mercy, of compassion, of God's amazing forgiveness.

The Spirit comes where it is invited. In this seminal story it comes to a community, not to the individual. That doesn't mean that the individual is not empowered -- we see that in Peter's experience. Of all the disciples, it is Peter who stands up to preach to the Jews assembled outside. The same Peter had not dared to stand up for Jesus to the maid the night of Jesus' being handed over. But here he stood before a partly curious, partly mocking crowd, and preached. We're told he converted 3000. Here we glimpse the Spirit's power to change fear into courage. A once cowardly disciple becomes a new man who now has the gift of bold speech. But Peter did not receive the Spirit while he was all by himself. Just as the house the disciples were in was filled with the wind -- "it filled the entire house"-- so they, the 12 (Judas had been replaced by Matthias), the new household of God, were filled. The implications of this may be discomfiting. We are more likely to model ourselves on the image of Jesus going out alone, to pray, than on the disciples holing up together in an upper room.

There is good news here for us! Think about a committee or department or council meeting you've been to recently; a Women's Association luncheon or Hunger Center activity or meeting or project you've worked on; a rehearsal, or worship or any gathering connected with the work of the church universal or the one called Plymouth. This story is telling us that it is in those times -- when we are holed up together, debating an issue, seeking common ground, teasing out of the meaning of an event or passage or phrase -- it is precisely then and there that the Spirit is likely to swoop down (transcendent) or emerge out of our struggling (immanent). Makes me look forward to my next meetings!

God is in our midst ... when we are in prayer together, contemplative and otherwise, and when we are struggling together over doing God's work, when we are forgiving, loving, hoping, staking our lives on God's promises. I am not saying we cannot know God on our own. Time alone in prayer is essential and rewarding in its own way. What I am saying is that the motivating, surging, unifying, dizzying power of the Holy Spirit transcendent-and-at-once-immanent is the lifeblood of the Church, this church, every church since the time of the Apostles. Together we stand the chance of experiencing the Holy Spirit's power and peace; that's great news!

Sally Wile 5/26/96
Pentecost, Year A
Unedited Sermon for Personal Reflection