“The Tale of Two Pentecosts”

Acts 2:1-21 and John 20:19-23
May 27, 2007 (Pentecost Sunday)

St. Paul United Methodist Church of Little Rock

Reverend John Andrew Fleming

Today is Pentecost Sunday. It is the Sunday that the Christian church has set aside for nearly two thousand years to celebrate the beginning and the birthday of the church. What we are really celebrating is the promised giving of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit helped the church to get up on her legs, you might say.

Like all birthdays, the church celebrates its birthday in a number of different ways. I think I have shared with you that when I was the Associate Pastor downtown at First Church, Jeanie Burton, our senior pastor, came up with some creative ways to celebrate the church’s birthday. One year, while everyone else was in the late worship service, the youth group and a crowd of volunteers blew up red balloons with air from a helium tank. I am pretty sure that some of the helium ended up in those kids and enabled them to talk funny for a moment or two. When the worship service was over, the youth and the other volunteers met the congregation at the Sanctuary doors. I think we all walked down to the church’s courtyard and when the moment was exactly right we released the balloons up into the sky. Looking back at it, I would have to say that the releasing of the balloons was a remarkable sight. Seeing five hundred balloons race to the sky was great.

My memory is a little fuzzy, but I think that we tied a note to the balloon that said something like this, “Receive the Holy Spirit. A gift to you from the First United Methodist Church of Little Rock, Arkansas.” I think our phone number was on the slip of paper. I am not sure what we were hoping for. Maybe we were hoping that somehow the balloon would fall from the sky and land in someone’s front yard, perhaps half way across the world and they would call and tell us about it.

What I remember is that someone did call to let us know that sending helium balloons off in the wide blue yonder might hurt the birds who shared their air space.

The next year Jeanie had the wonderful idea of looping tie-dyed cloth streamers from the church’s one hundred year old chandelier to the balcony rails. The rails surrounded the Sanctuary. I think Jeanie had seen the idea in a book or a magazine. Luckily the church recently had installed a motor that allowed the fixture to be lowered slowly. Before that, the chandelier had to be lowered by hand. The orange, yellow, and red streamers were twisted and turned. They were supposed to look like flames of fire. Getting the streamers in place was a logistical nightmare. Helping all of this to happen was in my job description. The simple line read, “And other duties as assigned by the Senior Pastor.” That is the catch that all pastors put in the job descriptions of those who work with them.

The streamers had to be of varying lengths because of where they would be tied to the balcony railing. On the Friday before Pentecost Sunday, we lowered the chandelier, three of us tied the streamers to the railing and then tied them to the center of the chandelier. Then we prayed. I hit the button that raised the fixture towards the vaulted ceiling. The streamers were in tow. We prayed that the streamers were cut the right length.

I will have to say that the sight was an impressive one that Pentecost Sunday morning. I positioned myself in that very formal Sanctuary and watched as very formal worshipers made their way to their pews. I watched as their eyes gazed towards the chandelier.

I have not tried anything spectacular here, at St. Paul, on Pentecost Sunday. I now know about the danger of balloons and we don’t have a balcony. Though I guess we could tie streamers from one set of lights to the other set of lights. Right now I am having trouble keeping the lights burning in this room. Besides that, I’m not one to climb way up there.

Church, you may already know this. I’m pretty sure I’ve brought it to your attention before. There are two different accounts of the giving of the Spirit. And usually, when I have preached on this day, I have focused on the louder one. Luke’s version of how the Holy Spirit came. Luke’s version is as visual as it can be. It takes place in Jerusalem a couple of months after the resurrection of Jesus. Luke’s version is dramatic and spectacular. There is a lot of sound and fury in it. Luke tells us there were one hundred and twenty people in the house and thousands of people in the streets when the Spirit came down from heaven. No one was working because the day had been set aside as a Jewish festival and holiday that remembered the day when Moses went up to the mountain of God, Mt. Sinai and came down with the Ten Commandments.

The book of Exodus tells the story and says that there was a storm complete with thunder, wind, fire, and smoke. All this was happening as Moses came down the mountains with the commandments. So everyone is in Jerusalem, one hundred and twenty in the house, thousands in the street, when the Spirit came.

Luke has trouble describing it. After all, how do you describe something like this? Luke says that it happened suddenly. He says that coming down from heaven came a sound like the rush of a violent wind. It came to the house where they were sitting. Luke says that divided tongues as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit.

People were there from all over, from all different countries, who didn’t speak the same language understood each other. Luke is clear. It is the Spirit that helped this to happen. The crowd, says Luke, was amazed and perplexed and asked the all important question: What does this mean?

John’s version is not as exciting. In fact, if you are not careful you will miss it. The lesson is preached every year on the Sunday right after Easter. It is a Sunday that is traditionally one of the lowest attendance Sundays of the year. John’s version also happened in Jerusalem, but there aren’t a hundred and twenty people in the house. No one is in the street. As far as I can tell, there is no great festival happening in town. Passover has just passed over.

The ones in the house are in an upper room, huddled in fear. Jesus has just been crucified and they hear that he has been raised and delivered from that. They really aren’t sure about anything and they are shaking in their sandals. That is when Jesus shows up. You will remember that Jesus suddenly and mysteriously showed up. The doors were locked and yet Jesus somehow is in the room. And he says to them, “Peace be with you.” He shows them his hands and his side as if to prove he is who he says he is. Then he says it again, “Peace be with you.”

It suddenly happens to them, too, but not as dramatic. Jesus breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

There is no wind blowing. There is no fire. There is no burning. There is no blowing. There is no babbling. There is just Jesus’ breath and according to John, that is how the Spirit came.

Now which of the two would you rather experience? I’ll admit that there is a part of me that would like the excitement of the Spirit coming like it did in Luke’s version of the story. I wouldn’t mind a little wind and I wouldn’t mind a little fire and I wouldn’t mind a little excitement, how about you?

I think I’ve shared the quote from Annie Dillard before. It’s one of my favorites. Annie doesn’t think that churches have the foggiest idea of the power they invoke when we ask for the Spirit to come. These are her words, “We (the church) are children playing on the floor with chemistry set. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should fasten us to our pews.”

Think about our worship services. We sit and we stand and we give our offerings and we listen to the sermon. We come away with a few things to ponder during the upcoming week. But since we do it every week, we can easily miss the greatness of it all. Yes, every once and a while I’d like for the Spirit to swoop in like that and knock us off our feet. A seminary professor of mine warned us, “Be very careful when you ask the Holy Spirit to show up.”

So there’s a part of me that would like the excitement of Luke’s version. But if I’m honest with myself, the Spirit usually comes to me the way it did to the disciples locked in behind closed doors. Jesus found his way in there and after a bit of showing and telling, he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Then he sent his disciples out into the world as if to say, “This is not Las Vegas. Things that happen in here don’t stay in here.” To which the disciples may have said, “But it’s safe in here.” Jesus, friends, never intended for us to play it safe. You won’t find that anywhere in the Bible. The church has been given to us as a place to get our bearings and a blessing and a place where everything else revolves around.

Let me close with this story. I don’t think it will be hard for you to imagine a little girl, lost in a fairly good sized town. For some reason she doesn’t know her way home. So she sits on a curb hoping someone will help her. She is crying her eyes out. People are trying to help her. Someone calls the police and they come and put her in the car, in the front seat, and drive up and down several streets in hopes she will see something familiar. Which, after a while, she does. She sees a steeple with a cross on it. Her tears vanish and her speech returns and she screams out, “That’s my church!” And then she says, “I can find my way home from there!”

Little girl, you aren’t the only one! Aren’t we glad that God has given us his Spirit? Aren’t we glad that the Spirit helped the church to get up on her legs? Listen to the girls’ words one more time, “That’s my church. I can find my way home from here.”

(Special thanks to Reverend Jeanie Burton for her Pentecostal celebrations while we worked together. Special thanks also to Rev. Fred Craddock for the idea of comparing the two Pentecost stories).