"What Does This Mean?"
Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost Sunday
May 31, 2009
St. Paul United Methodist Church
Rev. John A. Fleming
I want to ask you to go somewhere with me this morning. We haven't done this kind of thing in a sermon in some time and a field trip is fun, so I hope you won't mind going on one today. The good news is that you'll only have to go in your mind's eye and you'll only have to use your imagination to make this trip.
Today is Pentecost Sunday, the day that the church has set aside as a celebration both of her birthday and the giving of God's Holy Spirit. So I thought we might attend a worship service in a church big enough to fit our membership in her balcony. Don't worry. I've talked with the pastor. He knows we're coming. The ushers are ready for us. What I'm really hoping to do today is to look down, from a bird's eye view and to see all that really happens on a Pentecost Sunday
As you take your seat, look around. What do you see? Perhaps your eyes immediately head towards the altar. Everything up there is red. There is a red cloth on the altar and a red stole hanging around the pastors' necks. Even the flowers adorning the Sanctuary are red, roses mixed with some gladiolus. Hanging on the wall is a red banner. The church must know the importance of the day or the pastor has announced that they should all wear red because most of them are. The men are wearing red ties or sports shirts and the women are in red hats and dresses.
All of this red is there to remind the people of the flames that first appeared over the disciples heads on that first Pentecost Sunday.
Let's leave the balcony for just a minute and turn to our scripture lesson. Luke and John are the gospel writers who tell the story of what happened on that day in Jerusalem. John's version is calm, cool, and collected. John says that Jesus appeared to his disciples on Easter evening. He walked through a locked door, offered his disciples peace, breathed on them, and gave them the great ability to forgive people of their sins. That was a powerful gift. That is all there is to John's version of the day.
To be honest with you, I like Luke's version better! It's not calm and its not low key. It is loud and boisterous. Luke says that in Jerusalem that day there were one hundred and twenty people in a house with the disciples and thousand in the streets. They were all there for a festival, the celebration and commemoration of the giving of the Ten Commandments by God to Moses on Mount Sinai.
Those who called themselves Christians were in Jerusalem because they were told to go there to wait and to pray. That is when it happened. That is when it suddenly happened. Luke tries his best to describe something that is indescribable. From heaven there came the sound like the rush of a mighty wind. It filled that house and then what was seen was heard and what swept through the house made its way out to the street. Next Luke tells us that there were tongues of fire that appeared and landed on all of them. All of them were given the gift of God's Holy Spirit.
Luke is trying to describe something that was beyond description. Look at the words he uses. Words like: amazed, astonished, bewildered, amazed again, perplexed. People were talking with one another and even though they were from all over, they understood each other. There is a sermon in there, but I think I won't preach it this morning. The problem with our lesson is that there are several sermons in it.
I like what the people who were in Jerusalem asked. This was their question, "What does this mean?"
That's the text for the sermon and that's the question, really of the day. Do me a favor, let's go back to the balcony and look down on the worship service again. The opening song is perfect for the day. The preacher has done his planning with the worship committee. You have to sing O For A Thousand Tongues to Sing on Pentecost Sunday. Everything flows and when it comes time for the reading of the lesson, several people come forward. One reads a few verses in Spanish, another in German, a third in French, and one in English. It's all planned to help get a feel of that first day.
And when the lesson has been read, the pastor stands in the pulpit and prays and when an amen sounded, he draws attention to the prophet Joel's words. "In those days I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh" he reads. "And your sons and daughters will prophesy." He stops and asks his church, "Do we ever really ask our sons and daughters to speak and to tell us what they really think?" You can see the teenagers who were kind of listening sit up and look at their preacher in his eyes. An amen is rising in their hearts.
He reads a little more of Joel's prophesy, "Young men shall see visions and old men shall dream dreams." Some of the older members of the congregation, the ones who have been around for so long, who built the church with the sweat and prayers, look up and ask, "Do you think our dreams still matter?" The young men in the congregation, the ones who are fresh out of college and just getting started in life look at their preacher as if to ask, "Do I dare share my vision for our church with him and the Board?"
By now the preacher has the attention of just about everyone, which is always a good thing. He reads on, "Even on my slaves, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit and they will prophesy." The preacher looks around the church. He says, "I know what you are thinking, we don't have slaves any more, but we do have a way of looking down at people. We must be careful." He asks, "How do we look at the ones who take care of our kids while we are on our way to work?" "What do we think about the woman who stays with my dad at the nursing home when I cannot?" And then there is the nice woman at the restaurant. I wonder what her story really is.
The sermon is now nearly over and his congregation is thinking about their hopes and dreams and how this Holy Spirit can make a difference in the life of their church. With a prayer and an amen sounded, the pastor asks the congregation to stand. They don't normally sing right after the sermon, but today they will. Sing it with me, "Spirit of the living God fall afresh on me. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me. Spirit of the living God fall afresh on me." Wow. Powerful.
And that is it, or is it? I love to preach on Pentecost Sunday; its one of my top three favorite days to preach. Give me Christmas Eve first and Easter second, but don't let Pentecost Sunday pass me by. I love the excitement of it. I like the sound of the mighty wind. I like looking and seeing those flames land on the disciples' shoulders. I love the rush and the questions that fill the town. I love the question, "What does this mean?"
What does Pentecost mean, friends? I can tell you that it means more than a spring day and a worship service in late May. It means that God's Spirit is inside these bodies of ours and in this church that we love. The same Spirit that showed up that day shows up here. Have you noticed it?
I love what Annie Dillard said about the Spirit showing up at the church. I've used this before. I hope you don't mind me using it again. She writes, "Why do people in church seem like tourists. Does anyone have the foggiest idea of the power we invoke? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats. We should be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares. For the waking God may draw us to where we can never return."
Do we expect that? Do we dare hope for that? Do you really know what you are doing when you pray, "Come Holy Spirit." One of my seminary professors warned us in class one day, "Be very careful when you invite the Holy Spirit into your church, be very careful. Powerful things will happen. I know. I have seen it."
Church, I want to challenge our young men to see visions and for our old men to dream dreams and to share them. Its time for us to stand up and make a difference in our world by sharing what is deep inside all of us, this Holy Spirit.
Pentecost isn't just today. Today is just the beginning and with our pastoral change right around the corner, I think its time that we share our dreams and our visions with one another. Let me close with a story that a preacher I heard tell about a conversation he had with
a pastor who was in the middle of a building program. He asked how it was going and his friend said, "Well, we ran out of money before we worked on the Sanctuary." The man thought, "How could you let that happen? What's more important than the Sanctuary?" The man continued, "We renovated the basement. We have a shelter down there for homeless men. We put in new showers and fixed up the dilapidated kitchen. We painted the walls, brightened up the place. It was so dingy. On the Sunday before we opened it, our worship service started upstairs and ended downstairs. We went downstairs with bread and juice and stood around those empty beds. We passed bread around the circle and we said, "This is the body of Christ." That night the beds were filled and the Sanctuary needs some work.
The pastor of that church who worked on the basement instead of the Sanctuary said, "And to think that it was the hope and dream of one man who wanted to make a difference. Wow."
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me. Spirit of the living God fall afresh on me. Come Holy Spirit. Come as a mighty wind or a gentle breeze. Blow on the embers of our faith. Give us courage to speak and to act and to make a difference. Amen.
(Special thanks to a friend who helped me with the middle part of this sermon and the idea of seeing a church service from a bird's eye view).