May 27, 2007 – The Day of Pentecost
Acts 2:1-21
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Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus. Amen.
What a visual the writer of Luke’s Gospel lays before us in this scene from the Book of Acts! One hundred twenty believers in Jesus, gathered together in a house in Jerusalem for the ancient Jewish festival of Pentecost, when suddenly an enormous WHOOSH! fills the entire place. People literally on fire with the Holy Spirit, a spirit that leads them to somehow, mysteriously, fluently in other languages speak about God’s actions in history, up to that time. The point of it all, Peter says, is to testify to Jesus, the One sent by God but rejected by humanity and killed; and then on the third day raised from the dead by the power of God. This is the One, Peter says, who now offers salvation.
Pretty impressive scene. And if you’re into bottom lines, the rest of the story is even more impressive: When Peter finishes speaking, 3,000 people are added to the church. That day! We feel good about having 30 people in each new member class four times a year, but the original Church at Pentecost – 3,000 in a single day! It was the beginning of the Christian witness, and the community that grew up around it.
Dramatic beginning! Not all new beginnings, however, are so dramatic. Today we’re celebrating 25 years of ministry at Advent. We’ve been receiving congratulatory letters over the last couple of weeks, and this one came last week from the wife of Advent’s second pastor, Pastor Bob Hulse. Pastor Hulse suffered a massive stroke several years ago; he couldn’t be with us physically this morning, but he wanted to be present in some way, so Mrs. Hulse sent us this letter. I’d like to share just a few lines with you.
“Dear Pastors and Members of Advent, it is with heartfelt regret that we must decline your invitation to join you in celebrating 25 years of ministry that you have performed. Having been there at some of the beginning, I know that it took courage, love, deep faith, and spiritual blessings to accomplish even the littlest of tasks. There were Sundays when we rejoiced over having 25 in attendance. There was an occasion when we worshipped on the curb because the janitor failed to show to allow us entry into the school (where we conducted worship). Who would have guessed back in 1981 that Advent would be what it is today.”
What a contrast! One hundred twenty literally on-fire followers of Jesus in a story so dramatic and big that it’s in the pages of the Bible; and a handful of Lutherans huddled on a curb in what was then rural Kansas. But in each case, the church flourished, both the church that we read about in the Book of Acts and the church that we experience here at Advent. And the church flourished because of a vital combination of the invincible Holy Spirit and a cooperating human spirit.
We know about that human spirit. It’s what we see when the runner stumbles half-way through the race and falls to the back of the pack, then picks herself up and through sheer determination forces her way to the front and wins the race. We say, “She’s got a great spirit!” William Faulkner accepts the Nobel Prize in Stockholm and says, “I believe in humanity. I believe in the triumph of humanity, in spite of everything.” He believed in the ultimate supremacy of the human spirit.
Ironic, isn’t it, that the same human spirit that can accomplish so much through sheer grit and determination is the same spirit that can shake its fist at God when life and our plans for life don’t go the way we want them to go? In fact, theologian Lisa Fishbeck notes that human history is really a catalog of the long relationship between the Holy Spirit and the human spirit. Sometimes those spirits are in concert with one another, supporting and encouraging one another; at other times they are in conflict, opposing one another. But through it all – and we can thank God for this – it is the Holy Spirit that prevails, keeping God’s promise to us through the prophet Isaiah, that “My word will not return to be empty, but will accomplish that for which I sent it.” That’s God’s promise that his Holy Spirit will not fail, but will triumph, because God’s Spirit is ultimate power.
Power can be released in a couple of ways. Drop a lighted match into a 10-gallon can of gasoline and you have an immediate, concentrated release of power. Channel those same 10 gallons through an efficient engine and it will produce enough energy to take you quite a ways. At Pentecost we saw both kinds of release of power, both the dramatic outpouring of power on the original followers of Jesus, and since then the steady, consistent release of power through the Church.
We saw that power at work 1,500 years after Pentecost, when the church that formed back then found itself in deep trouble – spiritually bankrupt, saturated with corruption and the abuse of power. And then an Augustinian monk in Germany named Martin Luther stepped forward and challenged those abuses, called the Church back to its Biblical foundation and started the reforming of God’s Church. And the Spirit prevailed.
Two hundred years later, England was struggling mightily with the challenges of the Industrial Revolution and growing urbanization. Millions were trapped in poverty; alcoholism ran rampant. And a young priest in the Church of England named John Wesley stepped forward and ignited a spiritual revival that swept through Great Britain and transformed the lives of millions. And the Spirit prevailed again.
In the 1900s in this country, mainline Protestant denominations like the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America returned to their Biblical roots as they recognized the leadership gifts of women in the New Testament church; and they began ordaining women to the priesthood. And once again the Spirit prevailed.
We’ve seen the Spirit prevail here at Advent. It would be impossible to calculate the number of lives that have been touched by the Gospel of Jesus Christ as it has been lived out here at Advent, through worship, education, small groups, fellowship activities, mission teams, our preschool, the Laotian Worshiping Community. But we can say one thing about these last 25 years at Advent: they’ve been a good start. And be sure you underline “start.”
I believe God has placed a tremendous opportunity, and invitation, before us. Let me illustrate it this way. About 2 million people live in the greater metropolitan area here in Kansas City. Of those 2 million people, about 1.6 million are unchurched or “numb”-churched. “Numb”-churched – it’s a good term, not mine; but a friend of mine came up with it to describe folks who come to church occasionally, but if you press them ever so slightly about what they really believe, they have no clue. 1.6 million – 8 out of 10 people – have no working experience of their relationship with God.
Of that 1.6 million unchurched or numb-churched, about 600,000 live here in the southwestern part of the metro. That’s why we’re eager to start a new mission from this church in Gardner-Spring Hill. We’ll be meeting soon with Advent members and visitors who live in that area to create the nucleus of a new Christian ministry there. What will that ministry ultimately look like? We don’t know – that will be up to the Spirit – but we know one thing: The Spirit will prevail once again. Because the Holy Spirit, working through a cooperating human spirit, can accomplish miracles.
But how do we shape a cooperating human spirit, one that we can offer to God’s Holy Spirit? The late Father Henri Nouwen pursued exactly that question, and he found the answer as he studied the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ life. What we find is a simple fact – that throughout his life Jesus was filled with and fueled by one central truth: He was the beloved of God. That’s the voice he heard when he came up out of the waters of his baptism, “You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.” And Jesus tells us, particularly in the Gospel of John, that God loves us in exactly the same way. When Nathaniel Moberg is baptized in just a few moments, you may not hear it, you may not see it, but the heavens will open and the voice of God will resound, “You are my beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And that will be Nathaniel’s core truth from this day forward. The same is true for you and for me.
The problem is, unless we claim that truth for ourselves we cannot shape a spirit that cooperates with God’s Spirit; because we will allow our identity to be shaped by other voices, lesser voices. You know those voices, the voices that say, “Oh, you’re terrific, you’re so wonderful! Look at what you’ve accomplished! You’re awesome!” Or the voices that say, “What’s the matter with you, why can’t you do anything right? What a loser!” Throughout our lives we probably hear a mixture of both, but neither human opinion is the truth.
Throughout his life Jesus heard voices that said, “Come be our king!” as well as voices that yelled, “Crucify!” But he was swayed by neither voice; instead, he was shaped by the identity God gave him: the Beloved of God. Our freedom in this life, and therefore our ability to shape a spirit that cooperates with God’s spirit, lies with our willingness to claim the identity that God alone gives us: that we too are the Beloved of God.
That’s what Dan Quisenberry was trying to get at. Those of you who are familiar with the name of Dan Quisenberry probably don’t know him as a theologian; you probably remember him as a pitcher with the Kansas City Royals back in the 1980s. He had an absolutely dynamite submarine sinker. But he was also a pretty good theologian, and poet. This is what he had to say to you and me in his poem, What If. I know I identify with his words; see if you do too.
“What if you decided not to worry for one whole day, just one? What if you decided you could feel good and do things you really liked and gave yourself freedom to make a mistake or two and said out loud, ‘God really loves me?’ What if you told God that you were scared, lonely, afraid of the future and didn’t know what to do about the present? Do you think He would understand? What if you could trust God for this one day? Try this, one time, and see what happens.”
Trust it. Trust that the Spirit of Pentecost still burns brightly within you and around you, calling you to claim the identity that God alone gives you, and in the strength of that identity, accomplish God’s purposes in this world.
Twenty-five years of ministry at Advent? By the grace and the power of God, we’re just getting started! And to God be the glory! Amen.
