June 4, 2006 – Pentecost Sunday

God in Us

Acts 2:1-12

One of my favorite childhood memories is going with my dad to visit his sawmill in western Oregon. I grew up around the high-pitched whine of the saws and the wonderful fragrance of Douglas fir sawdust flying through the air. I was always impressed to watch the high-speed equipment and I was especially impressed when it was a piece of machinery my dad had designed. Even after I left home, he always seemed to enjoy showing me his latest invention. It was always quite impressive, the huge steel bars and plates, the conveyor belts and automatic arms, the fierce-looking saw blades. Dad would try to explain how the lasers and computers “read” the material and made automated decisions about how to process the trees. The blinking lights and switches all looked rather mysterious.

But quite frankly, the whole menagerie didn’t mean that much to me. I never said it out loud but the question in my mind usually was, “Yeah, but . . . What does it do?” That’s when Dad would reach over and press a big, green button with the word “start” displayed above it. And suddenly that machine began to make sense to me because I could see with my own eyes what all that steel and electronic gadgetry was trying to do.

We come from a world where the value of anything seems to be predicated upon what it can produce. Concern for function even attaches to how we evaluate people. What’s one of the first questions when you’re getting to know a new person? “What do you do?” If they say something impressive, we’re impressed. If they say something ordinary, we judge them to be rather ordinary. For many in our culture, including many of us, the cry of the age is, “That’s nice, but what does it do?” I’m wondering if that kind of question even functions a bit within our faith? We see the impressive “machinery” of our Christian faith. We talk about and study the great truths of the gospel. We affirm our belief in God’s plan of salvation through Jesus Christ. We read in the Bible and we confess together that when we come to Christ in faith we are forgiven, healed, and made new. And as great as all of that sounds, I can still hear the question, “Yeah but, what does it do?” In other words, “How does this faith really work in my everyday life?” We talk a lot about it, we celebrate it in worship, we affirm it in creed and in sacrament, but how does it really make a difference for me Monday through Saturday?

I suspect this question was very much alive in the hearts and minds of these 120 people we read about in Acts 2. And here’s why: Think about who these people were. One hundred and twenty followers of Jesus were gathered in somebody’s upstairs room during the days prior to Pentecost, praying and waiting on God to do something. Many of them had staked their lives on the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. They believed Him to be Messiah, but those hopes were crushed barely 50 days prior, when Jesus was crucified. But then, resurrection! And then 40 amazing days when the risen Jesus appeared to them on many occasions between Easter and His ascension into heaven. Those must have been amazing experiences. Then suddenly one day, Jesus said, “I’m going away and I want you to wait here until you receive the power of the Holy Spirit.” And He left. Taken up in a cloud into heaven. The group did follow His instructions. They went back into the city and gathered in a borrowed, upstairs room. And they waited. For 10 days they waited and prayed and talked and waited some more.

I don’t think it takes very much imagination to understand what must have been going through their minds during those hours: everything Jesus had taught them, the miracles He had performed, the conflicts with the Pharisees. As great as all of that was, I can imagine them asking, “But now what? We’re sitting here waiting for—something. Where is this going to leave me? I’ve risked a lot here. Will this faith really work? When it really matters and I push the green button marked ‘start’ will anything happen?” And with those questions pressing in on them, these disciples of Jesus, 120 of them, waited on the edge of a miracle.

Our scripture lesson for this morning is the account of that miracle, the miracle of Pentecost. As they were praying and waiting together, suddenly there was a violent wind, and tongues of fire, and they were speaking languages they had not learned. What an exhilarating and yet almost frightening moment it must have been, for all of these symbols were signs of the divine presence in their midst. The wind, a sign of power. The fire, a sign of purity. Tongues, for the purpose of proclamation. On this day called Pentecost, which they would never forget, they had been touched and filled with the very presence and spirit of Christ himself. That’s what God wanted to do all along. God has always wanted our relationship to Him to be so much more than a set of rituals we go through or a list of in which doctrines we believe. God has always wanted to be in us, to take up residence in our hearts and restore us to His original dream of who we would be.

There’s a great story back in the First Testament, when the people of Israel were on their journey out of Egyptian slavery into the Promised Land. It was a long and difficult journey. The people were grumbling and complaining the whole time. Moses was the leader and he’d just about had it. No matter how God helped them and what God provided for them these ungrateful people were always craving for more. In Numbers 11, God provided manna for them to eat in the desert. But they didn’t want manna; they wanted meat. So God said, “Okay, meat it is. In fact I’m going to give you so much meat that in a month’s time it’s going to come spewing out of your nostrils and you will loathe it!” Isn’t that a nice picture? And Moses was mad because God was going to give them what they wanted. He said, “God don’t you know that for these people it will never be enough?” Moses was ready just to wash his hands of the whole bunch. But that’s when he said something that goes to the very heart of what God really wants to do for His people. Moses said to Joshua, “I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!” (Numbers 11:29). What is he wishing for? That faith would go from head to heart. That religion would go from duty to passion. That spirituality would go from one part of life to the very breath of life.

It’s what the prophet Jeremiah longed for when he preached the word of the Lord saying, “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33).

It’s what the prophet Joel predicted when he said, “And afterward, [God says,] I will pour out my Spirit on all people” (Joel 2:28). Peter quotes that passage later in his Pentecost-day sermon, here in Acts 2.

God the Holy Spirit wants to take up residence in me, live in me, fill me, and empower me—to do what? To live the life of Jesus in this world. That is what Pentecost is all about. God never wanted or designed that our relationship with Him would be one of distance or casual acquaintance. He desires intimacy with us, restoring us to a life of freedom, peace, and joy.

But that’s not all God wants to do and that’s not all this story is about. The presence and work of the Holy Spirit is intensely personal but it is not private. Acts 2, and indeed the whole book, makes it clear that the purpose of the Spirit was to empower the Church for witness. Jesus said, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses” (1:8). The very first thing these Spirit-filled believers did was to hit the city with proclamation. Suddenly in verse 5 of chapter 2, the scene shifts from the upper room to the streets of the city where people from all kinds of different countries were hearing the good news in their own language. The Holy Spirit does come to comfort, and teach, and bring peace. But the very first gift given by the Holy Spirit is the gift of witness. The Holy Spirit gives us the courage and the power to be witnesses of Jesus Christ to our world. The whole story of Pentecost is not a story of how the Spirit comes to ease the life of the believer; it’s a story of evangelism.

Our church needs to live in the power of proclamation. That is our mission. And if we are not allowing the Holy Spirit to empower us for witness, then nothing else we do as a church will matter anyway. If we fail in our mission as a church, it will not be because of a lack of ministries. It won’t be a lack of leadership. It won’t be a lack of finances. It won’t be a marketing problem or an image problem. If we fail, it will be a failure to allow the Holy Spirit to move us and empower us as proclaimers of the gospel to our world.

You see the world is sitting there asking the same questions we ask.

It looks nice. It looks impressive. They seem to have a lot of fun together. Their lives seem to be different. The way of Jesus Christ looks fairly interesting from the outside, but what does it do? In other words, what real difference does it make? The only way they will ever know the answer to that question is if somebody pushes the big green button. We must allow the Holy Spirit to do in our lives what He did for these believers in Acts 2. Because we don’t even turn the page before we hear that this church was living together, devoting themselves to the study of the Scriptures, to fellowship, to worship, and to prayer.

They brought resources together so they could meet the physical needs of their community. Clearly something was happening among them that could not be explained in any way other than that the desire of Moses and the prophets had come true. Apparently God had placed His very spirit in their hearts. And the proof in the pudding was that “the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (2:47).

Folks, what are we doing? As a church what are we really doing? We have lots of activity. The church calendar is full. Lots of people come for worship every weekend, more and more. Our numbers are growing. We have lots of programs for children and teens and adults. The machinery is fairly impressive by most standards—lots of blinking lights and moving parts and substantial-looking pieces. But, what does it do? What difference does it make?

I can point to lots of examples, stories, programs, efforts, testimonies, and people that would seem to suggest we are a church. But looking at the big picture, looking at us against the paradigm of Acts 2, what are we doing?

As I think and pray over all the people who now call this their church home, I find myself resonating with the cry of Moses: “Oh Lord, how I wish that you would pour out your spirit on all of your people.”

The thing is, God has done that. The Spirit of God is present and available to fill your heart and empower your life to make a difference. But it doesn’t happen by accident. It happens through the intention of waiting before God with an open and hungry heart. Have you ever experienced a Pentecost moment in your life? Have you ever invited and asked the divine presence of Christ to fill you—body, mind, soul, and spirit? Is your faith working? Is there power in your life to live like Jesus every day? Are others coming to know about Jesus because of you? Perhaps it’s time for you to experience a contemporary Pentecost. It doesn’t matter how impressive the machinery looks—in your life or in our church—unless the green button is pushed, unless the power is applied, it doesn’t really mean much.

Pentecost is still happening. It happens in the lives of ordinary people who give up trying to control everything themselves and who surrender that control to the Lord Jesus. Have you done that? Are you willing to do that now?