PENTECOST SUNDAY
Psalm
104:24-34, 35b; I Corinthians 12:3b-13;
John 7:37-39; Acts 2:1-17
Preached at Beckley Presbyterian Church on May 15th 2005
I'd like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy birthday.
"But it's not my birthday today!" Maybe
not, but today is the birthday of the Church and you are the Church, the people of God, called to be God's servants and witnesses
to the whole wide world.
The day of Pentecost, Whit Sunday, is the day that many traditions
look back to the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples in Jerusalem, an event
foretold by the prophets, promised by Jesus and that filled the disciples with a new sense of power and boldness to accomplish
the things that God was calling them to do.
There are three great celebrations in the Christian Year. Christmas, well we know about that. Easter, we have just celebrated; yet in an increasingly secular society,
the message of the cross and resurrection is often lost in the midst of Easter bunnies and Spring Break. However Pentecost is the churches almost forgotten festival.
Pentecost means "The Fiftieth," so called because it fell on the fiftieth
day, a week of weeks, after the Passover (or for the church a week of weeks after Easter). For
the Jews it was a dual celebration. It had a historical significance for it commemorated
the giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai. It had a religious
significance in that it was the day that thanksgiving offerings were offered to God for the blessings of the Harvest.
The coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples gave the celebration
a deeper meaning for Christianity. As the Jews celebrated the completion of the
law-giving and the start of the old covenant of law, so Christians celebrate the completion of Christ's earthly ministry and
the beginning of the New Covenant of Grace. As the Jews celebrated the Harvest,
so the Church celebrates the spiritual harvest that the Holy Spirit brings to peoples lives.
Before the Jerusalem Pentecost, Christianity consisted of a very small
group of disciples who had personally witnessed the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. They had soaked up His teaching and been transformed by His works and words, but they didn't know what
they were supposed to do with all those experiences, except their Master had told them to wait and pray in Jerusalem.
On the day of the Jerusalem Pentecost, the disciples became witnesses.
Peter became a preacher. Many people believed the disciples’ message, and
the Church was born. So... happy birthday y’all. It all started in that place of waiting and prayer during the Jewish festival of Pentecost. It all started when the Holy Spirit of God came upon the disciples in a new and vibrant way with the sound
of a mighty rushing wind and the sign of tongues of fire, and they were filled with spiritual energy and power.
On this birthday morning I'd like to reflect on the sort of people
the disciples were who gave birth to the church. My hope in so doing is that
the Holy Spirit can weave into our lives the grace necessary for us to be faithful.
Firstly, the disciples were... A people of promise
From before He even called the disciples, Jesus had recognized that
they were people of great potential. What the world saw was a rag-tailed gang
of fishermen, laborers, clerks and hangers-on who were so insecure in themselves that they left everything to follow a local
carpenter with delusions of being the savior of the world.
What the world sees is not how God sees things. By the grace of God those disciples were transformed. By the
grace of God the deluded carpenter turned out to be the bearer of light, truth and all that God had promised since before
the foundation of the world; the Word of life in whom all creation could find meaning.
We all have a choice: To see things as the world sees them or as God
sees them. We can look at our own lives the way the world does or we can see
them the way God does. People will tell us all sorts of things about ourselves. They will enclose us behind all sorts of barriers.
"You can't do that. You
could never manage that. You aren't capable. You’re not that sort of person.
We tried that and it didn't work. We don't do things that way around here. You don't understand. You’re not listening. Stay where you belong. Do as you are told. Don't think that you are anybody."
They were the sort of things that people said about Jesus. They are
the sort of things people say about the church today. "Happy Birthday, ya bunch
of losers." That's the way the world looks at the church. Are we going to listen to that? Or do we hear the voice of
a God who sees in us so much more than we dare dream?
What kept the disciples from being people of unrealized potential was
that they became people of promise. We are all people of potential but only when
we listen to God do we become inheritors of promise.
In John 7, during a previous Pentecost celebration, Jesus said, “He who believes in me, as the Scripture said, From his innermost being shall flow rivers
of living water.” John explains, “This he spoke about the Spirit whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given.”
The Spirit’s coming was the fulfillment of a promise. There are many promises in Scripture. The promises are there
to unlock our faith. They are things to believe upon, to act upon. They are things to help us realize our potential.
They are gifts of grace for our life.
Miss out on them and we miss out on things God has for us. How sad it would be to have birthday presents you never
get around to opening because you were to busy with other things. Don’t
neglect your reading of God’s Word.
The disciples were also... A people of prayer
In the Pentecost room the disciples weren’t just hanging out
with no particular place to go. It wasn’t the dentist’s waiting room. They weren’t idly perusing back copies of the Readers Digest looking for some
inspirational morsel that would take their mind off their coming examination.
These people were pumped up, excited, and expectant. Jesus had promised that if they waited in Jerusalem something
good would happen. They had seen Him crucified then risen again. He had been coming and going, spending time with them, teaching them things that their minds could never
have grasped before the resurrection. They had witnessed His Ascension and must
have been wondering, well, what next? How much more awesome can things become?
Imagine the difference it would make to our services if every time
we entered this sanctuary we were pumped up ready to meet with God? I’m
reminded of those weightlifter characters from Saturday Night Live. “We are here to pump you up!”
“We have been praying this morning and God has said He will meet
with us in our service of Worship. We will hear God’s Words in the Scriptures and the Music, God will speak to us through
the preacher and through the prayers. And when we leave we will be ready to take
on what ever the devil throws at us.”
The disciples weren’t weight lifters. They were wrestlers. They wrestled with God in prayer and by
grace became empowered, not with muscle power, but Holy Ghost power. We need
to be a people of prayer, to claim the promises of God and realize the potential God sees within us. In doing so we will discover another characteristic of the disciples.
The disciples were... A people of praise.
What drew the people to marvel at the disciples on the day of the Jerusalem
Pentecost was the way they were praising God. It didn’t matter where all
the onlookers came from. When the Spirit fell, they all heard the good news in
their own languages. They all heard those disciples praising God for what was
happening to them.
It would be easy to get bogged down in theological debate, about speaking
in tongues, and the significance of wind and fire and living water and a whole lot of other things in the second Chapter of
Acts. Do that and we miss the point that praise in a universal language.
If your heart is lifted up to God.
If you believe on His promises...
If you build your life on His Word...
If you prayerfully live out your days...
then praise just bubbles out.
An exuberant British evangelist by the name of Ishmael had a little
chorus that said:
“It’s amazing what Praisin’ can do,
It’s
amazing what Praisin’ can do,
If
you should doubt it
You
should learn to shout
It’s
amazing what Praisin’ can do”
It is the work of the Holy Spirit to turn dead-end lives that can be
self focused and full of ungodly troubles into eternity bound, Jesus focused, Spirit filled, God honoring, Grace empowered, experiences of the awesome love of a Creator God.
In a nutshell that’s what Pentecost is all about. The power of the Holy Spirit to take prayerful lives and turn them into something powerful for God. Good News in a world full of bad news. Seems
to me that is something worth celebrating.
So “Happy Birthday y’all.”
As disciples of Christ may we seek
to be filled,
with the power of the Holy Spirit,
that God’s church may continue,
to be built into the lives of this generation.
Adrian
Pratt
