Gifts of Pentecost

May 30, 1993

Scripture: “And suddenly from heaven, there came a sound like the rush of a mighty wind.” Acts 2:2

Have you ever had an experience that absolutely changed your life, turned it around, so that from that time on, everything was different?

Just over 9 months ago, on August 24, 1992, Hurricane Andrew slammed into South Florida. It came out of the Atlantic Ocean, creating havoc in the northern islands of the Bahamas, paused to catch its breath and toy with the idea of veering northward, but then decided a course directly westward was more to its liking....

It took dead aim on land just to the south of downtown Miami and gathered all its incredible power for an onslaught.

The full force of the storm hit after midnight. At Annual Conference this week we heard the report of what people went through....It was nothing short of a miracle more lives were not lost. If it had come ashore just a few miles father north where the center of the population was located, there is no telling what the death toll might have been.

As it was, the devastation was unbelievable. The scope of it defies comprehension. Mile after mile with nothing left standing...trees, light poles, houses, buildings...wiped out.

Boats lifted from their moorings and blown inland hundreds of yards....Metal twisted into grotesque shapes....Losses in the millions, maybe billions of dollars. A heavy bomber attack could hardly have done more damage. It was like a war zone.

13 of our United Methodist churches were damaged, plus a number of parsonages. Some will never be replaced.

We saw a video at Conference of how the Church has responded to the crisis. This is the positive thing that has come out of the experience of that night....

People have been magnificent---Volunteers, some from this church and from around the Conference have gone down to help. Additional volunteers, United Methodist volunteers, from 30 states have gone down. More than $9 million dollars has been donated by church members in relief money, the largest dollar response ever made to a Bishop’s appeal for an emergency.

The response, though, only begins to touch the dimension of the problem. You really have to see it to believe it, the sheer size of it. There will be work to do down there for years to come, maybe for decades.

And the thing that was so striking to me about the reports we heard was the impact of that one night’s experience on people’s lives.

Speaker after speaker used almost the same words in reflecting on August 24, 1992---“What happened that night changed my life,” they said, nearly all of them...“I know I’ll never be the same again.”

The winds of destruction had that power. BUT SO DO THE WINDS OF RENEWAL. Today is Pentecost Sunday in the Church. Hurricane Andrew is a negative example of PENTECOST. The two events are different, of course...in some way radically different.

Andrew was destructive; Pentecost was constructive. Andrew tore down; Pentecost built up. Andrew took away; Pentecost added. Andrew left people diminished and isolated; Pentecost left them strengthened and unified.

Andrew brought fear; Pentecost brought hope. Andrew brought terror; Pentecost brought confidence. Andrew was a natural event; Pentecost...well, what can you call it but supernatural. Andrew came out of the earth and sea; Pentecost came out of heaven.

You can explain Andrew, if you know enough meteorology; you can’t explain Pentecost no matter how many “ologies” you’ve mastered.

The 2 experiences stand in sharp contrast in some basic and fundamental ways.

BUT NOT IN EVERY WAY. Both represent an awesome display of POWER. Both came unexpectedly. Both underline the essential precariousness of the human situation; both remind us of how vulnerable we are to forces outside of ourselves...both make us aware that we’re really pretty puny when face to face with genuine potency.

AND BOTH Andrew and Pentecost made people different. If you could have interviewed later on those who were present on Pentecost in the Upper Room, if you could have talked with them about that experience, you would unquestionably have heard them say, “What happened that day changed my life. I know I’ll never be the same again.”

We’re not quite sure what to do with the Pentecost story in the New Testament, are we? We’re not quite sure how to handle it....I guess because we’re not sure it can be handled, any more than a storm like Andrew can be handled.

In Acts, it just seems to erupt, out of nowhere, without warning, without prior notice. Suddenly there it is, and everything is different.

Nothing Luke tells us about the behavior of the disciples after the Ascension prepares us for the astounding character of Pentecost itself.

Oh, they knew something special was about to happen... Jesus had told them when He left, but they had no idea it would be like this.

They go back to Jerusalem, as He instructed them....They wait, they engage in prayer, they take care of a couple of routine administrative matters. At this point it sort of reminds you of an Annual Conference session. They have to elect somebody to fill a vacancy on a committee....2 candidates are put forward, their qualifications checked, speeches are made...

Somebody probably offers an amendment, and somebody else moves the previous question on all that is before them... We’ve just been through it in Lakeland. How familiar this seems.

Finally---gosh, this is embarrassing---Finally, they make the decision by means of a lottery....it just goes to show how badly in need of outside help they were!

BUT SUDDENLY, right there on the floor of the Conference itself, PANDEMONIUM BREAKS LOOSE. A Hurricane St. Andrew....that’s exactly how Luke describes it. A mighty wind whips through the room. Tongues of fire reach out and land on every head. There is noise and commotion.

People are filled with a sense of the HOLY, so powerful and overwhelming that the only thing they can do is cry out in ecstasy.

The Spirit has taken over the assembly. All semblance of order is gone; The presiding officer pounds the gavel, the sergeant-at-arms throws up his hands---NOTHING HAS ANY EFFECT. The people are seized by a spiritual frenzy.

Now that’s scary. That’s really scary. Think of something like that happening in one of our worship services. I can’t imagine anything in the world that would be more unnerving to a worship committee, or a liturgist, or a minister of preaching for that matter than having all your worship arrangements, all your Sunday preparation, all your plans for a service suddenly taken out of your hands by the very One in whose name you gathered. That’s scary.

How glibly and sometimes perfunctorily we pray, “Lord, come and be among us.” “Lord, make your presence known in our midst.” Ha! What if he did? What if he took us up on it?

A Pentecost is no tame experience.

Having the Lord on your hands-----Paul Scherer somewhere has written, “What if we stopped singing ‘Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine’, and started singing, ‘Blessed Disturbance, I am HIS’”?.....

Having the Lord on your hands...NOT the Lord of modest decorum and timid decency, but the full-throated and robust God of the New Testament....HAVING THAT GOD ON YOUR HANDS IS NOTHING TO PLAY AROUND WITH.

But that’s how it is in the New Testament. This is not the only place we see evidence of the unpredictability, the unruly nature of God’s Spirit.

Put Him in a box, or try to, try to tame Him, try to confine Him within normal, safe, bureaucratic operations, or institutionalize Him, to make Him work through proper channels, INVARIABLY HE’LL BREAK OUT TO DISRUPT AND STIR THINGS UP FOR GOOD. The New Testament’s full of it.

When God wants to send a Son to the world for its redemption, does he do it through the religious establishment? No, He sends the Spirit to whisper in the ear of a frightened peasant girl, way out in the periphery.....

When Peter continues to cling to the old idea that the Gospel is primarily for those of the household of Israel, a limited, restricted group, the Spirit interrupts him in a dream to show him that nothing God has created is to be called unclean. The Good News is not for the clique, it’s for everybody.

When Paul plans his missionary itinerary, having had some success in Phrygia and Galatia, and decides on his own to move next into Bithynia, up to the northeast, the Spirit stops him cold, saying, “Go the other direction. Go over into Macedonia, where God wants you to go.” OVER AND OVER IT HAPPENS....Unruly and unpredictable.

We call Luke’s account the Acts of the Apostles. A better name would be THE ACTS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT AS MANIFESTED THROUGH THE APOSTLES. It is the free, uninhibited, creative, innovative, pulsating, throbbing activity of God, which calls a people into being, shakes them up, shores them up, and sends them out to be about His business in the world. There could have been no Church back there, and there can still be no true Church apart from the enervating dynamism of the Holy Spirit. When it comes, things happen.

Now, I don’t know how far you want to press the details of Luke’s description of that day for literal accuracy. That bothers some people, especially since some in the Church take part of the description and make it into a litmus test for spiritual authenticity.

It helps me to think of it as picture language, religious language, couched in images of physical phenomena.

Could you have clocked the speed of the wind that day the way they clocked the speed of Andrew’s winds? I don’t think so. To think of it in those terms is to miss the point. We know enough Bible now to know how to translate those things. Wind and fire stand for God and God’s activity.

What Luke is saying is that God is bigger than our buckets, bigger than our labels, bigger than our institutions, bigger than any of our categories and structures.

We don’t control him and we don’t program Him. To meet Him is never to be the same again.

I can’t explain Pentecost any more than I can explain Creation or Incarnation. I don’t think Luke could explain it. I don’t think he was trying to. He was writing filled with awe at the Sovereign majesty of the Lord God of the universe, who by his grace acts in human life for our redemption, who acted here in a mighty way....AND HIS KEY EMPHASIS IS NOT ON THE PARTICULARS OF THE EXPERIENCE, BUT ON THE RESULTS.

What happens when God takes over, when the Spirit comes down, when Pentecost erupts in a life or in a church?

1) Well, for one thing, EMPOWERMENT OCCURS. “What happened changed my life”, said the Hurricane Andrew survivors. The Pentecost survivors said the same thing. “I’ll never be the same again. AND THEY WEREN’T.”

It’s a different crew after Pentecost Day from the gang that started out. The numbers alone reflect it. From 11 plus 1, it jumps to 120. By the end of the day, 3,000 more had been added. Think how that would look on a pastor’s annual report. POWER!

But the real difference is on the inside. Timidity is swallowed up in courage. Caution is devoured by boldness. Hesitation is made slave to resolution. You can’t even recognize Simon Peter as the same quivering personality who cowered in the corner when the girl accused him of being Jesus’ follower....“What are you talking about?” he had said...“I don’t even know the man.”

Look at him now....assuming leadership, standing up before the crowd, proclaiming the glory of resurrection in absolute disregard of what it might cost him. SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED TO HIM.

When J.B. Phillips wrote his brilliant translation of the Book of Acts---he entitled it “The Young Church in Action”...he said afterward, reflecting on the experience: “It is impossible to spend several months in close study of this remarkable book without being profoundly stirred, and to be honest, disturbed. The reader is stirred because he is seeing Christianity, the real thing, in action for the first time in human history. The newborn church, as vulnerable as any newborn child, having neither money, influence, nor power, in the ordinary sense, is setting forth joyfully and courageously to win the pagan world for Christ.”

No one can read this book without being convinced that there is Someone here at work

besides mere human being. Perhaps because of their very simplicity, perhaps because of their readiness to believe, to obey, to give, to suffer, and if need be, to die, the Spirit of God found what surely He must always be seeking---

a fellowship of men and women so united in love and faith that He can work in them and through them with a minimum of ...hindrance.

Consequently it is a matter of sober historical fact that never before has any small body of ordinary people so moved the world that their enemies could say, with tears of rage in their eyes, that these people “have turned the world upside down.”

They were simply not the same people they were before. They could never be again. There’s something thrilling about that, something that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

One of my professors at seminary used to say, “Jesus promised his disciples 3 things, and three things only---that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble.” At Pentecost His promise came true. When the Spirit comes, EMPOWERMENT ENSUES.

2) Luke hints at more. Well, he does more than hint. It’s right here. When the Spirit comes, it brings INCLUSIVENESS.

If Andrew divided, Pentecost united. If Andrew discarded, Pentecost collected. IT BROUGHT TOGETHER INTO ONE THE WHOLE COMPANY.

Isn’t that the real meaning of the naming of the nations, and the languages, and the tongues? There were people there from the entire known world. He names them. He doesn’t leave anybody out.

Exactly! THERE IS NOBODY LEFT OUT. Pentecost is a “For Everybody” thing.

“Each person heard in his own language.” Even in the excitement there was intelligibility. Even in the diversity there was unity. DIFFERENCES WERE NOT ERASED, BUT TYING THEM ALL TOGETHER WAS A BOND OF ONENESS.

The Spirit does that. That’s how you know the Spirit’s been there. Maybe we can’t point to explanations of Pentecost; maybe we can’t define it, or account for it, but we can point to the evidences of it. The Spirit may come without warning, but it leaves footprints where it has been, and those footprints inevitably take an inclusive shape.

Where divisiveness lives, you can be pretty sure the Spirit does not. Where walls of separation prevail, the Spirit still bides its time.

When the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald died, they rummaged through the papers he had left. Among other things, they came across a list of suggestions for future stories. One read, “A widely separated family inherits a house in which by the stipulations of the will they all have to live together.”

It’s the story being written in the world today. Maybe we’re learning the only way it can be done is by the power of God’ embracing, encircling spirit.

Remember Edwin Markham’s old poem: “He drew a circle that kept me out; Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout; But love and I had the wit to win, We drew a circle and that took him in.”

That’s what the Spirit does. When the Spirit comes, NO ONE IS LEFT OUT.

Someone once asked Carl Sandburg, “What do you think is the ugliest word in the English language?” Mr. Sandburg paused just an instant, and then said,  “I think the ugliest word in the English language is the word ‘excluded.’”

Pentecost says, no one has to be excluded now, you can’t run far enough to get away from God’s pursuing grace. You can’t blacken the slate enough to be considered worthless. You can’t sink low enough to be beyond redemption. THAT’S THE GOSPEL.

Simon Peter, filled with the Spirit and with the Spirit acting through him, stood up at Pentecost and quoted those ringing words from the Old Testament prophet, Joel: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” EVERYONE!

John Wesley preached on that text more than on any other text in the New Testament. If you’re separated from God in any way, for any reason, it’s hard to hear any better news. When the Spirit comes, it brings INCLUSIVENESS.

3) And it brings at least one more thing. IT BRINGS A FLOOD OF MISSIONARY ZEAL. It brings a heart of concern for other people. It brings a burning commitment to OUTREACH.

After Pentecost, you never hear much about the Church being closeted again in little room. That mighty wind in a sense blew the walls down and pushed them out into the street. It was like an explosion that blew them out into the world where the power of the experience within the walls could be transmitted to those on the outside.

That’s what the Spirit does. It motivates, it prods, it stimulates, it needles...it says, “Listen, if you think you have made your quota when you’ve come apart with others to worship and take in, then you haven’t felt the full measure of this calling. The Church gathers to get something to eat.... of course it does.

It gathers for nourishment, for insight, for training, for stimulus, but then the real work begins, as it scatters out into the world to make an impact.

Pentecost changed the character of Christianity forever, or maybe it would be more accurate to say it formed its true character. It made it a mission religion. It made it a sharing religion. It made it a giving away religion. We’ve lost some of that divinely carefree prodigality, I’m afraid, some of that “hilaritas” that didn’t worry about spending and giving freely, because it knew where its real treasure was.... we’re so anxious now to protect and preserve our  assets. But when the energizing winds of the spirit blow, people can’t help but be generous with their time, and their money, and their skills, and their witness. The spirit gets inside somehow, and you can’t be the same anymore.

There’s an old missionary story about an African convert who was given a copy of the Bible. He was enormously excited and appreciative of his “treasure”, which made the missionary all the more surprised when, a few months later, they met again and the missionary saw the condition of the Bible---worn, torn, battered, with what looked like lots of pages missing.

“I thought you would have taken better care of the Bible I gave you,” the missionary said.

Oh, replied the African man, “It’s the best gift I ever received. It’s such a wonderful gift, I gave a page to my mother, and a page to my father, and then a page to everyone in the village.”

Pentecost had come to that man. Maybe there were some things he didn’t understand, but the power, and the inclusiveness, and the compulsion to share which the Spirit brings when it comes pouring in had caught him up in its grasp, and he was alive.

It happened to a group of followers 2000 years ago, and from that day on everything was different.

“Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a mighty wind.”

Do you suppose.....Do you suppose....