Acts 2:1-21 "#CatchingFire"

  You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!  

         Did you know that, in the Christian Church, although we acknowledge holidays like Mother’s Day and Thanksgiving and although we shape our worship around the symbols and meanings of liturgical seasons such as Advent and Lent, we only celebrate three great festivals - or feast days - each year?  Only three:  The first one is, perhaps surprisingly, not Christmas, but rather Epiphany.  The second one is Easter.  And the third one is Pentecost, which we are celebrating today. 

         All in all, I would say that we are pretty comfortable with Epiphany because, after all, who can turn up their nose at a newborn baby, especially one showered with gifts from foreign lands?  Easter is also pretty easy to swallow because, as confusing as it may be theologically, it is still on the cusp of spring which, particularly here in Maine, we look forward to even in the depths of winter.

         But Pentecost?  Now that is a tough one.  We may all dress in red and take home a few geraniums, but as far as embracing this festival whose name alone conjures up revival tents and speaking in tongues, for us in staid northern New England, face it, Pentecost is a reach. 

But, I would say, it is an important reach for every congregation to make.  And it all began in one of those proverbial upper rooms in Jerusalem - a larger one this time since it is said that 120 folks squeezed into it. 

         It had been a hectic and mind-blowing few weeks for the apostles.  After all, they had gone from entering Jerusalem with Jesus and enjoying a well-deserved hero’s welcome to watching in horror as their rabbi whipped up a frenzy in the temple.  They had gone from Jesus’ arrest and monkey trial to his torturous and agonizing death.  They had gone from abandoning their leader to hearing the women’s crazy story about the empty tomb.  And finally they had gone from coming face to face with Jesus again to his final words before he sky rocketed to heaven:  “Wait,” he had told them. All in all, it was pretty confusing.

         "Wait? Surely you don't want us to lose our momentum, Jesus."

         "You heard me," said Jesus. "Go back to Jerusalem and wait."

         And so they did.  Not being exactly sure what it was that they were waiting for, they watched the market square below them as pilgrims from all over the Jewish world gathered in the Holy City for Pentecost, one of the three major pilgrimage festivals in the Hebrew calendar. 

Occurring 50 days after Passover (hence the root word – penta – meaning five), Pentecost celebrated the first fruits of the harvest, the portion traditionally given to God/Yahweh in thanksgiving for the fertility of the soil and in hopes of a good final harvest, one that would produce enough food to get them through the winter.

         It was just then, as the apostles marked time by watching the excited crowd assembling and listening to the Psalms they joyfully sang, that the unimaginable happened.  First there was the sound of a mighty wind that came out of nowhere, reminiscent of a freight train roaring by just outside their window.  It filled the room, the author of Acts tells us, and presumably he meant the wind itself as well as the sound. 

         Dust and even small pebbles blew in, all of the debris picked up and tossed about in little tornado-like swirls.  The dishes on the table rattled and shook.  Andrew dropped the pitcher he had been holding.  It broke into a hundred shards of brown and beige pottery even as the water inside it splashed and danced as it ran across the floor.  

         And then came the fire.  Out of the wind and the roar, the fire swept in.  Yellow and red and orange, the flames hovered over the head of each one of them.  They oohed and ahead and pointed at one another, trying desperately to describe what they were seeing. 

         But the words that came out of their mouths?  It was not Aramaic, their native tongue. No – instead they were speaking in all the languages of all the Jews from all over the Jewish world gathered in the market place below.

         That was too much! Unable to keep all that was happening to themselves, the apostles poured out into the streets.  Bonjour!  Buenos dias! Guten morgen!  Ohayō gozaimasu!  They went up to people they had never met, greeted them, and initiated conversations about who they were, who Jesus was, and what they were all about. 

         The more discerning ones in the crowd were amazed.  They pulled out their smartphones, took some video, did a facebook blast, and sent it out as a tweet:  #Crazy Holy Spirit.   The more cynical ones wrote it off to a bad night:  #Cheap Wine.

         That was when Peter got up, Peter who, for most of the time he was with Jesus, could barely string ten words together without putting his foot in his mouth, Peter got up and preached the sermon of a life time. 

         “This is what we have been waiting for,” he declared.  “We are not drunk.  Not because it is only 9 o’clock in the morning, mind you, but because what you are seeing is the Holy Spirit in action.  This is God come to be with us, just as Jesus said, in fact, just as the prophet Joel said: “Pour out, I will pour out my spirit. Earth shall be more than it seems.  Both sons and daughters shall prophesize, young and old will dream dreams.” (John Bell)

         What a day!  By the time Peter had finished, 3000 people were baptized, all of them proclaiming to be followers of Jesus and his way of justice, reconciliation, compassionate love, and peace.  Bam!  God had jumpstarted the church!

         It was quite remarkable really.  The disciples had been such a group of timid souls – filled with questions and fear of the unknown and what lay ahead, quite content to stay in their upper room, to hold on to their memories of a better time –

when they sang the same old songs around their campfires, when they were not challenged to think quite so much about the things they would rather forget, when they could convince themselves that they were too old or too tired to venture into, at best, a hazy future.

         And then came Pentecost.  The Holy Spirit swirled about them, shattering water pitchers along with their dreams of comfort and complacency, creating chaos where there had been order. Bam!  All-of-a-sudden, these frightened and faint-hearted individuals were, as Lutheran pastor James Erlandson wrote, “able to speak of the hope and new life that they had received from Jesus…They were now willing to give up everything that they had only moments before been clinging to... Now their future was in Jerusalem, and to share the good news of Jesus from there to Samaria, and to the ends of the earth – even to Rome, the heart and capital city of the empire which controlled so much of the known world. Most of them would die for their boldness and their witness, but they were no longer afraid of death, or even (perhaps more importantly, afraid) of failing….You can blame it (all) on the Holy Spirit.”        

         Erlandson goes on to ponder whether we in the 21^st century church are not like those first apostles at Pentecost – with many of the same fears for the future and questions about just where we are going.  He writes that ‘our numbers have dwindled since those glory days over 50 years ago, when this sanctuary was packed on Sundays, and there were (tens if not hundreds of) children enrolled in Sunday School (at least that’s what I have heard (he says) from the “old timers”, true or not).

         So where did everybody go? (We wonder): Will we survive? Will our children have faith? Who will pay the bills, and keep the Church going in this place? What will the future bring – do we even have a future?” Or are we just avoiding death?

         There is an email that periodically makes the rounds of cyberspace.  It is entitled “The Safest Place.” 

How to stay safe in the world today:

1. Avoid riding in automobiles because they are responsible for 20% of all fatal accidents.

2. Do not stay home because 17% of all accidents occur in the home.

3. Avoid walking on streets or sidewalks because 14% of all accidents occur to pedestrians.

4. Avoid traveling by air, rail, or water because 16% of all accidents involve these forms of transportation.

5. Of the remaining 33%, 32% of all deaths occur in hospitals.  So above all else, avoid hospitals.

         But…You will be pleased to learn that only .001% of all deaths occur in worship services at church, and these are usually related to previous physical disorders.  Therefore, logic tells us that the safest place for us to be at any given moment is in church!

         Nice thought! However, I would say – especially on this day of Pentecost when we come together to be wowed by both the power and the unpredictability of the Holy Spirit – I would say that this aura of safety in the church is not the best way to be a Christian in our post-modern world, and it is certainly not the best way to be the church.

         Episcopal priest Rick Morley put it this way:  “At Pentecost the Church wasn’t given a mandate to stay-put, set up shop, and get comfy. At Pentecost the Church was given maps and itineraries, and they were sent on their way.  Our call as God’s people is to be wanderers. We aren’t meant to get too settled. Too rooted. Too rigid.  At the very least our spiritual lives are meant to be a pilgrimage, where the dangerous place is the place that gets too comfortable.  We are to be on the move, and our churches are meant to be on the move.”

         Pentecost is not an affirmation of Sunday mornings with no surprises.  Pentecost is not about singing the same hymns we grew up with and having the same musical accompaniment we grew accustomed to decades ago.  Pentecost is not about doing things the same way we have always done them or going back to the way we used to do them in the hope that, if we do, the church will be just like it was 50 years ago.  Actually, that is one definition of insanity.

         A cynic put it this way: "If it were up to most Christians, churches would have lightning rods on their steeples instead of crosses in memory of that time when lightning struck the early church and as protection against it ever happening again!"

         The lesson of Pentecost is that a congregation who has embraced the Holy Spirit is not a congregation who embraces comfort and security.  In C.S. Lewis’ series of books, The Chronicles of Narnia, you may remember that God appears in the form of a great and mysterious lion named Aslan.

One of the children who had stumbled into Narnia and encountered the lion wondered, "Is Aslan safe?"

         "Safe?" a resident of Narnia replied. "No, my dear, Aslan is not safe. But he is good."

         Likewise, the Holy Spirit is not safe, but she is good.  Not safe because we will surely experience the Holy Spirit as disruptive at first, even unwelcome, stirring things up in and around us. No – not safe - but that is how new possibilities are born and nurtured – and that is good.

         One preacher put it this way: "We are often trapped by life…Afraid to leave and afraid to stay, (and so) we move into survival mode. Pentecost marks the descent of the Holy Spirit of God -- a spirit different from our own. It is the hurricane-like wind that, if we have the courage to conspire with it, will rearrange us into people who can be more than we are and do more than we do -- not just for ourselves, but for others.”

        We are at a crossroads in our church – not unlike virtually all churches.  Are we going to live – or are we content with just avoiding death?  Now is the time to really come together to discern where the Spirit is trying to lead us, to step out into the waters of faith, and see where it takes us, to trust that with God all things are possible because God is up to making all things new.  God has poured out the Spirit – not just on those apostles in the upper room in Jerusalem oh so long ago.  God has poured out the Spirit on us as well.  We too can feel the wind.  We too have been given a flame.  

         I believe that God wants this Spirit of Pentecost to inhabit churches – all churches, our church.  I believe that God wants this Spirit of Pentecost to swirl around us, emboldening us, unsettling us, thrusting out into an unknown future.  I believe that God wants this Spirit of Pentecost to transform us and renew us to become the church of the 21^st century.  I believe that God wants this Spirit of Pentecost to blow on the embers of our hearts and cause us to burst into flame.

         It will not be safe.  That is for sure.  But trust that it will be good.  So pick up your smartphone.  E-mail, facebook, tweet - #Catching Fire.  

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C.