Day of Pentecost: Sermon for 15 May 2016

Sermon for Sunday 15 May 2016

Day of Pentecost

Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, Jerusalem

The Rev. Carrie Ballenger Smith

Acts 2:1-21

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

 Let us begin with a prayer inspired by Julian of Norwich, a Christian mystic of the 14th C.:

St. John Chapel at Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, Jerusalem
Pentecost 2016

          

O God of every breath,

our beginning and our end,

O God of burning passion

and most tender compassion,

unbind our sin and our tongues this day,

that we may joyfully praise your name.

            

 For our substance is in you.

Heal our broken hearts and restore us,

make us one with you,

with each other

and with your entire creation.

            

 For you have assured us:

"I may make all things well.

I can make all things well.

I shall make all things well.

I will make all things well.

You will see for yourself

that every kind of thing

will be well."      Amen.

                

As I was preparing our little worship space here in St. John Chapel for Pentecost – hanging our beautiful red banner, and changing to red paraments, and looking for enough music stands for our wonderful musicians -- I found myself thinking about another Pentecost Sunday, in a chapel a few thousand kilometers away from Jerusalem.

It was a Wednesday evening in the tiny town in Illinois where I was first pastor. There were about seven of us lingering after our regular mid-week worship service to hang about one hundred red, orange, and yellow paper tongues of fire from the church ceiling. 

We had just heard the story of Pentecost from the book of Acts, and had sung a few Pentecost-y hymns to get in the Spirit of the week, among them, “We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord.” We welcomed a new church member that evening; we shared communion; and the Spirit got us moving and even clapping during the last hymn. It was a very good, Spirit-filled, Wednesday evening.

            

Capron Lutheran Church
Capron, Illinois
Pentecost 2011

But after the worship service, as we stood on chairs, ladders, and the backs of the pews trying to hang those dozens of paper tongues of fire from fishing line strung from one end of the chapel to the other, our conversation went something like this:

  

“Does this even look like fire?”

              

“Are the flames too close together?”

               

 “Steve, can you string that fishing line up a little higher?”

          

“We have to make sure Bill doesn’t turn the ceiling fan on this Sunday!”

             

“Ron, please don’t fall off the back of that pew!”

And of course:

“Whose idea was this, anyway?” (that one was directed at me!)

                

In fact, we were so caught up in the details of creating a beautiful, artistic, high-quality, life-like experience of Pentecost that we almost missed the real work of the Holy Spirit right in our midst.

            

And then, she blew into the room. Actually, her name was Marian, and she was a traveler seeking refuge from a storm.

             

You see, unbeknownst to us, at the same time as we were reading the biblical account of the mighty wind blowing in Acts chapter 2, another mighty wind was gathering momentum just outside. And as we were hanging those tongues of fire and generally blowing hot air inside the church, this stranger—Marian—was blown into our midst by the 105 kilometer per hour wind of the storm brewing in the early summer skies.

               

After a few frantic cell phone calls from family, wondering why we were still at the church when a tornado was brewing, we finally decided it might not be the best time to focus on liturgical decorations. We all escaped to our respective homes to check on farm animals and loved ones, leaving a few pitiful paper flames and some empty fishing line as the only remnants of our Pentecost plans.

I invited our wayfaring stranger, Marian, to follow me to the parsonage, where she waited in safety until the wind died down a bit.

We shared some tea and watched the weather reports until things seemed safe. And it was just as she was about to leave my house, an hour or so later, that Marian said, “Thank you so much for taking me in. As I drove past, I saw there were lights on in the church, and the Spirit led me to stop here."

“And by the way,” she said, “I’m a born-again Christian, and I’ve been baptized in the Holy Spirit.”

               

Could it have been just a few hours earlier that we were reading the account in Acts chapter 2 of the Holy Spirit’s unexpected entrance? Weren’t we just fussing about the proper placement of red, yellow, and orange paper to achieve the perfect “tongues of fire” look? And now, here she was—an unexpected guest, sitting in my living room, testifying to the real and awesome power of the Holy Spirit in her life.

               

Lutherans and other mainline Christians often struggle with what to think about the Holy Spirit. For many of us, the Spirit is kept under wraps until this one Sunday a year, when we break out our red shoes and sometimes even dare to clap during the hymn of the day! But other Christians—and definitely other Lutherans who aren’t as burdened by northern European sensibilities—don’t find it as difficult to embrace the Holy Spirit, thanks be to God!

                 

The Holy Spirit challenges us because, like an unexpected guest on a stormy night, she blows in and disrupts our best laid plans. The Spirit comes to us when we least expect her—though we have to laugh when it happens while we’re literally up to our elbows in tongues of fire! Though we may pray every week, “Come, Holy Spirit”, the truth is we’re generally unprepared for what it will mean when she—the Holy Spirit—actually arrives among us.

           

When the Spirit comes, our plans go out the window!

         

When the Spirit comes, we are stopped in our tracks and often must leave things hanging!

         

When the Spirit comes, we find ourselves doing and saying things we never thought possible!

                  

Have you ever just had to speak up for someone, or to speak out against an injustice?

Have you ever felt absolutely compelled to do something for a neighbor?

Have you ever known exactly what to do or say at just the right time? 

Maybe you had a moment of clarity in the midst of a crisis, or felt peace after making a difficult decision.

Perhaps you just knew that the church with the lights still on during a storm was a safe place to stop—or maybe you dropped everything to provide hospitality to a stranger seeking refuge from a storm.

                

If you have, then you know that the Holy Spirit moves us, inspires us, guides us, and empowers us in ways we can’t always explain!

             

Now someone once suggested to me that the Spirit is, in fact, just church-talk for “Stuff We Can’t Explain.” He suggested that these examples I just gave aren’t the work of the Spirit at all, but are just explainable, accidental, perhaps even overly-emotional moments in our lives.

                   

And maybe this is a fair question: How do we know if something is the work of the Spirit? After all, not all of us have the gift of speaking in tongues. Not all of us are preachers, teachers, or healers. Scripture tells us “there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.” (1 Corinthians) But how do we know if what we’re experiencing is the Spirit of God or just one of our crazy ideas?

              

1 Corinthians 12 gives us a clue in verse 7, where it says: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” 

For the common good. This tells us that the works of the Holy Spirit—the 3rd person of the Trinity, the breath of God, our Advocate—will by nature be for the good of others. The works of the Spirit will be reflective of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which was for the sake of our entire broken world.

                 

So you can test the promptings of the Spirit by asking yourself: “Is this about me, or about others?” The gifts of the Spirit which we celebrate today are not ultimately gifts for you, but are gifts for the world. The Holy Spirit summons out not only your best qualities, but God’s best qualities.

And this means that when the Holy Spirit blows in and makes herself known, she moves you to care for others. She guides you on right pathways and shows you the things that make for peace. She empowers you to forgive the sins of others. She gives you a voice—perhaps even a new language—so that you can be a voice for the voiceless, a broker of justice, an advocate for peace, and an agent of reconciliation, here in Jerusalem, in Bethlehem, or wherever the Spirit takes you next.

On this Pentecost Day, we give thanks for the way the Holy Spirit lives and moves in this congregation, and in the global church—not for our sake, but for the good of the world! Amen, Come Holy Spirit!