Acts 2:1-21
Goooooood Morning Covenant Presbyterian Church.
Welcome to Pentecost!
Welcome to the deep work of God!
Creating the Church of Jesus Christ.
Welcome to the fire and the wind …
Welcome to Pentecost.
The fiftieth day after Passover … a harvest festival, a pilgrim festival, 50 days after Jesus rose from the dead …
Jesus told his disciples to go to Jerusalem … wait there … wait for the promise of the Father … wait for the Holy Spirit.
I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to wait.
Do you find it hard to wait, too?
We do a lot of waiting in our lifetime …
A child waiting for Christmas … a child in the back seat on the way to gramma’s house – “are we there yet?”
I remember waiting for my 10th birthday … finally reaching double-digits – that was significant to me.
I remember turning 13 – a teenager, at last.
Then 16, to get my license …
18, registering for the draft …
And 21, to drink …
And so on and so forth … lots of waiting …
The disciples are waiting … a spiritual waiting … a positive, powerful, kind of waiting …
Waiting for the promise of the Father, the promise of the Holy Spirit … a promise proclaimed by John the Baptist when he stood with Jesus in the Jordan River: He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire [Luke 3:16].
Waiting is a vital part of our spiritual work …
We wait for God.
We discipline ourselves … we take a deep breath … we pray and we ponder, we wait and we watch, we stop and we sit … we put our burdens down, and we set aside our plans!
We resist the temptation to plunge ahead.
We wait for the LORD!
Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
all you who wait for the LORD [Psalm 31:24].
Be still before the LORD, and wait patiently for him [Psalm 37:7].
I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning.
O Israel, hope in the LORD!
For with the LORD there is steadfast love,
and with him is great power to redeem.
It is he who will redeem Israel
from all its iniquities [Psalm 130:5-8].
What would it look like for us to wait upon the LORD?
Are we inclined to wait upon the Lord?
I think American Christians are terribly impatient.
American Christianity is bustling and busy …
Full of books and methods …
Strategies and designs …
Meetings and marketing plans …
I wonder sometimes …
American Christianity seems frantic these days.
Evangelicals snarl and snap at one another over points of faith …
Liberals moan and groan about most everything …
And everyone counts numbers … how many in the pew this morning? How much in the offering plate? How tall the steeple; how big the program.
From Shakespeare [Macbeth, V.v.]:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
[wrote Shakespeare, Macbeth, V.v.]
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
I get the uneasy feeling sometimes that God is waiting for us to slow down … God is waiting for us to wait for God!
Does God say, Okay, you think it’s up to you? Your strategies and your designs, your plans and your power? Your dreams and your reputation? Okay. Go for it. I’ll wait! I’ll wait until you’re so tired, that you can’t think anymore. I’ll wait until you’ve read all the books and exhaust all the possibilities … I’ll wait until you learn … to wait for my promise.
In reality, some congregations never learn to wait upon the LORD.
A church in Redford, Michigan just announced its closing …
10 years ago, they had a chance to merge with another church and create a vital ministry; all the details had been worked out … but one of their stalwart members stood up and announced at a congregational meeting, “I’d rather take my church to my grave than see it change.”
Well, she got her wish, didn’t she?
She took her church to the grave.
I wonder what would have happened had she learned to wait upon the LORD rather than catering to her own comfort.
I wonder what a waiting church looks like?
A church waiting for the Father’s promise …
Waiting for the Holy Spirit?
It’s not that the disciples were waiting around aimlessly … twitting their thumbs … oh no … far from it … listen to the Text:
Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.
Devoted to prayer … together with one another …
I wonder what THAT looks like?
Are we devoted to prayer at Covenant?
What do you think?
If we were devoted to prayer, what would that look like?
Would we have prayer gatherings in our homes?
Would we open our meetings with 20 minutes of prayer? 30 minutes of prayer?
Would we have a Wednesday evening prayer service?
Would we have:
Extended periods of holy silence, when we wait together for the LORD to speak to our hearts … calm our minds, center our energies, reveal God’s will and purpose?
Extended periods of time - reading the Psalms aloud to one another, because the Psalms are mostly prayers …
Reading from prayer books … writing our own prayers … and just praying, as the Spirit leads … some praying with ease, because they’re comfortable with words; others praying hesitantly, because words flow slowly.
Are we devoted to prayer?
We are a prayerful church, that I know.
But can we kick it up a notch?
Are we minimalists?
I think a lot of congregations are sort of minimalist …
We do it all, but we do it perfunctorily …
We’ve done it a thousands times; we settle into the rut and sink into routine …
Are we minimalists here?
I love how the story unfolds …
They were all together in one place …
And then came the fire.
Tongues of flame above everyone’s head …
The anointing of the Holy Spirit …
The breath of God all over again … like the creation story of Genesis 2, when God took a handful of dirt and blew life into it, so the dirt become a living being …
God breathed a fresh breath of air on Pentecost day …
So the church could become a living being …
And they began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability.
This is the clue – language!
The ability to speak … to the world.
Crowds gathered at the sound of it all …
Curious crowds …
Bewildered crowds …
Crowds from all over the Mediterranean world – they heard the disciples speaking in their own languages – how can this be? They asked. We hear their accent – they a rough and tumble bunch from Galilee, and they’re talking about God in our own language. What does this mean?
Some sneered, of course; they’ve been hitting ye’ olde wine bottle a little too early!
Were they drunk?
Or was it just the Holy Spirit …
Barriers came down that day.
Bridges were built!
Folks from all around the world heard the gospel in their own tongue!
Los Angeles is a gathering place for peoples of the world …
We ate in a Himalayan restaurant the other night, next door to a Turkish café, just down the block from a Brazilian bistro …
Everywhere a veritable melting pot - in our streets and schools, workplaces and neighborhoods – a wonderful mélange of sights and sounds – full of energy and creativity …
Just like Jerusalem … that fabled day of Pentecost …
The world at our doorstep …
Several months ago, we had some guests …
One of them spoke Spanish … someone else translated …
As I read the story of Pentecost this week … I kept thinking of that moment.
This past week, I was at a union hall in Hawthorne … with a group of folks who had just lost their jobs at the LAX Hilton … folks who had worked there 20 and 25 years, and now they were laid off …
Most of the meeting was in Spanish …
A very sweet lady came over and sat next to me, and translated quietly.
I was deeply moved.
I was honored to be there.
They invited me to speak, and I did.
Most of them understood me.
They’re bilingual; I’m not.
Language …
God speaks in all the languages of the world …
To the lost and to the found …
To the blind and to the sighted …
The disciples spoke that day in everyone’s language:
Parthians, Medes, and Elamites;
Visitors from Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia,
Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,
Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene;
Immigrants from Rome, both Jews and proselytes;
Even Cretans and Arabs!
No one left out.
The message of God’s love for everyone!
So, what does Pentecost mean for us, right here, right now, Covenant on the Corner?
What do we learn from the Text?
From the story itself?
Have we learned the spiritual art of waiting upon the LORD?
Or are we likely to plunge ahead with our plans?
Are we a little bit frantic these days, or are confident in God’s purpose?
Do we use prayer to open and close meetings, or are we exploring the larger dimensions of prayer?
Are we a Pentecost church filled with the sound of God’s breath? … a sound that intrigues the world, and draws folks to see what’s happening?
We are growing in all of this … and there’s always more ahead of us …
We are asking good questions and probing the future …
Learning to speak the languages of our time …
We are the church of Jesus Christ …
A Pentecost church …
Spirit-breathed and Spirit-led.
Filled with the fire of faith!
We are, Covenant on the Corner …
Amen and Amen.
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