Sermon for Pentecost Sunday, Acts 2:1-21

Sermon 6/9/19

Acts 2:1-21

Pentecost

The Holy Spirit is weird. Let’s just acknowledge that right from the get-go. Christians are Trinitarian. That is, we worship one God, but we believe that God is a Trinity - three “persons,” one God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer; God, Christ, Spirit. And that’s great. But many of us, maybe even most of us are a lot more comfortable talking about who God is, the one we think of as Creator and Parent, and talking about Jesus, his teachings, and following as his disciples, than we are figuring out what this Holy Spirit thing is. In the weeks between the Resurrection of Jesus on Easter morning, and when Jesus finally returns to God’s home, as we celebrated last week on Ascension Sunday, Jesus keeps talking about this Holy Spirit thing that’s supposed to come and help the disciples feel equipped and prepared to do the work of Jesus in the world. And I’m not sure exactly what the disciples were expecting to have happen, but if they’re anything like me, what I would be thinking is: I’d rather just have you, Jesus. If you’re trying to sell that you leaving isn’t so bad because we’re getting this Spirit-thing that you never quite describe the same way twice, I’d rather just have you, Jesus! Because this Holy Spirit thing just sounds weird.

The Holy Spirit is described as Comforter, Intercessor, Advocate, and Counselor. It is called the Paraclete, a Greek word which means “Called Alongside,” as in something called to kind of journey alongside us. In church history, the phrase, “Holy Ghost” has been used, and that’s just, well, spooky, right? The scriptures use images of Dove and Fire for the Holy Spirit. The word for Spirit in the scriptures is the same as wind or breath - so we can think of Holy Wind and Holy Breath instead of Holy Spirit. Recently I was talking with Don Schuessler about some liturgical resources that come from the Iona Community. That’s a Scottish-based ecumenical movement focusing in part on worship renewal. I used many of their materials this year on Palm/Passion Sunday. And their publishing arm is called Wild Goose. Don and I were talking about what that meant, and I didn’t know. But I’m also going to a worship conference this summer called the “Wild Goose Festival.” So finally I had to look up: Why Wild Goose? And it turns out - the Wild Goose is yet another symbol for the Holy Spirit. Apparently, in Celtic spirituality, the wild goose was often used as a symbol for the Holy Spirit because, like the wild goose, the Holy Spirit has a “tendency to disrupt and surprise” and “moves in our lives in an unexpected fashion.” (1) So, add wild goose to the list as we try to figure out this mystery we call the Holy Spirit.

I think of a 90s song from the Christian band “Newsboys” that I always loved, called “Spirit Thing.” The singer is trying to describe how the Holy Spirit works in his life, and finds it challenging. Some of the lyrics: “It's an early warning sign, It keeps my life in line, But it's so hard to define, Never mind. It's just a spirit thing, It's just a holy nudge, It's like a circuit charge in the brain. It's just a spirit thing, It's here to guard my heart, It's just a little hard to explain. It pushes when I quit, It smells a counterfeit, Sometimes it works a bit like a teleprompter. When it's telepromting you, I pray you'll let it through, And I'll help you with the how, But for now, It's just a spirit thing.” (2)

A holy nudge, prompting us to action. I like that. So, today, Pentecost Sunday, is the day we celebrate that, just as Jesus promised, the Holy Spirit showed up for the disciples in a big way. They’re in Jerusalem, because Jesus had told them to wait there to receive the spirit. And lots of other people are there too, to celebrate the festival of Pentecost, a harvest festival in Judaism, the Feast of Weeks. And suddenly, the sounds of a violent rushing wind fills the place where the disciples are, and something like tongues of fire appears to rest on the head of each disciple, and each disciple begins speaking in other languages that they apparently previously didn’t know, and all the people gathered for the festival can understand them. The experience is so weird, so unexpected and unexplainable that some in the crowd assume that what they’re seeing is the result of drunkenness. Drunken antics of people who have been partying too much. But at this accusation, Peter finally stands up with the disciples, and addresses everyone.

He tells the crowds that what they are witnessing is the work of the Holy Spirit. He quotes the prophet Joel, who talked about everybody receiving the Spirit, which would enable them to prophesy, to tell the truth in powerful ways about the work of God in the world. Joel says God’s spirit will be poured out on sons and daughters, young and old, slaves too - everyone receives the Spirit of God. And Peter, by quoting Joel, indicates that the pouring out of the Spirit is happening right then, fulfilled in the midst of all these people. And from here on out, the book of Acts picks up steam, and the disciples are relentlessly about the work of preaching about Jesus, and urging others to join their movement.

It’s a pretty big switch, when you think that just last Sunday, we were watching the disciples stare up at the sky, not knowing what to do with themselves, not sure what Jesus was doing, not sure what was happening next. They seemed unsure of themselves, unclear on their mission, anxious to be carrying out any mission without Jesus there to guide them. This Spirit-thing, whatever it is, Wild Goose or Holy Ghost, or Nudge from God - it seems to make a big impact.

I think it is pretty easy for us to relate to the disciples when they’re unsure and unclear and confused and sort of stuck in suspended animation, unable to act. I’ve been thinking this week about Imposter Syndrome. Have you ever heard of that before? Imposter Syndrome? Even if you haven’t heard of it, you’ve probably experienced it.  “Imposter syndrome is a psychological term referring to a pattern of behavior where people doubt their accomplishments and have a persistent, often internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud.” In other words, it’s a fear that we’ll be “found out” as not really qualified to do whatever it is we’re doing, whatever it is that people think we’re good at. Like we’re somehow pulling the wool over the eyes of everyone else who thinks we’ve got it together. “The term was coined by clinical psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978, when they found that despite having adequate external evidence of accomplishments, people with imposter syndrome remained convinced that they don’t deserve the success they have.” Folks struggling with imposter syndrome “call their success luck, good timing, and [dismiss it] as other’s believing they were better, more intelligent and more competent than they actually are.” (3)

Probably, many of you resonate with the description I just read. Most of us at one time or another feel like imposters. We feel unqualified. Unequipped. Unimpressive. We feel like we don’t really know what we’re doing, and eventually other people are going to figure us out. And like there is most definitely someone else who would be doing a better job at what we’re doing. They’d be really getting it right. And I think we feel like this when it comes to our faith lives too. Like we’re imposter disciples - pretending we know how to follow Jesus, but feeling on the inside like we have no idea what to do to please God, to be faithful, to live the good lives we know God means for us to live.

I was very young when I started pastoring my first church. And one day, I wasn’t a pastor, and the next day, I was. I had a lot to learn still, even though I’d been to seminary for years and completed all the requirements set forth for me. I felt a little bit like I was pretending to be a pastor, and hoping I would get it right, or close enough to right that no one would figure it out. But here’s the thing, friends. I’ve been a pastor now for 16 years. Some parts of ministry I feel really confident about. But sometimes, when I encounter a new situation in ministry, or when I’m trying to figure out what I should do to best follow God, or when I’m trying to figure out how to communicate the heart of the gospel in a way that will make people show up and listen and invest their lives in this Jesus-thing with me? Sometimes I still feel like I’m mostly pretending that I know what I’m doing! I know you struggle sometimes too. I know you wonder if you’re making the right choices. I know you wonder about how to really hear and respond to God’s voice. I know sometimes people seek advice from you about faith and God and you can’t figure out how you’ve fooled them into thinking you know enough to help them.

But, don’t lose heart! Because this Spirit thing? This Holy Ghost-Comforter-Paraclete-Wild Goose-Breath of God-Wind-Advocate-Nudge that comes in a blaze of fire or in the gentle glide of a dove? As confusing as it is, as hard as it is to describe what the Holy Spirit is, it is for you. What it is is the very Spirit of God, the heart of Jesus, the breath of God, dwelling in you. God is in you. And there is nothing fake about that. No part of that that’s not real. No part of your identity as a child of God that is an imposter in anyway.  

Some of you are probably already familiar with this famous poem from writer Marianne Williamson, from her book A Return to Love. It’s called “Our Deepest Fear,” and I’ve been thinking about it as a sort of antithesis to those times we let Imposter Syndrome undermine our discipleship. She writes, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness That most frightens us. We ask ourselves Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small Does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking So that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, As children do. We were born to make manifest The glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; It's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, Our presence automatically liberates others.” (4)

To me, this is a bit of a Pentecost poem. “You are a child of God. We were born to make manifest The glory of God that is within us.” We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. That’s not about showing everyone how great we are. That’s about showing everyone who awesome God is, and letting God use us to do it. That’s about knowing that we don’t have to do it all on our own, because God’s very breath is within us. That’s about knowing that this Spirit-thing is within us, supporting our work for God, helping us to show God’s glory to the world.

On Pentecost, Peter and the disciples discovered the Spirit thing within them. And they stopped feeling like imposters, and started feeling inspired - which literally means being full of the Spirit. The gift of the Spirit? We’re not still waiting for it. We already have it. Even if we can’t quite describe it, it’s ours. We’re children of God, born to make manifest the glory of God in the world. By the power of the Spirit, let’s get to work. Amen.

(1)  Kosloski, Philip, “How the wild goose became a symbol of vigilance and the Holy Spirit.” Aleteia. https://aleteia.org/2017/10/02/how-the-wild-goose-became-a-symbol-of-vigilance-and-the-holy-spirit/

(2) https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/81225/

(3) Dalla-Camina, Megan, “The Reality of Imposter Syndrome,” Psychology Today, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/real-women/201809/the-reality-imposter-syndrome. 

(4) Williamson, Marianne, "Our Deepest Fear," A Return to Love.

Sermon for Pentecost Sunday, Year A, "Feet on the Ground," Acts 2:1-12

Sermon 6/4/17

Acts 2:1-21

Pentecost Sunday: Feet on the Ground

           

Just about 50 days ago, we celebrated the resurrection together, as we gathered on Easter Sunday, and shared together the gospel story. We heard about the women coming to the tomb and finding it empty, and we heard the repeated words from throughout the next, from messengers, from Jesus: Do not be afraid. Last week we left the apostles looking up at the sky, as we celebrated Ascension Sunday, and talked about hearing God’s messengers tell and disciples-becoming-apostles to tear their gazes from heaven, leaving them instead to get to work on earth. They’d been promised the gift of the Holy Spirit – a gift that literally means Holy Breath, a gift that Jesus describes as Comforter and Advocate, literally one called to your side. The Holy Spirit isn’t something new, isn’t something that just shows up in the New Testament, on Pentecost. But certainly, Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit in a different way than we hear elsewhere in the scriptures, and he encourages the twelve to trust that they will have strength and help from God, God’s Spirit dwelling within them, working within and through them in a way that seems new.

So the disciples-becoming-apostles, students-becoming-“sent ones” are waiting for this Holy Spirit to fill them up in some way that’s going to be more tangible than anything they’ve heard about before, and that’s going to help them do the work of Jesus in the world. What do they do while they’re waiting? According to the passage of scripture between last week’s text and today’s, the apostles return to Jerusalem and devote themselves to constant prayer, along with some women, and Jesus’ mother and brothers. Between the apostles, women, Jesus’s family, and others who have been following Jesus all along, they’ve got about 120 people gathered, praying and waiting for the Spirit. I forget that there were so many. From this group, the disciples also use this time to name a twelfth disciple, to replace Judas Iscariot. It would be easy for them to sit and do nothing until the Holy Spirit showed up as promised. But, perhaps inspired to action by the messengers at the Ascension, they wait actively instead of passively, praying and preparing to carrying out God’s plans. 

If our message from Easter was Do Not Fear, and our message from Ascension Sunday was to tear our eyes from the sky, our message for Pentecost is to get moving, get our feet on the ground, get ready to take action. We can take on the work of Jesus and carry it out into the world. Pentecost is a festival that is part of Judaism. The disciples in our text today are gathered together to celebrate Pentecost as they wait for the gift of the Spirit. Pentecost as also known as Shavuot or The Feast of Weeks. The festival celebrates the “first fruits” of the harvest and the giving of the Torah, the books we know as the first five books of our Bible. The disciples were gathered together during this traditional celebration, as are many other faithful Jews who have come to observe the holy days. While they are gathered, suddenly, a sound like the rush of a violent wind comes and fills the gathering place and the apostles are filled with the promised Holy Spirit. And they begin to speak the gospel message to all who are gathered in such a way that everyone in the city could understand them. Many people from many places were gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks, and it seemed that everyone could understand the apostles. Some were amazed at this, but others were a bit cynical. But Peter stands and raises his voice to the crowds saying: we are speaking as the prophets spoke. Visions and power from, God will come to all people – young and old, men and women, slaves and free. He quotes the prophet Joel, saying, “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young shall see visions, and your old shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.” After Peter is done preaching, Acts tells us that thousands respond to the message he shares about Jesus. And from this point on, now equipped with the Spirit Jesus promised, the apostles are out, everywhere they can get to, telling people about Jesus and carrying out his work.

            How can we think about the Holy Spirit in meaningful ways? When I was in junior high, I accidentally pinned my leg under our minivan. Some of you might have heard me tell this long story before, and doesn’t make me look very brilliant, but suffice it to say, I was laying on the ground outside a small market in Rome in the parking lot, with my leg pinned underneath our Dodge Caravan. My mother was in the store, and when my friend, who was with me, conveyed to her what happened, and my mother came out and saw me under the van, she didn’t look for help. What she did was push the van off me. Now, maybe she could have done this on a normal day, but I suspect that the level of adrenaline coursing through her body in an emergency situation made it suddenly easy for her to get me, her child, out of such a dangerous situation.

            I think the Holy Spirit is a little like that – like adrenaline that enables you to do something you couldn’t imagine doing under normal circumstances. Only, we have this Holy Spirit with us always. Did you ever sing the Sunday School song, Give Me Oil for My Lamp? Give Me Oil for My Lamp, keep it burning, burning, burning, Give me oil for my lamp, I pray! Hallelujah! Give me oil for my lamp, keep it burning, burning, burning, keep it burning til the break of day! The song continues in more verses, and some of my favorites were: Give me wax for my board, keep me surfing for the Lord, and Give me gas for my Ford, keep me truckin’ for the Lord. All the verses suggest that there is something we need, something God can give us, that can inspire us, move us, help us to act with faith and boldness. That’s what the Holy Spirit can do with us – give us boldness to speak and act in the name of Jesus.

            Friends, sometimes we need to be actively waiting for God’s direction, praying and preparing as we trust in God’s promises. And sometimes, we’ve got to realize that the promise is fulfilled, the Spirit is ours, a fire has been lit, and we need to be burning, shining forth with the light of Christ in the world. I spent the last several days at Annual Conference, our annual business meeting of the Upper New York Conference. Our study leader during the conference was Rev. Dr. Kenda Creasy Dean, a professor at Princeton Theological School of Youth, Church, and Culture. She was fantastic. I kind of wish I could just play a video of her whole study for you as my sermon today – she was so inspiring. Dr. Dean shared with us the story of Maggie, a woman whose life was upheaved by ethnic genocide in Burundi, but who has lived a life of love and light nonetheless, transforming her community, providing love and support for thousands of orphaned children. Maggie said, “Every day I improvise new life because love makes us inventors.” Dr. Dean asked us: Who has God given us to love as our own? And how is God calling us to be inventors? How can our church surprise young people with hope this year? There’s something about that description – that we are called to be inventors, carrying hope, new life, and new direction because of the love we have for one another that says “Holy Spirit” to me. 

            The gift of the Holy Spirit is a gift for us, a promise kept not just to those first apostles, but for us too. It’s a gift we claim at our baptism, that we renew as we receive new members even today, that we call to fill our hearts every time we celebrate Holy Communion together. It’s the gift that turned a group of disciples into a church, a community, the body of Christ in the world. And it’s the gift that can turn us into dreamers, visionaries, inventors for the sake of hope and love. Come, Holy Spirit, come. Amen.  

 

    

Sermon for Pentecost Sunday, Acts 2:1-21

Sermon 5/15/16

Acts 2:1-21

Pentecost

Today, we're celebrating the day of Pentecost. It is the day we call the birthday of the Christian Church. Today, we read about the disciples receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit. Today we read about that strange experience where the sound of a mighty rushing wind broke into the house where the followers of Jesus were celebrating Pentecost. Today, we read about the beginnings of Church as we know it – where Peter steps up and finally does what Jesus had been preparing him and the others to do all along: he shares the gospel – tells the Good News about God’s grace to anyone and everyone he can get to listen. Today is when we finally see Peter and the twelve move beyond their fear, move beyond their role as students, move beyond the ways they have closed themselves up and closed themselves off since Jesus' crucifixion, and finally, receiving the Spirit, the promise of God, they begin to take action. Last week we talked about how Jesus was entrusting to them all the work that he had been doing – they would be his hands and feet in the world, the body of Christ in the world now. And this week, we see the beginnings of that body, those hands and feet in action, as Peter delivers a powerful message.

Our text from Acts opens with the disciples already gathered together. They are gathered together for the celebration of Pentecost, a Jewish festival set out in the Torah, the law books for the Jews, which make the first five books of our Bible today. Pentecost was a celebration taking place fifty days after Passover, and was called also “the feast of weeks” or Shavuot. The festival celebrated the “first fruits” of the early harvest in spring. So the disciples were gathered together for this traditional celebration – this is what was planned. Jesus had told them to wait in Jerusalem after he returned to be with God in order to receive this strange gift he was to send them – the Spirit, the Advocate, the Comforter. So the disciples were gathered with everyone else there for the Pentecost festival. And suddenly, a sound like the rush of a violent wind came, and filled the gathering place, and the apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit, which seemed to them like divided tongues of fire. And they began to speak the gospel message to all who were gathered in such a way that everyone in the city could understand them. Many people from many places were gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks, and it seemed that everyone could understand the disciples. Some were amazed at this, but others were a bit cynical, and accused the disciples of being drunk. Peter stands and raises his voice to the crowds: We’re not drunk – we are speaking as the prophets spoke – and he goes on to speak to them of visions and power that will come to all – young and old, men and women, slaves and free. He quotes the prophet Joel, saying, “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young shall see visions, and your old shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.” This Spirit thing is for everyone.

Today, when we celebrate Pentecost, our focus is on not on the feast originally celebrated, the planned part, but on the wind that swept through and stirred up the celebration – the giving of the Holy Spirit. This is the gift that Jesus has promised the disciples they would receive, the thing that would be their Advocate, their Comforter, helping them to make the transition from followers of Jesus to those who would be leading and guiding and sharing with others. The Holy Spirit is the gift that helps them with all their other gifts, in a way. It’s the foundation for their work, the source of their confidence in their abilities. After all, being filled with the Holy Spirit is being filled up with God’s own self, right inside of you. God dwelling in you certainly should inspire you with confidence! On Pentecost, we celebrate that the Holy Spirit is the gift that is available to each one of us.

Still, I think it is hard to understand the Holy Spirit sometimes. In my little childhood church where I grew up, in Westernville, we’d usually talk about the “Holy Ghost” rather than the Holy Spirit. This made it even more confusing. (It was hard not to picture this: image on screen.) So how can we think about the Holy Spirit? When I was in junior high, I accidentally pinned my leg under our minivan. It’s a long story, and doesn’t make me look very brilliant, but suffice it to say, I was laying on the ground outside a small market in Rome in the parking lot, pinned underneath our Dodge Caravan. My mother was in the store, and when my friend, who was with me, conveyed to her what happened, and my mother came out and saw me under the van, she didn’t look for help. What she did was push the van off me. Now, maybe she could have done this on a normal day, but I suspect that the level of adrenaline coursing through her body in an emergency situation made it suddenly easy for her to get me, her child, out of such a dangerous situation.

I think the Holy Spirit is a little like that – like adrenaline that suddenly shows up when you need it. Did you ever sing the Sunday School song, Give Me Oil for My Lamp? Give Me Oil for My Lamp, keep it burning, burning, burning, Give me oil for my lamp, I pray! Give me oil for my lamp, keep it burning, burning, burning, keep it burning til the break of day! The song continues in more verse, but some of my favorites were: Give me wax for my board, keep me surfing for the Lord, and Give me gas for my Ford, keep me truckin’ for the Lord. I mention this song because the verses all suggest that there is something we need, something God can give us, that can inspire us, move us, help us to act with faith and boldness. Give me oil for my lamp is not so different from saying: Come, Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit’s coming in Acts is described as a violent rushing wind. Wind is powerful. It can set a boat to sailing across the water, or it can destroy and damage, or it can be harnessed for electricity. Sometimes we know when to expect a windy day, but often, the wind catches us by surprise. We can’t see the wind, but we can see what it does. Wind is a great image for how Spirit moves through us. But if the Spirit is so unpredictable, can we do more than say, Come, Holy Spirit, and wait for the Spirit to show up, if it will? When the apostles received the Spirit, they were in Jerusalem, waiting for the Spirit, and they were there because that is where Jesus told them to be. They made sure they followed the instructions they had, so that they could be ready for the unknown.

Last week at our Bible Study, we got talking about how we hear God's voice today, how God speaks to us today, and how we might hear God today in ways that are different than folks did in the scriptures. Maybe God will speak to you in a burning bush, as to Moses, or in the sounds of rushing wind and tongues of fire, or in dreams, waking or sleeping, like we've talked about a lot here at Apple Valley, or maybe God will speak to you through the latest news story you read, or through the mouth of your grandchild's curious questioning, or through the characters of your favorite TV show. We certainly can't predict the way God will speak to us, the way God's Spirit will move in us.

But we can do what the disciples did: we can follow the directions from God for our live that are clear to us, so that we're prepared for whatever God blows our way, breathes into our lives. We can study God's word. We can pray faithfully. We can share God's love, and extend compassion. We can tell God again and again: “Here I am, ready to follow you!”

That's what we celebrate today in confirmation. These 8 young people – who knows what God has in store for them, and how they will hear God's voice, and how they will put the gifts they've been given to use? But what they're doing today is saying: We've tried hard over these last months to be prepared, to explore our faith, to learn about the church, to grow as disciples. Today, they offer themselves to God and to this community of faith, saying, “Here I am!” And as they offer themselves and their hearts to God, let us join them in renewing our commitment. Let us say with them, “Here we are God. We're ready. Come, Holy Spirit, Come.” Amen.