The Call of Pentecost
Acts 2
Happy Pentecost! It is the Birthday of the church.
Pentecost really is a strange day in the year, a strange day in the church calendar and strange when it comes to Holy Days. It doesn’t bring with it the same expectations of Christmas and Easter. We don’t prepare for it with gatherings and shopping and decorations. There are no Pentecost sales at the store, not even the mattress stores and they any day is worth a discount.
No Pentecost is purely a religious Holiday. Although, not just a Christian. Pentecost is an ancient day in the Jewish calendar marking 50 days after Passover. This was the reason that the city of Jerusalem was filled, this was a pilgrimage festival, albeit smaller than Passover. Maybe the hotels were cheaper, maybe there were more rooms, maybe those in Jerusalem for this day had spent Passover with their families. Regardless, the city was full, the streets were crowded, there were people standing still and trying to get somewhere.
And I want you to think about this story as if you haven’t heard it before, and how weird it is. What did the tongues of fire look like? Were they little like candles or big like a forest fire? What did it feel like? Was it warm? Did they lap, like a dog’s tongue? Did they get bigger with the wind? Was it just the sound of wind? Was there actual wind? Were the disciples speaking in different languages or did the world just hear their language? Did the disciples know they were speaking other languages? Did they know what they were saying? How many winders were in the upper room that the sound would carry? Was there a porch? Why are they always leaving the women out of the stories? What were they doing?
It’s a weird story with so many questions.
And there are so many directions we could look at this story. We will never uncover all that there is to learn in each passage in a single 15 minutes. So here are some thoughts:
If we are to stop and think about the disciples, how they went from this group of full followers of a traveling rabbi, to the fear-filled mess that was in the upper room, to those who would die before being silent about Jesus, there has to be something that happened. And we could look at the Resurrection of Jesus, because that happened and things changed. But, when the Spirit finds them, they are still gathered together, not causing any waves, not drawing any notice if they could help it. I don't know if they were still filled with fear, but they weren’t filled with passion, they weren’t doing much of anything. And I know! Jesus told them to wait in Jerusalem, but it doesn’t even seem like they were trying to figure out what was next.
And then, the Spirit came rushing in, and everything changed. The fire, the wind, the words. And it was weird. I know, even me, maybe especially me, when someone tells me a story of seeing Jesus for real, or angels bring messages or help, or experiencing demons in a space, my intellect responds much like those who heard the first disciples--you’re drunk, go home. Or there must be some rational explanation for this. But there’s a part of me that wants to believe that Jesus came close and angels brought help. These are not stories that mean much to our intellect.
But then there are other times, other things that I hesitated to believe that I’m actually more ashamed of. Like when I was just a little kid, and one of my friends was singing and acting out a song from Vacation Bible School and I could have supported her but I remember thinking “She doesn’t even go to church,” like maybe she wasn’t worthy of singing the song let alone experiencing God. Maybe you’re better people than me, but that probably wasn’t the only time such a thought crossed my mind--out of jealousy of someone else’s experience of the divine or their gifts or their faith. There was something, in those experiences, in the singing and dancing of a song, in telling the story of salvation, in sharing an experience with God that made it impossible for some folks I have met to keep quiet.
I think, if I weren’t called to be a pastor, I would have defaulted in letting my actions speak for me. I’ll just do my normal life and be nice about it--to function as that being enough. To be on the sidelines, to not cause waves, to be sad about the problems but not necessarily engage. Being nice is important. But that is not what the Spirit came for, and not what the Pentecost is about.
See, the disciples, from this moment of Pentecost took all that they had learned and all their experiences and all their gifts and put them to use. We see no evidence that Peter would be a leader or preacher of this group given the interactions he had with Jesus, and the denying him just weeks earlier. Yet here he is, preaching. He didn’t have a new set of skills, he put into action who he already was, and told about his experience with Jesus.
They were already enough. They already had everything they needed to take the next step in faith. They were already prepared to start the next phase of their ministry. They were already enough. The Spirit came and gave them direction and courage. Gave wings to language so that those around them could be part of it. The Spirit showed up to tell them to Go.
The Spirit is motion and movement and breath, like fire and wind. The Spirit’s call to the disciples was to stand up, to trust God and who God had made them. To move, to be led even when they didn’t know where they were going. It was a risk to stand up that Pentecost day. It was a risk for the disciples to stand up and move and speak and proclaim. It was a risk when they left that upper room and dispersed into the unknown future. The birth of the church was going forth. Uncomfortable, unclear, but filled with courage and faith and trust.
And to be honest, it’s uncomfortable for us, too. While we talk about the Season of Pentecost liturgically, this red will quickly turn to church neutral Green. The red is just a moment. Maybe it’s because Pentecost asks so much of us. Christmas and Easter are easier, are more fun. Christmas and Easter we just have to hope. But that can’t be all there is. One of the Podcasts I listened to this week said. “Christmas is stupid without Easter and Easter is pointless without Pentecost. Without Pentecost, we are just people who tell the stories of Jesus but with Pentecost, we are people who live into the story of Jesus.”
Pentecost calls us to be more than living our daily lives being nice. Pentecost asks us to show up for those in need, to get out of our comfort zones, to remember that the church isn’t the walls of the upper room or any building but is lived in its people every day when we feed the hungry, care for those in need, visit those who are captive, heal the sick. Pentecost calls us to be the church in the word, the church who fights for justice and mercy and kin-dom living.
Pentecost reminds us that we are enough. You are enough. the church is enough. We have been prepared even as we continue to grow. Pentecost calls us to take all that we are, all that we have learned, all that God has made us and to have courage, and hope, and creativity, and to give it wings.
Pentecost calls us to live and preach and storytell as if something is at stake, like it matters, like Christmas and Easter are more than a family gathering or a moment in the life of the church but instead, the foundation of your world.
God came near and lived in flesh. Grew up poor, occupied from a nothing town. Jesus lived, taught, preached, prayed, healed, fed, welcomed, trained as if his life depended on it. As if everything he did depended on those around him being prepared--because it did. Jesus lived in a way that threatened the powerful and it got him killed. And yet he lives. To remind us that the powerful don’t win and don’t understand power much at all. To remind us that we can have hope in this world that the darkness won’t overcome the light. To remind us that we will reap what we sow, so we ought to sow goodness and compassion and justice and love.
Pentecost demands that we live as if the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus matters.
On this first Pentecost, at the birth of the church, the disciples left the upper room. They left the gatherings that had kept them feeling safe and secure and comfortable. They left all that they had known and went. They went forth into the world and lived and prayed and told the stories of Jesus like it mattered, like it was the most important thing because it was.
On this Pentecost, at this remembrance of the birth of the church, we are called to be the church, to live into Jesus living, step out in faith (safely), to, with courage, step into a new way of being, to be led by the Spirit to places yet unknown.
It’s uncomfortable. It might be fearful. We might make mistakes. All of those things are ok. We are called and becoming and growing. We are trusting and stepping and proclaiming. We are people of the incarnation, and the Resurrection, but especially we are people of Pentecost, we are people of the Spirit.
