Unforeseen Hope

This sermon was heard at St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas on Sunday May 31, 2009, Pentecost Sunday.

Acts 2:1-21
John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

There’s an old expression, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” We’ve heard it before, it means that it is better to take something certain than it is to risk more where you may lose everything. But when Jesus told the disciples “it is to your advantage that I go away,” we can well imagine the ancient equivalent of this old saw crossed their minds. Then again, the ancient equivalent came from Ecclesiastes 9 where the teacher says, “But whoever is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion.”

A living dog, a dead lion? If the teacher was trying to tell the pupils that life is preferable to death the Apostles were in perfect agreement. They were with the Lion of Judah! Life didn’t get better than that. So the thoughts of Jesus going away, regardless of whomever would follow him would fill their hearts with sorrow. Of course their hearts were filled with sorrow. Jesus knew it and so do we. Oh yes, imagine the Advocate, but a bird in the hand…

Jesus had given them hope. Hope for new life. Hope for life eternal. They had seen and heard much. They had learned much too, but there was still much more to learn. For that, they need the Spirit of truth. What Jesus was giving them here was hope, hope that they could not imagine with his absence. He offers them unforeseen hope, the hope which was yet to come.

In John’s gospel, the apostles were promised someone who would be alongside them when the world prosecuted them and persecuted them. They were promised the Paraclete, one who would serve as their advocate. Outside of scripture, the word Paraclete often referred to a lawyer or attorney. The Paraclete is one who advocates on our behalf not before God but in God’s good creation. At this moment, they needed an advocate.

As the book of Acts begins, Jesus tells the apostles “not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’” This wait could not have been comfortable. Given the events of the Passover, the apostles were marked men. The Romans knew this crew as rabble rousers. The temple leadership knew them as the worst kind of heretics. Yes, Jesus had returned to them, we have just read John’s report on that, but he was gone again. He had promised to return again, but he provided no estimated time of arrival.

They had received great promises. They had high hope. But the advocate, the Paraclete was still a promise, not a reality, not to them. They may have had all of the hope in the world, but with the reality of living in Palestine at that very moment, they would have been foolish if they had not felt fear.

It was at this very moment, on the day of Pentecost, that they were assembled together in one place. It was at this very moment that from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.

This must have been even more frightening. They knew to be leery of the princes of this world. They knew the Governor and the Prelate and the Sanhedrin had them in their sights, but now the violent winds rushed down on them. I watched the Weather Channel on Tuesday night, I saw what was happening north of here. I saw Mike Bettis and the Vortex2 storm chasers in North Dallas talking about how difficult it is to chase storms in an urban area. I can’t imagine what it’s like to see that live from the front porch.

We may be talking about this scripture and praising God for the glory of the coming of the Holy Spirit, but on that day, they were in the midst of a violent wind filling the house where they were sitting. We talk about joy, they experienced terror.

Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared on them. By this gift, the apostles were able to communicate with the Jews from every nation under heaven who were living in Jerusalem. The crowd gathered and they were bewildered. Nobody needed a translator anymore. Nobody needed to find a common tongue, not anymore. The apostles spoke to the masses in their own tongues, the curse of Babel was broken for a great shining moment. There was joy and glory was given to God.

The people asked what this meant. And they heard the answer of the informed crowd. They’re drunk. Peter said that they weren’t drunk; after all it was only nine in the morning. Honestly, I grew up in Kansas City, the bars opened at 6:00 am six days a week. I’ve seen drunks at nine in the morning. But none of them could quote the prophet Joel.

In the latest issue of the Presbyterian Outlook Magazine, Jack Haberer writes:

There is a new wind blowing through the sometimes musty halls of American Churches, and it is sweeping away the hypocrisy, lack of social concern, and unnecessary cultural baggage accumulated by the mainstream churches through the years. Thousands of people, young in spirit, are turning away from the anti-intellectuality of separatist fundamentalism and from mainstream ecumenical liberalism…[and to]…a vital, open, and truly revolutionary answer to Christ’s call to “go and teach all the nations.”[1]

The Good News is that these words come to us with a joy and determination to leave unproductive church-ianity in the wake of a spirit led revival. The bad news is that these words don’t come from a new missional group. They don’t come from the writings of the emerging church either. They come from the pen of Richard Quebedeaux and were written 35 years ago.[2] Asking “What happened,” Haberer pines “The young evangelicals [of the 1960’s and 70’s] grew older.”

We know the statistics; the church has lamented them for over fifty years. But here’s a slightly different spin on them from The Mainline Evangelism Project. In 1960, twenty-six million people were members of the seven mainline denominations. That comes to 14.4% of the population. In 2000, the number of people who were members of the mainline churches fell to 21 million folks and the percentage of people who were members of these churches fell to 7.4% of Americans. The fall in the mainstream ranks is in raw numbers and even more so as a percent of the population. Our only consolation is that there is the company in this misery; these numbers pertain to all of the mainline denominations.[3]

Haberer does not see us as hopeless though, he continues in the Outlook, “we all do well to re-read the gospels’ stories. The clarity of Jesus’ vision, the strength of his resolve, the power of his appeal, the cost of his summons to follow … such words and actions have stood the test of time. Let us all catch that vision together and refuse to let it fade.”[4]

To recapture the Spirit of Pentecost, we must again learn to speak so that those who will hear us will understand we have something to say. And what a thing we have to say. We believe that faith makes a difference in our lives; and there are as many reasons as there are people. Some of the typical reasons include:[5]

· A relationship with Christ makes sense, it’s true
· I love God so much I want other people to know this joy themselves
· The church community provides a great way to serve others
· Life in the Spirit is exciting
· I used to be consumed with guilt and through the grace of Christ there is forgiveness
· I have seen miracles and I want others to know it’s possible
· Christ has changed my life

As the apostles shared with the world on the day of Pentecost, we too are called to share. Our stories tell others about who we are and whose we are. We all have stories, but we only share in the Pentecost when we share these stories. We are called to know our stories, the stories of our faith that shows others the difference a relationship with the triune God makes in our lives. And we must be able to communicate this story so that those with ears may hear.

We, we who carry the cross of Christ into the world must learn to speak so that the world may hear. The blessing of the Pentecost is the immediacy of the ability that the Galileans received to speak to the Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, and so on. But going back to what I said earlier, about the decrease in members in the mainline Christian churches, we don’t need to speak to just Asians, Arabs, Egyptians, and Libyans belonging to Cyrene; we need to speak to our neighbors.

We can gain wisdom on this matter from ancient Celtic Christianity.[6] In 563 AD, about a century after the death of St. Patrick, Columba sought off to an island off of the western Scottish coast. This isle would be his base to reach the Picts of Scotland. Columba took a sizeable corps with him and they learned the culture of the Picts. They chose to pay the price to understand the Picts. Columba’s way of doing mission was the opposite of the model James Michener presented in his novel “Hawaii.” They learned about the people, their language, and their culture. They sent out teams from their island settlement—a little place called Iona—and in 100 years the Picts were significantly Christian.

The lessons we take from this is that there people close to us who do not know the Word of God. We need to learn about how they speak and show them the Gospel in words they understand. Peter and the Apostles did this miraculously; Columba and the Iona community did this diligently. We need to learn how to share the story of faith so that those with ears may be able to hear the word of God.

We talk about speaking in tongues, this gift of the Spirit being the one most accented during Pentecost, but where at Pentecost we talk about speaking in foreign tongues, we have to remember that there is an entire generation of people in America don’t hear the word because we don’t speak their language. In this world of Twitter and Facebook, we need to learn how to take the message of God into the world in a new language, without compromising the cross of Christ.

So today, let us all regain the elemental presence of worship. We come to the font of many blessings overflowing with living water and remember our baptism. We come to the table with the cup and the plate to partake in the food that feeds our bodies and our souls. We hear the Word proclaimed and even more so, we come to know the Word Incarnate, the Son of God, the one who the Lord has set aside since before the creation, Jesus the Christ.

And today, especially today, we need to allow ourselves to be consumed by the fire of the Holy Spirit so that as steel is forged in the furnace, we may be made strong in the Lord for the Lord’s service. And we do this so that in the words of our Lord, “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” By this, our hope is anything but unforeseen.

[1] Haberer, Jack, The Presbyterian Outlook. Vol. 191-20, June 8/15, 2009, page 5.
[2] Haberer cites Quebedeaux, Richard, The Young Evangelicals: Evolution in Orthodoxy. H&R, 1975.
[3] Reese, Martha Grace, Unbinding the Gospel, 2nd edition. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2008, page 25.
[4] Ibid, Haberer
[5] Reese, Martha Grace, Unbinding the Gospel. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2008, pages 19-20.
[6] Hunter, George C. III, The Celtic Way of Evangelism. Nashville: Abingdon, 2000, page 36.