Unforeseen Hope

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday May 23, 2010, Pentecost Sunday.

Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Romans 8:14-17
John 14:8-17, 25-27

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

I want to read those last two verses again, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

In John’s gospel, the disciples were promised someone who would be alongside them when the world prosecuted them and persecuted them. They were promised one who would serve as their advocate. As our reading from the Book of Acts begins, the disciples need an advocate.

As 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, they 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, but he had ascended to the Father. He was gone again. He had promised to return again, but he gave them no estimated time of arrival.

They had received great promises. They had high hope. But the advocate was still a promise, not a reality; not to them, not yet. 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 Tetrarch and the Prelate and the Sanhedrin had them in their sights, and now the violent winds rushed down on them. I was watching the Weather Channel on last week, and I saw what was happening in Norman and Oklahoma City. I saw Mike Bettis with the VORTEX2 storm chasers tracking down the big storms; but 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 response of the informed crowd. They’re drunk. Peter said that they weren’t drunk; after all it was only nine in the morning. Let’s remember, I grew up in Kansas City where the bars open 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 June 8, 2009 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. You’ve heard me quote these numbers 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 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.

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 the stories of our faith. We are called to know our stories, the stories that show 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.[5] 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 who don’t hear the word because we don’t speak their language. In this social networking world of blogs, 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 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] Hunter, George C. III, The Celtic Way of Evangelism. Nashville: Abingdon, 2000, page 36.