Pentecost Sunday 2024

May 19, 2024 – Pentecost Sunday 

Welcome

Je m’appelle Pastor Robin, et vous êtes les bienvenus ici. It’s Pentecost, so I thought welcoming you in another language would be appropriate. If you speak French, you would recognize that I said, “My name is Pastor Robin, and you are welcome here.” If you spoke only French and you were joining us for the first time today, speaking in your language would certainly have made you feel more welcome. That’s just a little taste of what it would have been like for those gathered at Pentecost.

Many of us are wearing red today in celebration of Pentecost, the day when tongues of flame danced over the heads of the first followers of Jesus as the Spirit made her appearance and they were able to speak in the languages of all those gathered in Jerusalem that day.

Today is a special day in the life of the Church, a celebration of the birthday of the Church, but it is also a special day in the life of this church as we celebrate our graduates. [Graduates Ema Iwasaki (Rock Bridget HS), Lidia Meyers (MU), and Abbie Sullens (MU) were recognized]

May the peace of the Spirit be with you. And also with you. Let us pass the peace to one another. If you know another language, say “Peace be with you,” in that language. Que la paix soit avec toi !

Call to Worship (Acts 2:1-21)                                                                                                                    

Leader: On the day of Pentecost all the believers were meeting together in one place. Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting. 

All: Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.

Leader: At that time there were devout Jews from every nation living in Jerusalem. When they heard the loud noise, everyone came running, and they were bewildered to hear their own languages being spoken by the believers.

All: They were completely amazed. “How can this be?” they exclaimed. “These people are all from Galilee, and yet we hear them speaking in our own native languages about the wonderful things God has done!” 

Leader: They stood there amazed and perplexed. “What can this mean?” they asked each other.

All: But others in the crowd ridiculed them, saying, “They’re just drunk, that’s all!”

Leader: Then Peter stepped forward with the eleven other apostles and shouted to the crowd, “Listen carefully, all of you, fellow Jews and residents of Jerusalem! Make no mistake about this.  These people are not drunk, as some of you are assuming. Nine o’clock in the morning is much too early for that. No, what you see was predicted long ago by the prophet Joel:

All: ‘In the last days,’ God says,
    ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy.
    Your young men will see visions,
    and your old men will dream dreams.

Leader: In those days I will pour out my Spirit
    even on my servants—men and women alike—
    and they will prophesy.

And I will cause wonders in the heavens above
    and signs on the earth below—
    blood and fire and clouds of smoke.
All: The sun will become dark,
    and the moon will turn blood red
    before that great and glorious day of the Lord arrives.
    But everyone who calls on the name of the Lord
    will be saved.’

[Moment of Silence] 

Leader: Listen to the voice of the Spirit speaking to the Church.
All: Thanks be to God.

Reading from the Psalms – Psalm 104:24-34, 35b (NLT)

24 O Lord, what a variety of things you have made!
    In wisdom you have made them all.
    The earth is full of your creatures.
25 Here is the ocean, vast and wide,
    teeming with life of every kind,
    both large and small.
26 See the ships sailing along,
    and Leviathan, which you made to play in the sea.

27 They all depend on you
    to give them food as they need it.
28 When you supply it, they gather it.
    You open your hand to feed them,
    and they are richly satisfied.
29 But if you turn away from them, they panic.
    When you take away their breath,
    they die and turn again to dust.
30 When you give them your breath, life is created,
    and you renew the face of the earth.

31 May the glory of the Lord continue forever!
    The Lord takes pleasure in all he has made!
32 The earth trembles at his glance;
    the mountains smoke at his touch.

33 I will sing to the Lord as long as I live.
    I will praise my God to my last breath!
34 May all my thoughts be pleasing to him,
    for I rejoice in the Lord.

Let all that I am praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord! 

[Moment of silent reflection] 

Leader: Listen to the voice of the Spirit speaking to the Church.
All: Thanks be to God. 

Reading from the Epistles – Romans 8:22-27 (NLT)                                                                     

22 For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as their adopted children, including the new bodies they have promised us. 24 We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. 25 But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.) 

26 And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. 27 And Abba who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will. 

[Moment of silent reflection] 

Leader: Listen to the voice of the Spirit speaking to the Church.
All: Thanks be to God.

Message                                                                                                                                                                

The earth began in chaos and God began to give order to it. As we heard in the Psalm, God filled the earth with all kinds of creatures. Now in Paul’s letter we hear that creation has been groaning since the beginning, waiting for the new creation.

On Pentecost God once again created order out of chaos. Some would say that the account of Pentecost we heard this morning was, in fact, the story of a new creation, a new ordering, a transformation of everything that was known up to that point in the story of humanity. 

It was, in fact, the birth of the Church.

It came on the day which celebrated the receiving of the law, the Torah. The people had come from all the places where the story of God’s relationship to humanity had spread – all the places which we did not name in our call to worship but which are a part of the passage in Acts, places like Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Egypt, Crete, and Rome. In fact, all of the places encompassed by the Roman Empire. (I left out the ones that were hard to pronounce) These people were not united by a single language but by their love for God and their love for the law God handed down to Moses and from Moses to God’s people.  They had come to Jerusalem to celebrate. Many probably came also to celebrate the Passover which commemorated the calling out of God’s people from slavery and which marked the start of the Festival of Weeks, the harvest festival in this promised land to which God’s people had been called. The 7-week festival culminated on the 50th day with Pentecost, which had come to be known as a celebration of the law, the 10 commandments, the covenant between God and God’s people.

So, Jerusalem, on this occasion, would have been swollen with people. I picture it something like Paris on Bastille Day. I was there back in the 1970s. My family had been blessed with a gift of money from my grandmother, and we used it for a trip to Europe. My mother was a French teacher, so France was definitely on the agenda, and as we were going in July, it made sense to be in Paris for their version of Independence Day. We had rented a car to drive all over Europe, but wisely had abandoned it on that day to take the Métro (the Paris version of the Subway) to downtown Paris for the fireworks. Think of July 4th in Washington DC on the Mall between the Capital and the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, packed with wall-to-wall people. Chaos. People of all descriptions crowding the streets, looking for the best vantage point to view the fireworks.

In Paris we took the Métro to the stop near the Place de la Concorde, a major public square just off the Champs Elysees where the guillotine would have been set up for the executions during the French Revolution. I know, pretty gruesome, but it was history, and our family trips were nothing, if not an opportunity to visit historical sites. I mentioned my mother was a teacher, right?

Anyway, we got off the Métro at the Place de la Concorde early in the evening and staked out a vantage point to see the fireworks to be shot off later after the sun went down. We found these big windowsills to stand and sit on, so we were a little higher than the sidewalks and could people watch as we waited. There was a French family very near to us with a little boy who was watching with fascination, as we were, as people poured out of the entrance to the square from the Métro. They flowed out, like a river, non-stop. As a matter of fact, the little French boy would fling his hand out towards the river of people with his palm held up and shout, “Arrête! Arrête!” “Stop! Stop!” His command had about as much effect as you can imagine. 

The streets of Jerusalem on that Pentecost Day would have had that same sort of chaotic atmosphere. That chaos was mirrored in the Upper Room where the disciples were gathered. It was a different sort of chaos, however. It was a chaos not unlike the chaos of the Spirit hovering over the face of the deep as in Genesis 1. There was a mighty rushing of the wind, so loud that the people in the streets of Jerusalem heard it as well and came running to see what was going on. 

Just as in the first creation account, next came light, but this time the light wasn’t from the ball of fire in the sky, but from the tongues of flame which settled on the disciples. The Spirit of God was in that place. Like the fire of the bush that was burning in the wilderness, these flames which signaled God’s holy presence, did not so much consume the disciples as empower them to speak the good news to all those who were gathered. From the chaos of all the many languages, came the order, the clarity, of understanding.  All of those diverse peoples were able to understand the story being spoken by those who were filled with God’s spirit.

Make no mistake, what happened that day was nothing short of revolutionary.  The reordering that was going on was not simply a reordering of understanding of the language being spoken. It was a reordering of understanding of who the people of God were to be. They would no longer be a people of the Book, a people of the law, the Torah. Instead, they were now to be a people of the Spirit. The law was not forgotten or done away with – it still had its role in the lives of the people of God – but it was no longer the guiding force behind the formation of the relationship between God and people. The Spirit would be the new guide, the way to follow. Discerning the Spirit’s movement, like following the wind, would be the new way.

So, when I talk about spiritual formation – being formed by the Spirit – I’m talking about the very essence of what it means to be the Church. It was a revolutionary message on that first Pentecost day and it is a revolutionary message today. We forget, as the Church, that it’s not about the law, it’s about how Jesus taught us to live. The Spirit was sent so that we would have a guide to remind us of how Jesus lived. God’s Spirit points us to the way of Jesus, forms us as we go.

Remember what Jesus said in Luke 4:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,
    that the blind will see,
that the oppressed will be set free,
    and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.” [Luke 4:18-19]

As baptized believers, the Spirit is now upon us, and we are to go and do likewise. The revolution that was begun on that first Pentecost Day continues. Nothing can stop it.  Just like the little boy said to the crowd on that Bastille Day, we can say “Arrete! Arrete!” to no avail. The revolution already happened. The Spirit’s power was poured out and continues to be poured out on all people – young, old, rich, poor, male, female, the enslaved, the free. All are welcome at the table.  The Spirit bids us, “Come.” It is up to us to follow. 

Following, however, is not without its problems. We long for a day when there will be no more suffering. I think that’s why so many of our hymns have something about heaven as their third or fourth verse –

“And then one day I’ll cross the river; I’ll fight life’s final war with pain. And then as death gives way to victr’y, I’ll see the lights of glory and I’ll know He reigns.” [Because He Lives]

“To the old rugged cross I will ever be true; Its shame and reproach gladly bear. Then He’ll call me someday to my home far away, Where His glory forever I’ll share.” [The Old Rugged Cross]

“Onward to the prize before us! Soon His beauty we’ll behold; Soon the pearly gates will open, We shall tread the streets of gold. When we all get to heaven, What a day of rejoicing that will be! When we all see Jesus, We’ll sing and shout the victory!” [When We All Get to Heaven]

Ok, I cheated on that last one. That whole song is about heaven. But you see what I mean. We along with all of creation are longing for the promise of heaven. We want to leave the suffering of this world, leave the groaning of creation – which is at least partly, maybe all, our fault.  

We forget that part of the prayer that says, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Heaven seems like a place far off and perfect. After all, Jesus ascended – went upwards – to heaven as we just recalled last week. But what we’re praying for is for heaven to come here. We won’t be escaping earth and all its problems. We’ll be bringing God’s will here.  

As followers of the way, empowered by God’s Spirit, we will work to alleviate the suffering we see around us, at times are even engulfed by it ourselves. We may feel like that we can’t do it, that there’s no hope but Paul wrote in the letter to the Romans…

26 And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. 27 And Abba who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.

Peter Storey called it the great nevertheless of God. Clayton Schmit wrote about it related to this passage. He said,

We may live in difficult times; nevertheless, God is guiding creation through the pains to a future fulfillment of promise. We do not see the hope that we hold to; nevertheless, it is this hope that saves us and for which we are given patience to endure. The Spirit is not always as visibly active in the church as we might desire; nevertheless, the Spirit is unceasingly attentive to our pleading, even to the point of bringing our prayers home to God when we are unable to articulate them for ourselves. We may not know what God has in store for us; nevertheless, the Spirit knows the mind of God and leads us toward the will of the One who made us for God’s own purposes. [From Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol 3]

It is the Spirit who came to the first followers on Pentecost who is now forming us and interceding for us and leading us as we seek God’s will on earth as it is in heaven. Here. Now. Amen.           

Pray with me.

Holy Spirit, form us. Empower us. Lead us. Just as you did those first followers. May we sense your presence in the mighty rush of wind, in the warmth and light of fire, in the still small voice, in all the ways that you speak today. Amen.

Call to Commitment                                                                                                                                        

We pray “Your will be done” like it is something from which we are totally separate, like it is something God will do completely on their own. We pray like we want it to happen, but we don’t have a part in making it so. I don’t think that is the case, so I’m wondering this morning, what is the Spirit empowering you to do to help make it so? What is our part in alleviating the suffering of this world, of this country, of this city, of this neighborhood, of your neighbor, your co-worker, your friend from school, your brother, the person sitting in your row at church on Sunday? May the Spirit fall fresh on us today, filling us with the power to make a difference.