Pentecost 2010

05/23/10
Pentecost 2010
Hudson UMC

This morning we celebrate Pentecost, the day that the Holy Spirit was given to the people of God without measure and the church was born. The Holy Spirit is absolutely pivotal to our Christian lives. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, says, “if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him.” Strong words indeed. Paul is saying that, if we belong to Christ, the Spirit of Christ, that is, the Holy Spirit poured out upon the church at Pentecost, dwells within us; and if we refuse the Spirit, we have nothing to do with Christ. So, as we celebrate the giving of the Holy Spirit, God in God’s freedom to be present with us, we need to remember that the story of the Spirit is the story of the church, and it is our story. It is a story that shapes who we are, whether we like it or not.

This morning, we heard four different texts, only one of which is what we expect to hear on Pentecost Sunday. And yet, this extended reading from the Bible is very intentional indeed. Not only do they each play directly into the themes of this special day, their importance is driven home all the more fully because we are recognizing graduating seniors today, and sending them into the future with the promises of the Gospel and confidence that God is working, even in their lives.

The first text we heard was the story of Jesus being baptized in the Jordan. We considered how important Jesus’ baptism is when we last celebrated the baptism of a baby. Now, we are reflecting on how important it is for our understanding of Pentecost. After Jesus went down into the river and came up again, we read that “the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’” You might be wondering what this has to do with Pentecost. It is important because it is here that Jesus is the first human being to really receive the Holy Spirit in its fullness.

In the Old Testament, we read about prophets who did the work of God with the power of the Spirit of God. However, we read about this spirit coming and going, accomplishing the purposes of God but then going away. It is very important that we understand the response that people in the Old Testament had when they encountered God. In the Disciple Bible Study, we noticed several times that, when people encountered God, or even just an angel of God, their response was amazement that they had seen God and yet were left alive. The people in the Old Testament knew that even a basic encounter with God was something that would put their life in danger. To actually have God meet them in any kind of intense, personal way, was not necessarily a good thing, because they would surely be consumed by the holiness of God.

This is why it is so important that we have Jesus receiving the Spirit from within our humanity. In Jesus, we have the fullness of God completely united with real and total humanity. In Jesus, God took all of our brokenness, our alienation from God, and entered into it. We might say that it was God’s goal to give us the Holy Spirit, but that the only way He could give it to us was by becoming an actual, particular human being in Christ, and strengthening our humanity enough so that it could actually receive the Spirit without being completely consumed by it. Then, when Christ received the Spirit on our behalf and in our place, we might say that the Spirit learned to compose Himself within our humanity, so that, when the day of Pentecost came, it would not be a tragedy where countless people were consumed by the awesome holiness of God, but where thousands of people received the very life of God.

The other major thing that we learn from the story of Jesus’ baptism is that baptism and receiving the Spirit are tied together. Jesus receives the Spirit into our humanity when He was baptized. The second reading we had picks up this theme again. After Jesus had been crucified and was raised from the dead, He remained among His disciples for forty days. At the end of that time, Jesus ascended into heaven, but before He did so, He gave His disciples one more bit of advice. He said, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

When Jesus is about to leave His disciples, He tells them that the one thing that must consume their minds and lives, and be the driving purpose for all who would follow Him, is to go into all the world, starting with where they were, and baptize people, teaching them the good news of Jesus Christ. We read about the first sseveral years of the missionary work of the church in the book of Acts, but what I want to point out is how the people are to be baptized. Jesus does not say just to baptize the people in the name of God the Father, nor would He have people baptized in the name of both the Father and the Son, but He sees it as vitally important that people are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. A person is not baptized as a Christian unless all three persons of the Trinity are invoked, because, unless you have all three Persons, you are not speaking of the Christian God.

The gift of the Spirit to the church cannot be overstressed. Sometimes, people will speak so romantically about the people who were able to see Jesus in the flesh and how easy it would be to believe if we could have been there. And yet, this is not what we actually see in the gospels. We have people who have been with Jesus for three full years, who watched Him die on the cross, and who were now in the presence of the risen Lord, and yet what did we read? “When they saw Him, they worshipped Him; but some were doubtful.” Even though they were there and could put their hands in Christ’s wounds, it was still very much possible to doubt. Even the resurrection of Christ was not enough to convince the hardness of the human heart.

It was only after the Holy Spirit was given that the disciples became the apostles, those who are sent out, because up until the very moment that the Spirit came, they were all huddled together in one place, scared to go out into the world, for everyone knew that they were followers of Christ, and, to many of the people, they were guilty by association. And yet, when the Holy Spirit came, everything changed. Those who were able to doubt, even when the resurrected Christ stood right before their eyes, were transformed into people who had such strength of faith that they were able to endure beatings and serious mistreatment and yet stay true to the gospel. Remember, with the exception of John, every one of the twelve apostles met a rather unpleasant end. They were beheaded, crucified, skinned alive, and burned, just to name a few of the ways they were treated cruelly. And yet, not once did they turn their backs on their Lord.

The last passage that was read this morning concerns the conversion of Saul, who we know better as Paul, the author of many of the letters in the New Testament. The reason why I wanted to make sure we considered Paul’s story is because it is all too tempting, when we think about the story of Pentecost, to convince ourselves that it was an event that happened in the past and is over, with no more impact on the world in general or for our lives in particular. Nothing could be further from the truth. If there was ever a single event that impacts your life today, it is the crucifixion and resurrection. However, outside the incredible event of God suffering and dying on our behalf and in our place, and overcoming death from within our humanity, no other event in the entire history of the world has as much of an impact on your life today as Pentecost.

You see, the Holy Spirit was not just given to twelve guys once upon a time and the church exists simply to remember what God did “back then.” No. The Holy Spirit was given to every single person who came to believe in Jesus Christ. Indeed, it is because every single Christian has received the Spirit of God that Jesus was telling the truth when He told us He would be with us until the end of time. Perhaps there is no greater example of the life-changing power of the Holy Spirit than the life of Paul.

We often think about Paul as one of the greatest and most dynamic leaders in all of Christian history. We owe so much to the labors of Paul that he has been called “the real founder of Christianity.” Though it was indeed Jesus, through His life and ministry on earth and His giving of the Holy Spirit to commission the apostles, who really started the Christian movement, Paul is one of the leaders who took the call to mission so seriously that he traveled throughout the known world telling everyone he could about this Messiah and His good news.

However, Paul was not always the great hero of the faith. The first thing we hear about Paul is that he oversaw the execution of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, giving approval to the killing of Christians. The next thing we read is that “Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way,” that is, the Christian faith, “he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.” Saul was so determined to bring an end to the church that he was willing to travel great distances just to bring Christians back to be put into prison in Jerusalem.

It was to this kind of person that God revealed Himself. I will not read through the entire story again, but, while he was on his way to Damascus, Saul encountered the risen Lord and was immediately struck blind. He struggled to get to his destination. When he got there, he prayed for three days and nights, being so disturbed that he neither ate nor drank. Finally, God calls a man named Ananias, who is not an apostle, but just an ordinary Christian like you and me, and tells him to go to this Saul, this enemy of the church, who is directly responsible for putting Christians in prison and having them killed, and pray for him to regain his sight. Ananias goes up to him and says, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Immediately, at the prayer of this ordinary Christian, Saul’s sight returned, he was filled with the Holy Spirit, and was baptized on the spot.

So, what do all these stories have to say to us today? They tell us that, just as we participate in the baptism of Christ, we also participate in the gift of the Spirit that Jesus received on our behalf and in our place. They tell us that, even though we get sidetracked from time to time, the only real business we have as the church is to go into the nations, starting right where we are in Hudson, and baptize people in the name of the Triune God, teaching them everything that God has to say to us in Christ. They tell us that, even when we feel alone in this ministry, or even when we try to do it alone, Christ is with us through the power of the Holy Spirit, and is doing His ministry in and through us. They tell us that, though we may be weak and faithless at times, God is fully capable of overcoming that weakness and empowering us to be bold ministers of the gospel, even here and now. Finally, they tell us that, even if we have sinned in the past, even if we have made fun of people for their faith, or even if, in our heart of hearts, we have spent our entire lives resisting God, we too can be utterly transformed to be what God has made us to be.

Brothers and sisters, this is the good news of God, that our sins, whether they are many or few, do not need to hold us down. Though our sins are more serious than we can ever fully realize, God has acted decisively, taking those very sins upon Himself and nailing them to the cross, cleansing us and purifying us so that we too, broken as we are, can receive the very power of God into our lives so that we, too, might join in God’s earth-shaking ministry to all the world, just like the apostles. When we remember how utterly transformed Paul was on his way to Damascus, it makes perfect sense that he would say, “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.” Fellow Christians, whether you are male or female, old or young, staying in this community for the foreseeable future or going out into the world, God has given you the Holy Spirit, not so that you might remain the same, but so that you might bring hope to the hopeless, joy to the downcast, and life to those who are dead. Let us go into the world and let God change it through us. Let us pray.

AMEN