Pentecost

May 27, 2007          

by John Christianson

 

Acts 2:1-21

¹When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ²And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

⁵Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? ⁹Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” ¹²All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” ¹³But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

¹⁴But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o”clock in the morning. ¹⁶No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ¹⁷‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. ¹⁸Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. ¹⁹And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. ²⁰The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. ²¹Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

 

Our sermon today will be “The Spirit Still Surprises.”  It’s the third sermon I’ve planned for St. John’s today.  I threw out the first two.  Over three months ago I gave our worship planners my long range plan for this message.  I was intrigued by it.  “The Amazed, the Scoffers and the Saved.”  Those were the three groups who were there when God sent the first Pentecost.  It’s also the same three groups we have in our world today.  The Amazed – (they’re mostly spectators).  The scoffers – the atheists and secular folks who are getting more and more vocal and writing more books.  And finally the saved – also getting more vocal.  A good message, but where do we take it?  How do you avoid a Pentecost Pride Party where we end up saying “Pity those who are only amazed; pillory those who scoff; let’s praise us who are saved.”  It was people centered.  Not good!

 

I threw that idea out.  I changed the title and on Monday I wrote a sermon that was full of statistics and basically said that the situation is just as good among us today as it was on the first Pentecost.  The title was “As Good as The Real World Gets.”  What a downer!  Remember when the obsessive compulsive Jack Nicholson stormed out of the psychiatrist’s office paused in the waiting room with a sadistic smile on his face, and said to the waiting patients, “Have you ever considered this may be as good as it gets?”  Not very upbeat!  The Holy Spirit didn’t like it.  It was true to the text, but it wasn’t suitably uplifting for Pentecost Sunday.  When I tried to e-mail the sermon home for finishing touches I hit the wrong button on the church computer and erased the whole thing.  At first I thought it was my personal troll, Helga, but then I realized it was more likely the Holy Spirit.  He didn’t like the message.  Just as well! 

 

So, Tuesday, I sat down at my church computer and wrote a new title.  “The Spirit Still Surprises.”

 

Claus Clausen questioned whether that was true, that the Spirit still surprises.  He was a strait-laced old-school Danish Lutheran pastor in a small town where all the ministers got together for coffee every Tuesday morning, and shared experiences.  Now, Claus always prepared his sermon and took the text into the pulpit with him.  The Evangelical and Pentecostal preachers got on his case. 

 

“Claus,” they said, “You just don’t trust the Holy Spirit.  If you did, you wouldn’t be writing out your messages word for word.  You’d do like we do.  We immerse ourselves all week in the sermon text until we know it frontward and backward.  Then we get up early Sunday morning and spend a couple of hours in prayer for the people in our congregation.  Then we go to church and the Holy Spirit gives us the message.  Why don’t you try it just once.” 

 

“Okay,” Claus said.  “Pray for me.  I’ll do it this Sunday.”

 

The next Tuesday they showed up at the Café.  They were eager to hear the report.

“Clause, did you do it?  Did you get into the pulpit with no notes?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And did the Holy Spirit give you the message?”

“Yes, he said, ‘Claus, you’ve been lazy.’”

 

So, why did the Spirit give Peter the message on Pentecost but left Claus in front of his congregation looking like a fool?  I’ve heard many people credit the Spirit for the time they stood up at a congregational meeting and said infinitely more than they knew.  But, you know, they usually didn’t plan it the way Claus tried to do.  It surprised them.  Peter didn’t have any notes either on Pentecost, but he hadn’t planned on giving his first sermon that day.  The disciples weren’t sitting around outside the temple on Pentecost Sunday, checking the shadows and the height of the sun in the sky, and asking each other, “When was it again that those tongues of fire are supposed to show up?”  No.  They didn’t expect them.  It was all a big surprise.

 

Didn’t Jesus say you can’t get the Holy Spirit to march to your drumbeat, to follow your schedule?  It was in that wonderful triple pun that Jesus said in John 3.  In the original Greek, he says,  “The pneuma pneis where it wishes.”  That can be translated three very different ways.  Two of them we already know.  It’s the third translation he wants us to learn. 

• First:  “The wind blows where it wishes.”  True.
• Second: “The breath breathes where it wishes.”  Again, obviously true!  How long would any of us last if we had to think each breath.
• But then there’s the third:  “The Spirit inspires where he wishes.”  Just as true, but easier to forget!

Don’t schedule the Holy Spirit!  There’s incredible power and wisdom there, but the Spirit is very independent and predictably unpredictable.  The Spirit surprised us on the first Pentecost, and he still does.  It’s what he does best.

 

            The most remarkable Pentecost in my forty-four years of ministry happened over thirty years ago.  It was ten o’clock Saturday night.  I was just finally finishing my Pentecost sermon.  The phone rang.  A high school girl in our congregation had been in a terrible automobile accident and she was in the hospital in very critical condition.  I rushed there.  I spent the whole night with her and with her parents.  We prayed for the impossible – that God would let her survive.  Eventually those prayers were answered. 

 

            I left at the last minute, rushed home, showered, dressed, and went to church.  No sleep!  I was glad my sermon was written because my mind was useless.

 

            It hit me when I reached the gospel that I hadn’t given a thought to the children’s sermon.  I read the gospel.  I said, “Will the children please come to the front of the church for the children’s sermon.”  Now I never address my prayers to the Holy Spirit, but this time I did, deliberately.  I said, silently, “Spirit.  This is your day.  You have to rescue me.  Give me a children’s sermon.  I’m too exhausted to think of one myself.  You know I haven’t been lazy.  I’ve been doing your work.”

 

            The children sat and looked at me expectantly.  My mind was blank.  Then, and it’s the only time it’s ever happened in my ministry, there was a sudden, rapid hammering.   “Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.”  It was a woodpecker hammering on the drain pipe of the roof gutter.  I took a deep breath and I said.

 

                        Do you hear that, kids?  It’s a woodpecker.  Today is Pentecost.  It’s the Holy Spirit’s Day.  Sometimes we compare the Holy Spirit to a bird, but it’s always a dove.  Doves coo and comfort us and help us sleep.  But I wonder if sometimes the Holy Spirit isn’t like that woodpecker out there. Hammering away, and trying to wake us up, trying to get in.  Well, we don’t need a woodpecker in here, but we could sure use the Holy Spirit.  Let’s pray.  And like that, the woodpecker stopped.

 

            On my way out of church, one of the ushers asked, “That noise during the children’s sermon – what was it really?”  I said, “a woodpecker.”  He said, “How’d you do that?”  I said, “You don’t really want to know.”

 

            I remember going home, sitting in a rocking chair, and repeating the words over and over again.  “It WASN’T a coincidence, was it?”

 

The Spirit still surprises us.  It’s what he does the best.  Mostly, he surprises us by giving us glances of the invisible Father – and faith in the Son.  That’s the main thing he did on the first Pentecost, and five-thousand were baptized.  And then he gave stumble-bum Peter the words he needed.  It’s certainly true.  “God doesn’t call the gifted.  He gifts the called.”  But if the Holy Spirit is doing it, you can be sure it’ll be a surprise.  The Spirit still surprises us. 

 

Amen

 

(Comments to John at john.christianson@stjohnsofmound.org .)

St. John’s Lutheran