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May 15, 2005
Telling Visions
Acts 2:1-21
Telling visions. What happened that day got Peter to telling about the visions and dreams, the wonders and marvels that were the fallout of the coming of the Holy Spirit. What happened that day brought forth visions that had a telling effect upon everyone there. They were all caught up in telling visions. As you all listened to the reading of Acts 2:1-21 this morning, chances are you didn't understand many of the words. But you got the drift. We don't know just exactly what happened that day to Peter, the apostles and the rest. Luke gives a vivid description, but leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
What happened was unexpectedly expected. Jesus had promised them the Holy Spirit would come, but they had no idea what to expect. We've got some unexpectedly expected things coming, too. We're all looking forward to moving back into the sanctuary and allied spaces being renovated. What that day will actually be like none of us can say. We like some unexpectedly expected things. We all expect Christmas, partly because of the surprises that are part of it. The Pastor Nominating Committee is going to bring you a new pastor. They'll know a lot about that person before they ever make the nomination. They'll present you with a vision of that person. We all trust it will be the outcome of the work of the Holy Spirit prompting the committee, the person and the congregation. When your new pastor actually gets started you're in for some surprises. You'll be disappointed if there aren't some. What happens will be expectedly unexpected.
When your new pastor comes that will touch the lives of everyone associated with the church. Not just the members, but their friends, people in the community, even people we do not know and may never know will be touched by what the Holy Spirit does in bring pastor and people together.
I wonder if most of us haven't come to think of the work of the Holy Spirit as something that just personal in a kind of private, individual way. That the Holy Spirit is just something that happens in the lives of each one of us. The Pentecost story in Acts takes us in a very different direction. There, the Holy Spirit is God going public—big time. The Holy Spirit is God touching the lives of people who didn't ask to be touched and who don't know what to make of it.
Maybe because a lot of people associate the Holy Spirit with what's personal and private they also associate the Spirit with feeling some particular way, say, feeling spiritual. We do tend to weigh things according to how they feel to us. "I have a good feeling about this," we say. Or, "I don't have a good feeling about this." Don't misunderstand. It's not that feelings are unimportant. They're just not the main thing. What happened to Peter and company wasn't about their feelings. It was about the power of God to draw people together; about the Lord creating understanding where there wasn't any before.
About three years ago I was standing on a beach on the Salvadoran coast talking to Coqui, a former commandant of the FLMN. The FMLN was the organized rebel force who fought against the Salvadoran government in hopes of getting economic and political reforms, human rights where there were none. The Pacific comes in relatively quietly there. The mountains behind us are what got Coqui's attention. They're where he'd led a battalion of rebel soldiers, plus unnumbered women and children. He told me of seeing, hearing, doing things he could not forget. Our standing there together had a kind of surreality about it. He never imagined he'd be standing on such a beach, having such a conversation, with a person he could scarcely understand him any better than he could understand. He in his fluent Spanish and fumbling English, me in my fluent English and fumbling Spanish came to an understanding that day. We might even have become friends. It's not that our feelings didn't matter, it's just that they weren't what was most important. The understanding we came to that day endures long after our feelings of the moment, or even our memory of those feelings, have faded. What was important on that Pentecost day was that those who heard Peter and the apostles understood they shared a vision. And that vision had a telling effect on them.
The telling effect was that the gospel got to being told. Not just by Peter and the apostles. But by young and old. By men and women. By all kinds and sorts of people who understood enough and started telling visions and dreams. All the visions and dreams had a common thread. That common thread was this gospel proclamation: Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.
Ron Turnbow died not so long ago. He was a classmate of mine in seminary, some older, a second-career student. He, like all students second year and above, took a turn on weekends to go preach in churches in driving distance of Austin. One evening a few years after he'd graduated and returned to Austin for a visit—and after a little too much wine—he got to going on about his "million dollar sermon." He explained that was the sermon he'd used on the seminary's circuit of church's hapless enough to have us seminary students come preach. He reckoned he'd gotten paid, maybe not a million, but a lot for it over those years. He finished up saying something like this: Anyway, all my sermons come down to just one thing—Jesus saves. I reckon Ron knows for sure, now.
One of the ways we know the Holy Spirit is at work is when people start telling the gospel to one another. A lot of us when we talk about our faith like to tell about the church. We tell people what a great church First Pres is, how much we like it, what's wonderful about it.
The buzz here now is all about the renovation. It's happened to all of us. I've heard some weren't too keen on it at the outset; some still haven't warmed to it; some may never like what got done. But however people may have felt, it's happened, and it's touched the lives of all. Now the buzz is: It's lovely. You'll want to come see our church. It is lovely. And we do hope people will come—but for more than just looking.
Is there a difference between telling people about the church and telling people about the Lord? Consider this: When Peter and company got to sharing visions it was all about the Lord. They didn't tell one another: All who become part of our group will be saved. It's not about us. It's not about our church. Peter and the others were saying that whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Calling on the name of the Lord: That's how we get drawn to the Lord. That's how we end up drawn to one another. That's how we come to an understanding: of the Lord, of the gospel, of the world, of one another. That's the sort of thing we've been led to expect. It's still a surprise.
We do expect to move into a beautifully renovated sanctuary. It'll still be a surprise. We expect the Pastor Nominating Committee to get a pastor here. It'll still be a surprise. We expect the Lord will do some wonderful things at First Presbyterian. It'll still be a surprise. We expect that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. It'll still be a surprise.
Telling visions. Isn't that what we're about? Telling visions.
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First Presbyterian
Church of Cedar Rapids
310 Fifth Street SE Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
Phone: 319-364-6148
E-mail: church@fpccr.org
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