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May 30, 2004
Pentecost Sunday
All Fired Up
Acts 2:1-21
The Book of Acts is written by the author of the Gospel of Luke, and it continues the story from where the Gospel left off. As the Book of Acts opens, it is somewhere around forty days after Jesus' resurrection. Jesus tells his followers to return to Jerusalem to wait for the promise of the Father to be fulfilled (1.4). They will receive the power of the Holy Spirit, he tells them, and they will be his witnesses "in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8)." And then, Jesus is lifted out of their sight on a cloud (Acts 1:9).
Left on their own, Jesus' followers go back to Jerusalem like they're told, and they take stock. Altogether, Luke tells us, the followers number one hundred twenty persons (Acts 1:15).
As they wait, the city begins to fill up with Jews from around the Mediterranean world, gathering for the pilgrimage festival of Pentecost. Pentecost, also known as the Feast of Weeks, was the Jewish holiday that celebrated the spring barley harvest, a time to show gratitude for God's goodness toward the nation.
When the day of Pentecost arrives, the one hundred twenty followers of Jesus were together in one place when,
"…suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability." (Acts 2:2-4)
The promised Holy Spirit had arrived, and boy did it know how to make an entrance. It is an incredible scene, to be sure, and difficult to imagine with the sights and sounds of wind and flame filling the rooms where they are. And if that were not incredible enough, suddenly Jesus' followers were praising God and telling the good news in the languages of all the devout Jews who had gathered in Jerusalem for the festival, and now for this spectacle. The crowd grew and speculation was rampant. Some were amazed and wondered if this wasn't something they should pay attention to. These weren't worldly folks, afterall. They were Galileans, from a rural, unsophisticated province, and here they were speaking in all the languages of the world. How could such a thing be? Others there just sneered and shrugged if off drunkenness (Acts 2:12-13)
In response to this, Peter suddenly waxes eloquent. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, he tries to explain what is going on, calling on the words of the prophet Joel: 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 (Acts 2:17).
Beyond our passage this morning, Peter keeps talking to the crowd, preaching about who Jesus was. The crowd was stirred by his words, and faith in Christ took root. Luke writes that "those who welcomed this message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added (Acts 2:41)."
Not bad for a mornings' work.
The story of Pentecost is one that we hear every year; this is one of the High Holy Days of our church year. Pentecost has its own liturgical color and its own paraments. It's a big deal. Because on this day, we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift that empowers us to be who God calls us to be and do what God calls us to do. Without the Holy Spirit, those one hundred twenty followers of Jesus might have remained one hundred twenty, a timid group who feared what might happen to them, confused or prone to disagreement about what they should do next. Instead, the Spirit came to them and they were all fired up, and the faith they shared spread like wildfire throughout Jerusalem, and Judea and Samaria, and to all the ends of the earth.
This is our story, our history, and it is worth remembering. It is amazing to me to think of a time when believers were so filled with God's presence that their faith was literally contagious, that just being around them made people want to believe in God, or at least want to know what was going on. In fact, I think it's worth trying to re-ignite that sense of being fired up for God.
Now, I know, the idea of Presbyterians being fired up is a little uncomfortable. We are God's "frozen chosen" afterall. We're known in ecumenical circles as people who worship from the neck up. The majority of us would never dream of raising our hands up in worship, and generally speaking, our every day conversations are not peppered liberally with references to God, the Lord, or Jesus. And we certainly leave the dramatic stuff—like being overcome by the Spirit and passing out or speaking in tongues—to our more aptly named Pentecostal brothers and sister in Christ.
No, that kind of behavior just isn't us. Especially in church! We like faith that is well thought out, reflective, intellectual, considered, measured. And I truly believe that "the life of the mind" which Presbyterians cultivate is a gift to us from God for God's church. However, I still think even we Presbyterians can be all fired up for God, in our own intellectual way.
It is, in fact, a matter of survival. Our denomination is shrinking. And the truth is, we don't need to be. If we could keep even the majority of the young people we confirm every year in our church, in our denomination, we would not be shrinking any longer.
One of the questions that is asked by religious educators these days is, Will our children have faith? Or perhaps another way to think of that question is, will our children see our faith as worth taking on for themselves?
The last week of April, I attended Princeton Seminary's Institute for Youth Ministry. The theme for this year's institute was Longing for God: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church.
Kenda Creasy Dean, United Methodist pastor and a member of the faculty at Princeton, gave one of the keynote lectures at the conference. Kenda has been part of University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's National Youth and Religion Project. The goal of the project is to learn how adolescents view organized religion, specifically, whether adolescents feel alienated from the church, as many have believed for the past decade.
Kenda told us that the interviews are completed, and the data is being crunched. What they have found is, youth are not feeling alienated from the church. However, they're not feeling all fired up, either. Instead, what they're feeling is, and I quote, "Benign Positive Regard". That's the phrase the research team came up with—benign positive regard. What that means is, youth have a positive attitude toward organized religion, but it doesn't really have any influence in their life. Church is a nice place to be, but it doesn't necessarily mean anything.[1]
Ouch. The truth hurts. All of the four hundred youth ministers and youth workers in that auditorium sadly shook our heads as we heard our worst fears confirmed.
Kenda argued that youth really do long for something to give life for, something to be passionate about, in the sense of having something worth giving your life for. She used the sobering examples of John Walker Lindh, the Washington teenager who converted to Islam and was found in Afghanistan among the Taliban, and the Palestinian teenagers who were willing to serve as suicide bombers in Israel.
Of course, these are extreme examples, but the point is, teenagers are inherently passionate creatures. In fact, a recent Time magazine article on the adolescent brain says that their brains develop in such a way that teens have "an appetite for thrills" and are "actively looking for experiences to create intense feelings." (Time, May 10, 2004, What Makes Teens Tick, p. 61)
Anyone who has spent any time with teenagers knows all about these "intense feelings." Adolescents throw their entire selves into whatever they're doing. If they're into a movie or a sport or a pop star, it's easy to devour every shred of information out there. They memorize sports statistics, imitate music, and recite entire scenes from movies and television shows. They create websites devoted to their idols and interests. Teens know enthusiasm.
I do not mean to imply that there is anything wrong with this enthusiasm. I think it's wonderful, it's part of who adolescents are, and it's part of the reason I enjoy spending time with them. In fact, I think their enthusiasm is one of their gifts to us, the older and less enthusiastic crowd. The question I want to raise is, do we in the church give teenagers anything to be passionate about? Do we model in our lives a faith that is worth living for?
Actually, it's a good question for all of us: do we live our lives as if faith matters?
Faith, it is said, is caught, not taught. That means we can have the best Sunday School curriculum in the world, but it cannot make our children have faith. We send them to the mountain top experiences of church camp and mission trips and youth conferences and the Presbyterian Youth Triennium where you worship with 6000 other people and it's difficult not to feel the presence of the Spirit. But even those are not enough. When our young people come home, they need to have a congregation empowered by the Spirit to encourage and nurture and welcome them.
And it's not just adolescents and children who need this. All of us need a congregation where faith is contagious, whether we've been members here for fifty years, or five weeks, or this is our first Sunday visiting.
In Medieval times, churches were designed with "Holy Spirit holes" in their ceilings, symbolically and actually opening themselves to the presence of the Spirit. There are records of churches in Rome in the 10th century on Pentecost, uncovering those holes, releasing doves through them and raining rose petals down upon the congregation below as choirboys ran through the aisles, making whooshing sounds and beating on drums to call to mind the rush of the Spirit.[2]
I, for one, would like to see Holy Spirit holes make a comeback. (Design Review Committee, you have been warned.) Or maybe it is enough to remember Holy Spirit holes, to think of our building, our ceilings and walls, our Sanctuary, Fellowship Hall and the Christian Education rooms, perhaps even our own selves — all of them and all of us, with holes, cracks, open to the Holy Spirit moving in us, and through us to others.
Close your eyes for a moment and breathe, imagining yourself open to the Spirit. Can you feel it? Can you feel the Spirit present with us this morning, present in the people around you? Can you imagine what it is God is calling this congregation to be, to one another, to our community?
Now open your eyes, and stand up, and let us together say the words of the Affirmation of Faith, saying what we believe about the Holy Spirit and what it calls us to do and to be:
We trust in God the Holy Spirit, everywhere the giver and renewer of life. The Spirit justifies us by grace through faith,
sets us free to accept ourselves and to love God and neighbor,
and binds us together with all believers
in the one body of Christ, the Church.
The same Spirit who inspired the prophets and apostles rules our faith and life in Christ through Scripture, engages us through the Word proclaimed, claims us in the waters of baptism,
feeds us with the bread of life and the cup of salvation, and calls women and men to all ministries of the Church.
In a broken and fearful world
the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing,
to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in Church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.
In gratitude to God, empowered by the Spirit,
we strive to serve Christ in our daily tasks
and to live holy and joyful lives,
even as we watch for God's new heaven and new earth, praying, "Come, Lord Jesus!"
(A Brief Statement of Faith)
May it be so. Amen.
1 Kenda Creasy Dean, April 27, 2004 lecture at Princeton Seminary's Institute for Youth Ministry. Additional information about the study can be found at http://www.youthandreligion.org/. go back
2 Diana Eck, Encountering God, p. 130 go back
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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
Copyright © 2003 First Presbyterian Church of Cedar Rapids. All rights reserved.