Pentecost

May 23, 2021 · Ben Hoyer · 32:43

A Pentecost sermon on Acts 2, recounting the disciples' wait in Jerusalem after Jesus' resurrection appearances and ascension, and the coming of the Holy Spirit with the sound of a mighty rushing wind.

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Glad you made it this morning. It's Pentecost. Anybody know that coming in today that is Pentecost? I was curious, face in hand. We can close their eyes so you don't feel ashamed. You don't have to know. A few people. I had a... When I was in college, when Megan and the Moors and I were in college, we went to this church, this Anglican church. They still had a bishop.

When the bishop came, you noticed that the bishop was wearing... I mean, this was a very high church Anglican church. They had big chasable when they were doing the communion. They had incense sometimes. They had kneelers on the chairs. When the bishop would come, the bishop would be all robed up, have the big staff and the miter hat on.

Then at the bottom of the robes, you would notice he had on Birkenstocks. That was funny. With his Birkenstocks, he always wore red socks. Red socks with Birkenstocks. He said that red was the color for the Holy Spirit. He wanted to shout his feet with the Holy Spirit, so he always performed the service with red socks on his feet. Red's the color for Pentecost and the Holy Spirit.

Historically, churches would have red doors because he would come in through the Holy Spirit, the color for the Holy Spirit. These churches we got for free from a church, you can imagine, and they are church-read, I call it, these chairs. Pentecost is when we celebrate the coming of the Spirit. I'll start us off with that story this morning.

We just finished the season of Easter. Pentecost comes at the end of the Easter season. For us, we were looking at the reality that the God of Easter is a very specific God, not a God in general. The God of Easter is called the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Christ in the church. This is the God of Easter. In the first Pentecost, it came after a whole series of appearances

by the risen Christ. This Easter period, this 50-day period from the Passover through to Pentecost saw Jesus' crucifixion, his resurrection, his resurrection appearances, where he's in his glorified body and he appears to over 500 people in all these different settings. He's popping in and out of space and time. He appears to the disciples on the road to get 70 and then disappears. He appears to the disciples in the upper room through the locked doors and then disappears.

One of my favorites is after that, after he's appeared to them, they're confused, they don't know what to do, so they go fishing and they haven't caught any fish all night, and Jesus appears to them on the bank of the lake and makes breakfast for them and welcomes them out of the boat. Jesus meets them up on the hill of Galilee, says they appear to over 500 people, and then famously on Galilee, he ascends into heaven and tells them to go back to Jerusalem and wait.

And what they were waiting for becomes apparent at Pentecost. Acts 2, if you want to look there with me, is the Pentecost story. Remember that the full name for what we call Acts, it was the Acts of the Apostles. It's pretty clear that the Acts of the Apostles is a continuation of Luke's account of the gospel. Luke writes the, his gospel, Luke is not one of the 12.

He, people most likely think he was a physician, that he interviewed Mary and lots of people. He's trying to write a definitive account of the life of Jesus. He's a little bit more detail in some of Luke's stories. And then he goes on to write the Acts of the Apostles, which talks about what happens to the church right after the ascension of Jesus and the impartation of the Holy Spirit. And you can see then he, if you read the whole Acts of the Apostles, it's kind of an amazing story. He starts to weave in the first person pronoun, ween,

because it seems like he's caught up in the movements of the first century church moving around with Paul. Acts chapter two is where we get the first Pentecost story, and it says, when the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty Russian wind. And it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And I want you to think about this for a minute.

What Luke is trying to capture in words right here. Two weeks ago or so, Megan and I and a couple of friends went out to the Yosemite Valley in California. And you can look up pictures of it online, read accounts of it. It's breathtaking. But you come on this interstate and the valley is this side, it's a valley,

but it's interesting because the way that it exists is not what you think of normally as a valley. Like you think of mountains coming down like at an angle. And these mountains coming down at an angle and maybe meeting in a mountain stream at the end of the valley. So the valleys are narrow and maybe more fertile. This valley somehow, the mountains, almost all of them are cut like sheer walls straight down. So that the mountains come like this, then a couple of them reach a plateau,

then it's just straight walls straight down to a flat valley floor. And all these mountain streams come running into it. We had seen pictures of the Yosemite Valley, but when you come to Yosemite Valley, you drive along this ridiculously curvy road. I mean, it's like they made it curvy on purpose to make the back seat sick, you know? It's just like, but it doesn't matter how many times you have seen pictures of it. As you turn around the corner, you get right to the edge of the mountain and you turn back

and now you're going to drive into the valley. And the valley opens up in front of you. And it's like there's some kind of perfect mist always in the valley so that the air looks like a painting. And the scope of the granite walls and the movement of the water, it doesn't matter how many pictures you see, you cannot capture. It doesn't matter how many times someone recounts the story of it. You can't affect the beauty, the beauty is the wrong word, the experience of standing in its beauty.

Luke writes this story about Pentecost and he says, when the day of Pentecost had come, they were gathered all together in one place and suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind. Imagine that the great, like original primordial presence of God, the active force of God that hovers over the nothing at creation through which creation is called into existence

in which humanity is animated with the breath of God. This presence of God for generations has been pent up and held back, bolted behind doors and walls, kept in some storehouse sometime, somewhere, waiting for this moment. What would it be like to be the few when the mighty rushing wind of the original presence of God is released on humanity again?

Good Lord, I hope we get to experience it one day. I mean, I like reading about it, but I want to like, read it all in again, unhindered by my own malaise, apathy, and lack of faith. It's a beautiful set first sentence to the experience of Pentecost.

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place and suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And it divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now, they were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven,

and at the sound, the multitude came together. They were all in Pentecost because they would be bringing their first fruits into the temple. Pentecost is a harvest festival where you take the first fruits of your harvest, and in first century Israel, the only place you can make acceptable sacrifices is at the presence of God, and the presence of God is located in the holiest place in the temple in Jerusalem.

So not only do you have to take a tenth of your stuff, you've got to take whatever time it takes you to load it onto a donkey and drive the donkey however many days journey up to Jerusalem. So then you might stay for a little while and you have a feast and celebrate the fact that God had given you such a harvest that you were acknowledging that with your sacrifice and then enjoying that with the people there. So they were all there. It was a convenient time for the Spirit to be released on humanity again,

verse 6, and at this sound, the multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language and they were amazed and astonished, saying, are not all these who are speaking Galileans, and how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Capidocia, Pontius and Asia,

Firgopan, Philly, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Creatans, Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God, and all were amazed and perplexed, saying to another, what does this mean? But others, mocking said, they are filled with new wine. They all heard the announcement of the gospel, hey, Jesus is alive, raised from the dead,

King of all kings, you can live under his authority if you like. That's good. He's defeated death, so death no longer has hold over you. They're all hearing it in their own language, which if we had another time in another day, we would talk about how Pentecost is part of the way that we know Jesus fulfills all of Israel's obligation, that Jesus is Israel reduced to warm. God's intent to pour Israel started with the person of Abraham all the way down through the intertestamental period,

was that they would be a beacon of hope, a city on the hill that people would look to them and see the life they were made for, and all nations of the world would be drawn back to God. Israel was always selected as a servant because of the rest of the world, not at the exclusion of the rest of the world. And Pentecost is this beautiful example that all languages are drawn back again to God. But that's not what I want to focus on this week. What I want to focus on this week is what comes right next. I want to focus on this week. I want to focus on this week. I want to focus on this week.

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to caught up in this original life-giving spirit of God. What's interesting to me to think about a little bit that I spend some time thinking about is why right now? Why does it happen right now? Wouldn't it be interesting if Jesus could have had the 11 with the benefit of the spirit while he was walking around? Like, remember when he sends out the 72,000 people? He sends out the 72, I'm sending you out two by two, be as wise as serpent and as innocent as dubs, takes no extra clothes with you, but your clothes get...

What if they got it then? They were doing miracles then and they didn't know what had happened. They came back and said, we can't believe this thing worked. What if they had had the spirit then? So that was a question that was fun for me and I didn't have the answer to it, so I started reading. Some of my stuff. This is not a one-to-one, but I just want you to know that I'm still learning stuff, which is fun. So I went back to this book that I had been given in seminary. One of the main reasons I think to go to seminary is to get a library that you can read later.

And I had skimmed this in seminary, but I'm reading it more in depth now. It's called The Holy Spirit in the Life of Jesus by Ranyero Contillamese. If you look up Ranyero Contillamese, he was the preacher to the papal household, which is a pretty cool title, but I was trying to figure out, I'm pretty sure the Pope does not have a wife or children, so I'm wondering who's in his household. But he preached to the papal household and he writes this book on the role of the spirit, and there's a couple of ideas that sparked some thinking for me in there.

And the first thing I want to go to from there is in John chapter 16. So you go just a little bit to the right. Matthew marks Luke John. John chapter 16. Jesus is talking to the disciples here. And let's see. Oh yeah. So he's telling them that he's going to leave, that the world hates him, or John chapter 16 looks like halfway through verse 4.

Says, I did not say these things to you from the beginning because I was with you, but now I'm going to him who sent me. And none of you asked me where are you going, but because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away. For I do not go away to help or will not come to you. But if I go, I'll send him to you.

And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment, concerning sin because they do not believe in me, concerning righteousness because I go to the Father, you will see me no longer concerning judgment because the ruler of the world is judged. And I love many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. For he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. And all that the Father has is mine. Therefore, I said that he will take what is mine and declare it. To you, I started thinking about the way that we hear sometimes in the Old Testament about the spirit coming on a prophet and in the 19 for a specific purpose. But really, when you think about it, even we just went through the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, even the story of Moses.

There is not anybody like what happened. You don't hear stories like in the Old Testament like we just saw with Peter. Peter has a moment where he is afraid of the slave girl to admit to her that he knows Jesus. And then two days later, three days later, he is announcing to the whole church standing in front of the temple that they killed the one they had been waiting for. You don't see stories like Paul. Paul is breathing out murderous threats, overseeing the stoning of the followers of the way, getting permission to hunt them down through Asia Minor.

On his feet, walking between cities to arrest followers of the way to perhaps the greatest evangelist the church has ever known. Like Moses is a leader that wants to liberate Israel and then on his own and then is a leader who wants to liberate Israel with God. Something different happens. You don't see the stories of the transformation, like 100% until the spirit of God is able to come.

And the first thing to recognize is Jesus says there's something happening. There's something mechanical even about the working of God in the world. He said, look guys, I've got to go because when I go, then I can send the spirit. May theologians think that there was a significant like a new creation that had to happen in order for humanity to carry that original spirit of God.

That this is even something beyond the first ones. That the incarnation, remember it says that Gabriel comes to Mary and he says, God the Father has found favor with you. And so the spirit will overshadow you and the Son of God will be conceived inside of you. That all three persons of the Trinity line up right here, much as they did in the beginning of creation when God speaks the spirit hovers the word penetrates through the spirit and creates that God is creating something different here.

And so when Jesus incarnated in the womb of Mary, something new has begun. And many folks think that there is a sin capacity in humanity where it has two components. He mentions a little bit there concerning sin and judgment that the world has is broken and a shadow of what it might be.

That the world is broken and a shadow of what it might be. This essence, this state of separation from God theologians and scripture called call iniquity. That there is an ontological problem of being separate from God. For us, it looks like for the life of us, we carry always this fatal flaw.

No matter how far down in faith we move, it continues to rear its ugly head that we are sure we know better than God. We cannot take it. Even more, no matter how far into the presence of God we move, no matter how holy we feel our bodies still age and death still creeps. No matter how magnificent these giants of Koyas in Yosemite, Valle, y'all, we saw one tree up on the top higher than the Statue of Liberty, a branch comes out of the tree.

The science helps me. It's seven feet in diameter. The tree is over 3,000 years old, quietly growing in a valley in the central California for 3,000 years a tree, slowly doing its job over and over again. And yet death is woven into the fabric of the giant sequoias. There is iniquity in the world. The scholars tell us that in the incarnation, Jesus recreates again without iniquity.

So that there is capacity in the world for something someone to exist without the iniquity of the fall. Of course then there is capacity. It's why Paul says whoever is in Christ is a new creation. The old is gone. The new has come. That those who live under the reign of Jesus have something birthed inside of them that's growing now, that unlike the giant sequoia will never die.

Carries no iniquity in it at all. The capacity to join with God. But God's Father does not release the Spirit at Christmas. Because iniquity is not our only problem.

We have bodies separated from God woven with death like the rest of creation. And we have our own stubborn will. God has recreated you at your moment of faith, at your baptism. God has launched something new inside of you. And if that were all, you would have abandoned your new creation, embraced your old Adam and marched off on your own way a long time ago.

God the Father imagines the incarnation and then imagines the crucifixion. Both are needed. At the crucifixion God takes on your will in the person of Jesus. And puts it to its natural end so that your iniquity and what scholars call your sin, your choices to separate from God.

Your nature that is separate from God and your choices every day to separate from God. Both then are dealt with and new opportunities arise. Jesus is crucified, ascended and now he has prepared Peter and the eleven with the capacity. They have new creation and sacrifice for their sin. Now they have the capacity to carry with them that original Spirit of God and everything changes.

I mean, everything changes. Peter's people raised from the dead at his own words. Peter saw thousands of people at Pentecost come into the way of Jesus when weeks before they had shouted for him to be killed.

Paul talks about it in Romans. This is our last passage of the day that I'll stop talking. Romans chapter eight. Romans chapter eight is like really great. Here. Romans chapter eight is really great. And the first part is like he's like unpacking what it means that we get this gift of our iniquity and sin resolved and then look down to verse 12 of Romans chapter eight if you're reading along with me.

So then brothers we are better. It's not to flesh. Not to old iniquity. Not to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to flesh, build up. It's destined for death like the giant sequoia. But if by the Spirit, by the Spirit you've been given, you take iniquity to a natural end. You put the death, the deeds of the body. You will live.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God. Oh, our children of God. For you did not receive the Spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. God gives you the spirit because now you have open ended capacity and opportunity. God gives you the spirit, not a fear as though you would live on a razor's edge trying to please a master, but that you might live as heirs of the promises of God.

As though all things are working for the good of those who are the children of God. You might live not a spirit of fear, but a spirit for you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. You may receive the spirit of adoption as children by whom we cry. Abba, Father. It was scandalous when Jesus would call God something as intimate as Abba. And then sitting at the right hand of God, He descends to us the same spirit who animated His life in order that we might also understand God as into the primordial original Creator God.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we got a Christ in the church, the God of Easter is intimately acquainted with you, has accomplished the incarnation, endured the crucifixion, dispatched the original spirit in order that He could have intimacy with you. Open ended possibility. Pentecost means that you have now everything that you need to be all that you ever hoped you could be. Love generously. Forgive freely. Create prolifically. Build with ingenuity and hopefulness.

Love with open ended vulnerability and generosity. You create things in the world. You subdue what is evil. You build what is good. You carry the spirit of God by which you are children of God. And all the promises are good for you. Pentecost started something altogether new. I don't know why He waited so long. I can't imagine what Moses would have looked like with the spirit of God. It's a question we could ask Him.

But I am glad I get to live on this side of Pentecost because I need the spirit of God. Death haunts me, sin pursues me, iniquity, nags at me. I need the spirit of God. That's why I am so glad we live in the age of the spirit. You live in the age of the spirit.

We are going to spend the next several weeks. I am going to keep learning from Ron Yara. We are going to spend the next several weeks looking at what it means that we have the spirit of God available to us. Hey Lord, thank you. Good Lord, thank you for the gift of Pentecost and your original spirit. Holy Spirit, come now.

In life and forgive, restore, renew, convict, love, build, create, in and through us the spirit of God. We love you because you have first loved us. Love us now unto yourself. In Jesus name we pray.