Sermons

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Wind and Fire
June 8, 2003
Pentecost Sunday
Pastor Dan Baumgartner
Acts 2

Before the day of Pentecost, there was no church. Not really. Before the day of Pentecost, there were a bunch of anxiety-filled followers of Jesus. Before the day of Pentecost, whatever church there was consisted of a chaotic, confused gathering not sure what to do. Sometimes they are pictured as rather saintly, sitting around praying all the time, having seen the resurrected Jesus go back to heaven for the final time.

I think the picture must have been pretty different from that. I think it was more like a group of people sitting around scratching their heads and saying, “I dunno, what do YOU think we should do?”

What should they do? Sit and wait, like Jesus had told them? Or make something happen on their own…maybe Jesus would like their initiative.

Before the day of Pentecost, there were a bunch of paralyzed followers gazing up into heaven. Before the day of Pentecost, the church was non-existent. Or if it did exist, it was in such disarray it was both unrecognizable and useless. Where was God in all this?

And just like the God of Genesis had to breathe life into human beings…the God of Acts had to breathe life into the church.

They heard the wind. They saw the fire. They knew the presence of God.

I was in Tennessee most of this week. Once a year, four of us who went to school together gather for 3-4 days somewhere. It’s a high point of my year. We read a book together ahead of time, then spend several hours dissecting it…and poking fun at the person who chose it. We share what has gone on in our lives over the last year, we challenge each other, we pray for one another. We laugh.

This year, we ended up staying on Lookout Mt. just outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee. We were given this stunningly huge and beautiful log house with a sweeping view of the whole Chattanooga Valley. There was a huge deck hanging over the edge of the mountain, and an outdoor fireplace, and we sat outside at night and talked and talked. One night, just after we’d gone in, the wind came up from out of nowhere. It was strong, and it blew through those mountain trees so hard, it shook them, they swayed and you could hear the swoosh of the wind. It was so loud we thought it had started to pour down rain, but when we walked out it was just the wind. Invisible, but not silent. Unseen, but loud. You heard the wind, and you marveled. Where did it come from? It was so strong.

Two summers ago, we drove to Montana to meet some friends. It was the summer of so many serious forest fires, and as we crossed into Montana we began to see smoke in the air. The further east we went, the smokier and cloudier it got. Darker and darker. Finally we rounded one bend…we were on I-90…and the entire hillside next to the freeway, straight up…was all on fire. Helicopters were dumping water with what seemed to be a thimble full of water each trip. When we saw all of those trees ablaze, it was like “Whoa! This is serious. This is borderline out of control.” There was something both thrilling and dangerous about it.

Hear the wind. See the fire. Know the presence of God.

The disciples were gathered together. They didn’t appear to have education, finances, direction, leadership or guidance. If it was up to them to develop the new start-up, it was a bust. They didn’t have the resources, the know-how or anything else. If it’s up to them to spread the kingdom of God…it’s all over. So God sends his Spirit, with wind…and fire. When the Spirit of God came…they KNEW: God is with us…NOW. God the Father is over us, Jesus the Son was with us -- but now is gone…but we know them in the Holy Spirit. And by the way…it was just a little out of control.

You know, in the church we have so often tamed God down, limited what we can imagine God doing until the wind is just a gentle breeze of an air conditioner and the fire is always neatly contained behind the safety glass of the fireplace. When God is under OUR control, you know what happens? Nothing. Nothing happens. Or the things we attribute to the actions of the Holy Spirit are nothing more than OUR best efforts. That’s not the story of Acts. Acts is the beginning of the church…and it’s the story of God taking helpless, hopeless, powerless people…and blowing boldness into them, refining them in fire…changing them. Inside out.

Jesus tells his disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit. And when it comes, there are all sorts of surprises. The sound of rushing wind, tongues of fire, the empowerment to speak in other tongues. Often we stop our reading for Pentecost right here in chapter 2, and then we skip over to Corinthians and conclude that the Holy Spirit is only about the charismatic gifts like speaking in tongues and interpreting and prophesying and healing.

You need to know that Bethany is a bit of an atypical Presbyterian church…sometimes the Holy Spirit IS manifested here in worship in these ways (prophecy, tongues, healing, etc)…in fact, with some regularity, actually…thanks be to God! But we don’t to limit God in this way either.

We all want to know: Is the Holy Spirit in my life? Is the Holy Spirit in our church? Some people teach that the only way of telling that the Holy Spirit is present is whether or not a charismatic gift is present. If we stick with the Acts story just a little longer, there are some other helpful barometers. You see, the next thing that happens in this story after the Spirit comes in wind and fire is that:

a) Peter, the Galilean fisherman stands up, and the Holy Spirit gives him words, and he tells the listening crowd the story of Jesus’ ministry and of his death and resurrection. And Acts 2:37 says when the crowd heard it, “they were cut to the heart,” and asked Peter what they should do, and Peter says first, “Repent.” The presence of God’s Holy Spirit…convicts people of their sin. That’s not nearly as glamorous as speaking in tongues…but it is one of the things the Spirit does. The Spirit convicts us of our sin. We don’t include a time of confession on Sunday mornings because somebody told us to. It’s because we HAVE to come and confess. We confess where we have failed the very people we love, where we lived differently than how we want to before God. It’s that groan down deep inside you when you realize that, like the Apostle Paul, you are doing the very things you don’t want to…and you are not doing those you desire to. We hear the wind, we see the fire, we know the presence of God. Do you want to know if the Holy Spirit is in your life? Are you convicted of your sin? Do you understand how much you need God? Do you want to know if the Holy Spirit is in our community? Are we regularly dealing with the sin in our lives?

b) The next thing Peter says in his sermon after Repent is… “be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ.” That’s more than a word just about the physical act of baptism in water. It’s a word about lives being changed. It’s a word about people who are outside the community of faith being brought in. It’s a word about people who don’t know how much God loves them…finding out. If the Holy Spirit is active in your life, people around you will be impacted. If the Holy Spirit is present in our community….people will be coming to faith. Not just coming to church…but coming to know Jesus Christ personally. Our church will be changing and growing not because we attracted people who were going to other churches…but because people are being drawn towards Christ.

The great thing is…it’s exactly what Jesus told his followers would happen when the Spirit came. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

I was struck this week in a new way as I read this passage…I always think of the sort of concentric circles going out from Jerusalem, the call to witness further and further out, that we’ve heard before. But this time I got stuck on Samaria. Samaria was full of people that were bitterly antagonistic. Samaria was a place that folks of Jewish background wouldn’t even walk through. They’d go MILES out of their way just to avoid contact. Samaria was the place it was IMPOSSIBLE to think of anything good happening. That’s where Jesus said they would go…and even further.

Where is that? On Queen Anne, in Wallingford, in an office downtown, in your extended family, in the places where it is difficult or impossible to imagine yourself pointing others towards Christ, to the ends of the earth?

We hear the wind, see the fire, know the presence of God. The Holy Spirit will EQUIP, will EMPOWER us to be witnesses. The Holy Spirit will give us what is needed to do this. What would you need? Courage? Boldness? The right timing? The right words? Peter stands up to talk…and when he sits down, 3,000 people believed that hadn't believed.

In October, nine of us from Bethany went to China…took Bibles in, and met three times with leadership training schools of the underground church there…always in secret, because in China you are arrested for gathering to worship together like we are doing right now…without permission. I’ve told you many stories from that trip. But I don’t think I’ve told you about what I call the “Holy Spirit Day.”
I went back and read my journal entries from that trip this morning. The one from this particular day was about six pages long. It was the third group we had met with, in a poor part of a city in Inner Mongolia. We arrived in the late morning, and met them, and had lunch together. As with all of our other stops, we talked some, we worshipped together and people shared some of their stories of faith. It was great, and we had plans to leave about 2 in the afternoon. And about that time, some of us were feeling like “it’s about time to go.” We left at seven. We heard the wind. We saw the fire. We felt the presence of God.

Brad, Bethany’s missionary there for many years…began to tell a story from a very painful part of his life. The story is too long for me to tell you, and it’s his story anyway…but Brad kept relating back this word that came to him from God that said “…your sin hurts me.” And as Brad shared, it got quieter and quieter in the room. There were tears running down every cheek. And when he finished, people were sobbing. We all just flat out wept. We wept for the pain Brad had felt, but we wept over our own sin, wept over the realization that we too had disappointed God so many times. For the better part of an hour we cried. I’ve never been a part of anything like it.

An electricity filled that little room…there were prayers. Someone would start a song. The Bethany folks, with a little encouragement, moved around the room and began to pray with the Chinese students. Soon, each person was with two or three students, kneeling or standing, arms around or holding hands…this was amazing…not necessarily comfortable for everyone…I mean, Presbyterians for goodness sake! There was only one translator, and he could only be in one place at a time…but it just didn’t matter. Chinese people prayed for Americans, Americans prayed for Chinese…people just knew what to pray for. Some of the praying was in English, some in Chinese…some in tongues…I think! You couldn’t totally tell…and it just didn’t matter! God gave what was needed in the moment.

Later on, several of the Chinese students came and washed my feet, and Brad’s and Carol’s…took our socks and shoes off, and washed our feet…and in the room, still singing and praying. I have never felt so humbled, in such a place of receiving God’s care for me. A little later a young Chinese woman shared that she had always had a hard heart towards Americans…until she saw her own leaders washing the feet of Americans in this way, and her heart melted. This went on ALL DAY! Sometime after seven, we pulled ourselves away.

Now, I’m not telling you this story because we somehow duplicate that day here. Only to say that we, in our lives, need to be open to God’s wind, and God’s fire in the Holy Spirit. The presence of God IS with us. The Spirit moves in large and small ways…convicting of sin, bringing people to faith, empowering the church for ministry.

I have to tell you…that neither the wind nor the fire are under our control. And because we don’t control the Spirit, I think it is always a little risky, a little dangerous to look for God’s presence like this. It is risky in worship: maybe at some appropriate time in our service (appropriate time…we are still Presbyterians, you know!) God’s Spirit nudges you to lead out in prayer, or scripture, or a song, or a tongue or a word. If you are like me, you start by saying, “That couldn’t be you, God!” But maybe it is! It’s a little risky to be honest with God about our sin, to truly admit to God about the places we have been in our lives, our hearts, our minds. It’s a little risky to reach out to people around us…especially those in Samaria! But Good Lord…what an incredible thing to know that the God who made the universe… who has saved us in Jesus Christ…is with us here, and now. We hear the wind. We see the fire. We know God’s presence.