Acts 2:1-21 Fired Up Sermon preached May 19, 2013 Opening A while back, ABC News ran a special

called In the Name of God. A reporter interviewed John Wimber, founder of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship, a charismatic Christian fellowship that has grown explosively in recent years. Vineyard puts out songs we sing during the first service, like Hungry and Breathe. In the interview, Wimber spoke about the first time he attended church. He was already an adult; he listened attentively to the sermon, was fascinated by what he heard, so he went back. The same thing happened the next Sunday. He was enthralled. So three Sundays in a row he returned to church, but by this time he was beginning to get a little frustrated. So, following the service, he approached an official looking man and asked, When do they do it? Do what? the man replied. The stuff, Wimber answered. What stuff? The stuff in the Bible! What do you mean? You know - multiplying loaves and fishes, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind. That stuff. The stuff in the Bible -do you ever yearn for it to happen, too? For bunches of people to come to faith and find healing and new life in Christ...for people to be healed of addiction and pain and sickness...for the poor and suffering to be fed and cared for...do you ever yearn for it to happen? Waiting As our reading opens, the disciples are waiting for something to happen. Theyve encountered the risen Jesus, theyve heard him tell them that they are going to carry the Gospel to the whole world, they dont know what that really means yet but they know that some kind of wild and dangerous mission awaits them...and then Jesus ascends to heaven. 1

Poof, hes gone. Before he goes, he tells them, to wait...to wait for the gift the Father promised...the gift of the Holy Spirit. And so, theyre together, praying, and waiting. And waiting, feels like a complete waste of time. Waiting feels like powerlessness. Like when you go to the doctor - you always have to wait - first in the waiting room - then they call you to an exam room and tell you to get undressed and you sit there in your underwear, waiting for the doctor to come in on his schedule, not yours. Theres a lot of waiting in the Bible, too. Abraham, waiting for years for the son God promised him. The Israelites, crying out to God for decades to be freed from slavery in Egypt. But waiting, is always a prelude to God doing something amazing. Years ago, Im waiting on God to tell me what he wants me to do with my life. Were living in Kansas City, Im working as a computer systems programmer geek. Im doing well at it, and were living the classic American life - mortgage, two children, church, friends, its a pretty good life. But somehow I know its not the life Susan and I are called to live. Ive got this nagging insistent sense that there is something else out there, but I cant see, it, cant figure out what it is. So one day Im raking leaves in our back yard and Im praying, God, please just show me, just tell me, what you want me to do. Ill do it. So Im raking the leaves and I hear Gods voice - I hear God speak to me in the clearest way before or since - and what I get is one word - God gives me a word and that word is, Wait. Wait? The God of the universe hears my prayer for direction and I get the word, Wait? But six months later...God called us to ministry and we headed off to seminary. In Gods timing, waiting is always a time of preparation that gets us read for what God is about to do next. Waiting is a time when were called to pray and trust and kind of lean forward in anticipation of what Gods about to do. Like when youre watching a baseball game, the games tied, there is a full count and theres a man on second and you think the pitcher is going to groove a pitch and the batter is going to connect and drive in the goahead run...you lean forward, waiting on God to reveal whats next. Then God shows up So back to the story in Acts. For centuries and centuries before Pentecost, people who loved God longed and prayed for God to be present - Job prayed, O would you rend the heavens and come down; the passage Peter quotes from the prophet Joel - looking ahead - that in the last days God would pour out his Spirit on all people - hed write his law on 2

our hearts meaning that we would be able to know right from wrong because the Spirit living inside us would awaken our consciences... Youve felt this way maybe - you look up at the cold distant stars at night and know that God is out there somewhere but all you feel is the vast emptiness of the universe and you want just a sense, a touch, a glimmer, of the presence of God. But here, on this first Pentecost, it finally happens. God does come down, his Spirit pours out from heaven and drenches those hoping, praying disciples...and the hopes and fears of all the years...the yearning for God to show up - and God, is finally here. The fire coming down on the disciples - means the presence of God - in Exodus, God appeared in a pillar of fire to lead the Israelites through the desert by night; earlier, God appeared in a burning bush to Moses - fire means the presence of God and tongues of fire dance on the disciples heads. Do we really want it? But heres my first question. Do we really want God, to show up? We mainline Christians - Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, etc., we prize order and respectability. We think being part of a church is part of being a good person, a good member of the community. And we look down our noses at the overly enthusiastic excesses of our Pentecostal sisters and brothers and use their occasionally over-the-top behavior as an excuse to stiff-arm the Holy Spirit, keep the Spirit at a safe distance. It seems that most often, we want God to stay at a safe distance, to be there when we need comfort and to take us by the hand and lead us to heaven when we die, but otherwise, weve got our lives arranged satisfactorily. Fred Craddock tells a wonderful story about a young minister, newly graduated from seminary, serving his very first church. He gets a call telling him that a church member, elderly woman who has given her life in service to the church, is in the hospital. She's so weak she can't even get up out of bed, and the doctors don't hold much hope for her recovery. Would he go up and visit? Well, of course he will and he does. All the way to the hospital he's thinking about what he will say to this Christian lady, what words of comfort he can give her to prepare her for her imminent death. He arrives at the hospital, goes up to her room for the visit. He sits and talks with her a few minutes, just small talk really, nothing earth shattering. When he gets ready to leave, he asks if she would like him to have prayer with her. She answers, "Yes, of course. That's why I wanted you to come."

He then asks politely, "And what exactly would you like me to pray for?" "Why, I want you to pray that God will heal me," she answers in a surprised tone of voice. Haltingly, fumbling over the words, he prays that God will heal her, even though he's not really sure that can happen. When he says the "Amen" at the end of the prayer, the woman says, "You know, I think it worked! I think I'm healed!" And she gets out of the bed and begins to run up and down the hallway of the hospital, shouting, "Praise God! I'm healed! Praise God! I'm healed!" Meanwhile, the young minister, in a stupor, stumbles to the stairwell, walks down five flights of stairs, makes his way to the parking lot and somehow manages to find his car. As he fumbles to get his keys out of his pocket, he looks heavenward and says, "Don't you ever do that to me again!" We like to be in control. When the Holy Spirit shows up, youre no longer in control. God is. And youre going to go places and do things you couldnt imagine. Your comfortable, safe life is going to become a lot more exciting. Are you ready for that? A fired-up church draws people together Speaking of the exciting and unexpected - the Holy Spirit comes down at Pentecost - and what happens? The 120 disciples - all start preaching - in different languages. Whats going on here? Well, lets consider the scene: Pentecost is a big Jewish holiday, and the city is packed with Jewish pilgrims from all over the ancient world. Hundreds of years earlier, the Jewish people had been scattered all over the world and there were Jewish communities in all kinds of places and the people there over time adopted the language and culture of their new homes...while holding onto their faith. So the place is packed...kind of like its going to be around here this summer for the 150th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg, well have people from all over the world here...and the disciples start preaching in a whole bunch of different languages and it gathers a few onlookers who then become a crowd and theyre amazed, were from all over the world and yet we can all hear them in our own languages. 4

Whats the point of all this? God is creating the church - and stage one, is to populate the church with Jews from all over the world. You see, Gods vision, is to create a new people where all the walls that separate us from one another, all the walls of culture and language and race and ethnicity and gender and all the rest, those walls come down and you get a new community where the only thing that matters, is Jesus Christ. At Pentecost, God is creating a new people - 3,000 that day - and then a few chapters later in Acts God broadens the church some more and the Gentiles - non-Jews - begin to flock in and in no time at all youve got all kinds of different people, different colors and cultures and languages, who are brought together by the Spirit into the church of Jesus Christ. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit began the creation of a movement that created a new people - where the barriers that kept people divided up into their ethnic and national groups no longer mattered, but where different people found unity in Christ. Trouble is, thats a pain. Most of us prefer to be with people who are pretty much like us. I mean, its hard enough for a Ravens fan like Tim Miller to exist comfortably in this congregation, a sea of Steelers fans...but what if the Holy Spirit really showed up here and God started bringing people who dont look like us...people whose first language isnt English...people with messed-up lives...people who dont dress nicely. When the Holy Spirit shows up, you get a community of different people who may share in common only Jesus Christ. We say we want spiritual renewal here, we say want to grow and reach new people - well, I dont want to scare you - much - but be prepared to get to know some new and different people. And what kind of community? And it gets even more challenging. As you read on in Acts, you learn that this community of diverse people practiced radical caring for one another. They didnt just tolerate one another, they loved and cared for one another. And it changed the world. Ever wonder how the Christian church went from a few thousand people in Jerusalem, to two billion today? Grew from obscurity, grew despite centuries of intermittent persecution? The church didnt grow through military conquest - it grew because the church kept living this Acts 2 kind of life. The historian Rodney Stark - wrote a great book The First Christians, said the early 5

Christians had an amazing network of care - says in the book that the Emperor Julian, who was a pagan and wanted to combat the rise of Christianity, launched a campaign to create pagan charities in an effort to match the Christians. Julian complained in a letter in the year 362 that the pagans needed to equal the virtues of the Christians. For recent Christian growth was caused by their moral character, even if they were pretending, he said, and by their benevolence towards strangers and care for the graves of the dead, the impious Galileans support not only their poor, but ours as well. In the ancient world, where the poor were despised, where unwanted babies were left out in the cold to die, where there were no hospitals or nursing homes, where people abandoned their own families when plague struck, followers of Jesus Christ sacrificed to care for not only their own but for those outside the church. And they changed the world. You want renewal, you want growth - are you prepared to give of yourself in costly ways to help hurting people? Praying for the Spirit So back to the beginning of the story - what were the disciples doing while they were waiting? Praying. They were praying. For exactly what, Luke doesnt tell us. But based on human nature, Id bet they were praying, Show us whats next Lord; show us what to do, Lord, give us a sign, Lord. They knew they were on the cusp of something wonderful happening, and they prayed and prayed while they waited. And youve been waiting, too. For spiritual renewal. And praying too, I trust. You all have done such a wonderful job welcoming me and Susan and making us feel loved and appreciated - and I am growing to love you all, this church, this community. Were happy here. And all that is good and wonderful. But from what I hear, some of you think having a new pastor is the key to the renewal of Central. But I cant create renewal. You cant create renewal. We cant create renewal. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. Do we really want it? Will you pray for it? Opportunities to pray during the Lords Supper Closing Annie Dillard tells the story from New Guinea, during the 1930's, of a British District Officer named James Taylor who made first contact with a remote mountain village whose people had never seen the outside world. The British hacked a crude airstrip out of the jungle near the village so they could open up that part of New Guinea. One day, a villager did something extraordinary. He cut vines and lashed himself to the fuselage of Taylors airplane just before it took off. He explained calmly to his family that, no matter 6

what happened to him, he had to see where the plane was going. And I cant wait to see where were going, into the future God has for us. Amen. Endnotes 1. Journal for Preachers, Advent 1999, p. 51.