Pentecost Sunday, First Congregational UCC of Rock Springs, WY

Our Companion in Faith
By Rev Steven R Mitchell
First Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY 5/23/2010
Based on Acts 2:1-21 and John 14: 15-17 & 25-27

Today, we celebrate Pentecost Sunday. It is a day often thought as the Churches Birthday; the day we celebrate the receiving of the Holy Spirit, the beginning of the Christian Church. One of the ways that we celebrate this particular day is in the use of the color “red”. We display red cloth on the pulpit, you see a number of red candles here on the communion table, and many of us are even wearing red, all in honor of this particular day. Red is the symbol of the flame that scripture speaks about that came down from heaven and landed upon the heads of all the followers of Jesus.
Our wearing or displaying red isn’t nearly as impactful in today’s society as it would have been 70 yrs ago, for it is now a color that is completely acceptable in polite society. Yet I have had women from previous congregations tell me how as little girls or young women, they were chastised for wearing red to church, as red was a color left only to women of “questionable” morals. For those of us who live in Wyoming, reading this story about the wind coming up, at gale force, again would not have the same understanding or feeling of what that means, as it had for those who were in Jerusalem that particular day. After all, we get gale force wind here in Rock Springs quit frequently.
All of this is to help us realize that there is so much that we read within scripture that we find very hard to relate to, with respect to how unusual some events were experienced and then recorded, because of how we perceive what goes on around us today. When a volcano blows out the side of a mountain and covers the sky with smoke and ash for days, as did Mt Saint Helens in Washington State 30 years ago, or the volcano in Iceland that is causing such havoc over the last month or so, because of my current understanding of science, I do not look to these events as a message from God as some folks might. Nor do I look at meteors striking particular locations on earth as God punishing us for wicked behavior. Yet if I were living a few centuries ago, I might very well have a different interpretation of those events.
As products of the modern age of science we, by conditioning, have come to rely solely on empirical information or evidence in order to believe something. Anything that is being explained outside of this empirical information is scoffed at and we come up with explanations that try to diminish the event. The interesting thing is, even as scientific understanding increases our base of knowledge, human behavior has changed very little.
On the day that God’s Holy Spirit was given to this group of followers of Jesus, there were those who couldn’t understand what was going on, and as a defense accused these people of having drunk too much wine. Today, I would suspect that when I speak about the power of the Holy Spirit, there are those of you who would roll your eyes in disbelief. I would bet that there are those of you who would try to rationalize this as being just an emotional state that one can let themselves enter into. It is our nature to discount what we do not understand.
When I watch T.V. programs that deal with the paranormal, I am constantly rolling my eyes and saying to myself, “and there are people who really believe these guys?” Yet, I have to stop and recall an event of being awakened at night by a flash of light and a crashing sound, knowing there is no storm outside, looking the next morning for evidence of a broken tree branch to explain the noise, only to find out later that day that a very close friend had died that night at about the same time as when I was awaken. And again a few years later having that same experience while attending seminary and then learning that another person who was very important in my life had been killed in a plane crash at about the same time that I was awakened from my sleep. And even if I doubt the possibility of a spirit crossing over into this plane of existence, why would I enter into “prayer”? After all, isn’t prayer, a form of sending thoughts and emotions out into the universe, and expecting them to be intercepted and acknowledged by something that “empirical” evidence cannot substantiate?
This story in Acts goes well beyond the idea of the church’s birthday. I think that this story is dealing with the continuation of God’s work within God’s creation. This event doesn’t happen on just any day. It happened on the day of celebrating Shavuot, which in Jewish history was the day that Moses received the 10 Commandments. These commandments were in essence a guide or a road-map for “right” living; this knowledge of how we relate to God as well as to our neighbors. While this was happening, it is recorded that the people down below on the plain saw Mt Sinai encircled with smoke, and there was loud thunderous noise and lightning flashing.
Next we see God acknowledging the gift of salvation in a differing form, through that of Jesus the Christ. On the day that Jesus was baptized, it is recorded that the clouds parted and a rush of wind came upon those at the river and a dove descended down and landed on Jesus’ head, and a voice said, “here is my son, of whom I am well pleased”. Jesus was the physical embodiment of God showing humanity the path for “right” living.
Then before Jesus left his disciples, he informed them to wait in Jerusalem, for he was sending a companion to them. Acts 1:8 says, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." And come the Spirit did. When she landed upon this small group of about 120 followers of Jesus, they began to speak in all the languages of those who were within listening range. Many of us through school have studied a second or third language, it isn’t all that unusual for us, but this group of people was pretty much from Galilee, in other words were considered to be “country bumpkins”, an uneducated group, by those living in Jerusalem.
I would like to share with you a clip from the movie Klondike Anne, which stars Mae West. (Show clip where she sings, Barfly and a Bum”.)
The point is that in order to be able to communicate with somebody, you have to be able to speak their language. In Jerusalem, that meant actually speaking a foreign language. For us, in order to truly communicate the message of Jesus to a world that hasn’t listened, this means that we have to stop speaking “church” talk and speak the language that non-church people speak. I’m not talking about speaking coarse bar room words but rather, speaking in the style that those who have not heard about the love of God would understand. What that means is, knowing what the world of a non-Christian is like, and being proficient in working, walking beside, and playing with those in that world. God sent us the word in the form of the 10 commandments, then sent us His son (the living word) in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and now we have the promised companion, the Holy Spirit, something that empirical evidence will not be able to substantiate; that proof is known only in the heart. It is a gift and power that we gain solely through an active prayer life.
You will note the seven red candles here on the communion table, with red star shapes in front of them. These candles represent seven differing gifts that we all can receive from God. Although there are more than seven gifts available to us, I have chosen to focus on those gifts as written about in Isaiah 11: wisdom, understanding, right judgment, courage, knowledge, reverence, and wonder. As we read through The Litany of the Gifts of the Spirit, you will be asked to come up and select which gift you wish to take with you this day.
These gifts do not come at our beacon and call, but rather, it is through the Holy Spirit’s timing and not through our own efforts. It is the Holy Spirit that knows when we are ready to use these gifts and we can recognize that these gifts are from God. She is our guide in life as well as our strength in speaking Gods love. All we need to do is wait, pray, and be receptive vessels for the Holy Spirit to come and land upon our heads and be that promised companion, that Christ promised us nearly two thousand years ago. Amen