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The Day of Pentecost Of all the forces of nature, for me the wind is the most intriguing, the most mysterious, the most awe-inspiring. If you’ve ever lain in bed at night listening to the wind whistle around the corners and toss tree branches overhead, if you’ve ever been on the fringes of a tornado, or in the midst of a blizzard or at the edges of a hurricane, if you’ve felt the caress of a gentle breeze on a spring day, or the welcome coolness of an ocean breeze in the depth of summer, if you’re a sailor who depends on wind to fill the jib, if you’ve ever flown a kite, perhaps you know what I mean. The poet Emily Dickinson writes: Of all the sounds despatched abroad, The wind does, working like a hand Invisible, powerful, quiet, roaring—the wind rages and it sings, it caresses and it buffets. And so it is, I think, with the Holy Spirit. Our reading from Acts tells the story slightly differently. The disciples have been with the resurrected Jesus, talked with him, walked with him, and seen him ascend to the Father. They’ve heard his promises that they won’t be alone, but they aren’t sure what that means and so they are waiting 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. It must have been frightening--the rush of wind that filled the house, the tongues of fire above each head—but unlike so many stories we’ve heard about the disciples being afraid, here they show no fear. Luke doesn’t even tell us if the disciples were surprised; all we know is that newly empowered they immediately begin the work of spreading the gospel. These two stories are evocative, presenting as they do two pictures of the Spirit—the breath of God moving over and through the disciples just as it did over the waters at creation, gentle and yet powerful, and the rushing violent wind moving around and through them, strong and fierce as the winds that parted the Reed Sea so many generations before must have been. And so it is that we, too, might experience the Spirit in our own lives in different ways—sometimes quiet and gentle and reassuring, and other times strong and forceful. These two stories do more than give us a multi-layered image of the Spirit moving in our lives, however. Taken together they also remind us why the coming of the spirit is so important not only for our lives but also for the life of the church. Just as it was for the disciples, the presence of the Spirit in our lives is a sign that Jesus does not leave us alone, a vivid reminder that God in all God’s power and glory is there with us always, in all we do. But just as it did for the disciples, the Spirit comes into our lives not just to console us but also to strengthen and empower us to do the work—the ministry—that Jesus calls us to. On this day of Pentecost we not only celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit, we also celebrate the birthday of the church. Of course it took many years for the “church” to be established, but with the coming of the Holy Spirit, with the empowerment they received that day, the disciples began the work of going out into the world and spreading the good news that was received in Christ Jesus—the work of the church handed down to us across the generations. And what did that work look like? Luke gives us one picture in our reading from Acts. Newly filled by the Holy Spirit, the disciples went out into the crowds and [just as we heard the gospel proclaimed today in many languages, they] found themselves preaching in the tongues of Jews from all over the world who had streamed into Jerusalem--Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—people with whom communication would normally be difficult if not impossible because of language barriers were able to hear and understand the preaching of the disciples—to hear the gospel message. Empowered by the Holy Spirit the disciples were able to make the Word accessible and available to all. If I had to sum up the mission of the church in one sentence that might do it: To make the Good News of Jesus available and accessible to everyone. Historically we haven’t always been very good at it, and we still aren’t. In the midst of preaching the gospel and ministering to others, we allow ourselves to be entangled in complicated webs of theology and doctrine and dogma that serve to make the Good News less accessible, less available to the world. We set up boundaries to show who’s in and who’s out and we become cowardly, forgetting or ignoring the power of the Spirit to move in our lives, to fuel our ministries. It’s a testament to the power of the Spirit—to the power of God—that in spite of our human failings, in spite of our distractions and our cowardice—the church persists and we’re still here. And it’s a testament to the power of the Spirit in our lives that we are continually called back to this work—called to break down the barriers that divide us,called to make the Good News of Christ Jesus accessible to everyone, called to come together as the body of Christ in the world. The winds of the Holy Spirit moved on that first day of Pentecost and they are moving still—sometimes as a gentle breeze, sometimes as a gale force gust, the power of the Spirit beckons us, fills us, and empowers us to be the church—in our words and in our actions, to be bold disciples of Christ. So emboldened, let us go forth into the world rejoicing in the power of that spirit and spread the Good News. Amen.
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