“United for a Purpose”
Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost.
What is Pentecost?
I’ve had many long-time church members over the years who weren’t familiar with what this day is about, and it is an incredibly significant day in the life of the church.
It ranks up there close to Christmas and Easter.
This day celebrates, and commemorates the birth of the Christian church—the Christian faith.
So, it’s a big deal.
Most of you know this.
But we often forget, too, just what Pentecost itself originally was and meant, and in going over this a bit, we might get a peak into why God chose this particular day to unleash His Holy Spirit.
For a first-century Jew, Pentecost was the fiftieth day after Passover.
It was an agricultural festival when farmers brought the first bundle of wheat from their crop, and offered it to God, partly as a sign of gratitude and partly as a prayer that all the rest of the crops, too, would be safely gathered in.
But that’s not all Pentecost meant.
It also brought back memories of the Exodus from Egypt, when God fulfilled His promises to Abraham by rescuing His people.
Passover was the time when the lambs were sacrificed, and the Israelites were saved from the avenging angel who killed the firstborn sons of the Egyptians.
And that very night, the Israelites passed through the Red Sea into the Sinai desert.
Then, fifty days later, they came to Mount Sinai, where Moses received the law.
So, Pentecost isn’t just about first fruits; it’s about God giving His redeemed people their way of life by which they were to now carry out His purposes.
And for us, it’s about the first fruits of the Holy Spirit as well as how we are to carry out God’s purposes through the Risen Christ, and, as I spoke about last week, we can’t carry out God’s purposes or God’s will for His Church without waiting on the leading of the Holy Spirit’s guidance.
Because when we don’t wait and don’t allow the Spirit to lead, we—the church—tend to make a mess of things, lose sight of our mission, and that causes all kinds of problems.
(pause)
This week, I read an article from the Washington Post that caught my attention and tugged at my heartstrings.
The title of the article is: “Seniors are flooding homeless shelters that can’t care for them” it begins by describing a 73-year-old woman named Beatrice who was clutching a flier offering low-cost cable TV, imagining herself in an apartment, somewhere out of the Arizona heat.
Instead, the grandmother and former autoworker can be found most mornings in a food line or seeking shade under the awning of a mobile street clinic.
At night, she sleeps on a floor mat at a homeless shelter.
She dreads the odors of human waste outside and the thieves who have stolen her wallet and her purse.
And she doesn’t stand out from the other seniors using wheelchairs and walkers at homeless shelters around the country or living in tents on the surrounding streets of our cities.
Nearly a quarter of a million people 55 and older are estimated to be homeless.
It’s the fastest-growing group of people who make up our homeless population, and a devastating combination of factors is to blame for the rising problem.
But the path to homelessness for our older adults often involves the death of a spouse or parent, which means income is lost and rent or mortgage can no longer be paid.
And let’s face it, housing and food prices have skyrocketed to unprecedented heights.
I’m thankful for the Homeless Food Pantry we have here at Red Bank United Methodist Church, where two-three hundred bags of food are packed each month for the homeless healthcare workers to deliver to homeless encampments around our city.
It’s what we should be doing as a Christian Church, as the followers of the One Who said, “I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat…for whatever you do for others, you have done it for me.”
But, you know, with 1,000 churches in the Chattanooga area, I think we can do more and are called to do more—much more.
We have a tendency to get caught up in things that sideline us and make us ineffective.
We waste resources and time arguing with one another and splitting off into different factions over controversial issues when we could be pooling our resources, both spiritual and material resources—not to mention our time—helping those in need—doing what Christ has called us to do.
I’m afraid we are often found re-arranging the furniture on the Titanic when we could be changing the world for Christ!
But it’s not just theological differences that get in the way of God’s work.
Divisions between people of various races and political leanings run deep.
And so, Pentecost offers us an opportunity to lament and repent of our failure to see people who are different from us as those God creates in God’s image.
It also offers us a chance to re-commit ourselves to uniting in unconditional love and treating one another like God treats us.
After all, on the first Pentecost, God responds to the brokenness of humankind by graciously drawing people together through the Holy Spirit.
Jesus’ followers were all together in the Upper Room, waiting for the promise of the Holy Spirit when “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven…they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.
And then people who were staying in Jerusalem for the festival heard the disciples speaking their own languages.
And when they hear this, they’re thunderstruck.
These are uneducated Galileans, former fishermen and tax collectors, and women who’d never spent a moment in a foreign language class speaking all these languages fluently.
And so, the people listening asked one another, “What does this mean?” but the nay-sayers make fun of them, saying, “They are drunk!”
It’s understandable.
What would you be thinking if you were in the crowd?
I’d be freaking out, and so were they.
But still, the Holy Spirit continues to bring these baffled people together to hear what Peter has to say.
“We aren’t drunk,” Peter begins, “God is fulfilling Old Testament prophecy.
The prophet Joel had promised that God would send the Holy Spirit on all God’s people in such a way that it would rattle creation.
If we were to read the entirety of Acts Chapter 2, we would read that Peter tells the crowd that Jesus “was handed over” to them…and that they, with the help of
“wicked men put him to death by nailing him to the cross.”
They hear Peter go one to insist that God raised this same Jesus from the dead and that this risen Jesus is the Author of Life, the Lord, and Messiah.
After Peter finishes, these Jews, who were divided by language barriers, confusion, and guilt, press Peter for how they should respond to the news.
“Change your life!” Peter boldly answers.
“Turn to God and be baptized.
Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
And how do the people respond?
Three thousand received God’s grace through faith and were saved on that first day.
Yet, their new togetherness doesn’t end there.
The Holy Spirit draws them even closer together after they become Christians.
In fact, the end of Acts Chapter 2 describes what might be the most dramatic form of “togetherness” that the Holy Spirit has ever created.
This brand new group of former strangers, who are from different countries with different customs and speak different languages, devote “themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayer.
The Holy Spirit has completely united them in their commitment to both God and one another.
Yet, once the Holy Spirit unites these new Christians together, the Spirit doesn’t keep them there in one place for long.
Instead, they are sent back into the world, spreading the gospel's good news through words and deeds.
Is that what God is doing for you and for me?
The book of Acts talks about the filling of the Holy Spirit as an ongoing experience, not just a one-time event, and the church is constantly changing.
And that is hard, because, we as a people tend to resist change.
We like to be comfortable and can get pretty comfortable in our pews and buildings.
But God is constantly calling the church to change according to the Spirit’s leading.
What worked in the 1800’s didn’t necessarily work as well in the 1950’s.
And where the Spirit was leading in the 1950s might be different than what we are being called to do to address the problems and situations people find themselves in today.
Our faith and understanding of God also changes as the Spirit leads.
For instance, on the day of Pentecost, the church was only made up of Jews.
They were Jews from different lands and with different languages but they were all Jews.
They never would have dreamed that God was going to call the Gentiles, those heathens into His Church as well.
They weren’t even supposed to touch those folks, let alone worship with them, eat with them and live with them.
But, as Acts moves on, we see that Peter has a vision that changes everything and the church makes the huge decision to change and allow the Gentiles in—and they don’t even require that they be circumcised…
…which then becomes a huge controversy within the church for at least a couple hundred years with one side screaming at the other—they must first become Jews and be circumcised before they can become Christians, while the other side yells back: “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, slave nor free. For we are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Eventually, the rest of the church follows the leading of the Holy Spirit rather than the divisiveness of human reasoning and allows everyone in—by grace through faith alone.
From the very beginning, Jesus calls us into community as His Church.
He prays that we will be one just as He and the Father are one…
…He prays that we will allow the Holy Spirit’s leading to bring us to that point.
We haven’t gotten there yet.
But we can be an exception.
People are hungry.
People are living without hope.
People see the church arguing with itself and walk away sad, saying, “See, they are no different than anyone else.”
But we can be better than that.
Jesus’ command—COMMAND—is that we love one another as He has loved us.
That is how the world will know we are His disciples if we love one another.
That is what it is all about.
Pentecost sums up the Gospel with simplicity and audacity: Jesus Christ offers salvation to all, and the church exists to proclaim it.
And the way we proclaim it is through putting our money where our mouths are.
What are we doing about the homeless problem in our city and country?
We have a homeless pantry, which is a great start, but I know we can do more.
Last year, I visited a church in Nashville that has built and continues to build tiny houses on its property.
Formerly homeless people live in these homes and their lives are being radically transformed.
We have a lot of property.
Why not use what God has gifted us with for His Kingdom?
Red Bank United Methodist Church is here for a very important reason.
Jesus offers salvation, we are to proclaim it.
Think about it: “How did you come to the faith?”
My bet is somebody loved you into it.
Will you all unite with me allowing the Spirit to fill us and bring us together?
Will you unite with me on listening and waiting on the Holy Spirit’s leading for this church?
Will you consider what God is calling us to do with the land, the space the grace that God has blessed us with?
It can and will become very exciting around here if we do this.
Let us pray:
Lord God, we thank You for the Day of Pentecost, and the giving of your Holy Spirit to the first believers.
We also thank You that the same Holy Spirit is available to us right now, right here in 2023.
We want to do what You have created Your Church to do.
We aren’t called to simply be pew warmers, we are called to be world changers.
Lord, please unite us and use us to change this world for Your sake—for Your Kingdom.
In Jesus’ name, we pray.
Amen.
