“Under Construction”
Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost is one of the most important days in the history of Christianity.
It is, quite literally, the birthday of the Jesus’ Church.
In importance, it ranks right up there with Christmas and Easter.
That being said, a lot of people know very little about it.
Why do you suppose that is?
It’s a spectacular event, filled with lots of drama and even special effects.
But there is no Pentecost Bunny or Pentecost Santa leaving plastic eggs in baskets for the children or gifts under a tree.
Grocery Stores and Pharmacies aren’t filled with Pentecost candy for months beforehand.
Hallmark doesn’t have rows upon rows of “Happy Pentecost” cards.
The radio doesn’t play Pentecost music from April through June.
People don’t spend months and months--not to mention--tons of money Pentecost shopping.
And when the church service is over, if we did go to church that morning, that’s usually it.
We don’t tend to go home to our Pentecost celebrations.
I wonder why this is.
Before Pentecost there was no church, just a group of about 120 frightened and confused people who had watched Jesus be Crucified, Resurrected and then Ascend back to heaven 10 days earlier.
Jesus had instructed them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for “the gift” God promised.
This gift, Jesus said was that, “in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
They had no idea what Jesus was talking about.
It was a radically different concept—they couldn’t get their minds wrapped around it—it had never happened before, it was something brand new!
It was something that had to be experienced in order to be understood.
Remember back, at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist?
We are told “At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on [Jesus].
And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
This was the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.
A similar thing happens to the 120 Jesus followers on the day of Pentecost.
The Holy Spirit comes down from heaven and rests on of each of them.
They are transformed into the beloved children of God and given their marching orders through the power of the Spirit.
They are assured of their place in God’s family.
It is the beginning of their ministry…
…of our ministry…
…of the ministry of the Church in the world.
And they are able to speak in the languages of all the pilgrims who had entered Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish Feast of Weeks telling them the good news of the Resurrected Christ.
It was a wild scene and it drew a big crowd.
It’s what happens to a person when they have a radical conversion experience.
Suddenly, the lights come on in their heart and mind, they understand the Gospel in ways they never understood it before, and they are filled with the Holy Spirit and along with that comes a new confidence, a new courage, a new outlook and a new life and a new call to mission and ministry as God’s Spirit testifies to their spirits that they are, indeed, children of God.
Nothing is ever the same again.
This happened to each one of the 120 first followers of Christ on that day approximately 2,000 years ago.
And it happened to them all at once.
It was a free gift from God.
And suddenly they were on fire!
And who should stand up and give the first Christian sermon in the history of the Church?
Probably the last person on earth whom we might expect.
The Apostle Peter, the same man who on the night Jesus was arrested, was so afraid that he wouldn’t even admit to a servant girl in the high priest’s courtyard that he even knew Jesus.
But sure enough, this once frightened man, stands up and speaks boldly, and passionately and loudly to some of the very folks who put Jesus to death.
Wow!
What a change.
What a day.
We are told that 3,000 people joined the brand-new Church that day, and the numbers kept growing and growing and growing.
The Book of Acts is the story of the early Church and how it evolved from there.
It’s an exciting adventure.
And in it we get an intriguing picture of a group of people—folks just like you and me—who are continually being changed and formed and transformed in their understanding of God and what it means to be children of God in whom God is well-pleased.
Jesus had said, “John baptized by water, but in a few days, you will be baptized by the Spirit.”
And one of the things that stands out most is that even though the Church is born on Pentecost, the Church is not finished on Pentecost.
It is a work of God, always under construction—all the way to today.
Even though the first disciples were able to preach truth about Jesus with boldness and in the power of the Holy Spirit, that didn’t mean that they understood everything there is to know about God and what it means to be a child of God.
They knew some basics.
If they had been able to comprehend everything at once—it would have been just too much.
How could they?
The Apostle Paul says in 1st Corinthians 13: “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child…
…Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.
Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”
For those of you who have been Christians for a long time, how many of you have the exact same understanding of God and what it means to live as God’s beloved child that you did say, 10, 20, 30 years ago?
It’s always changing isn’t it.
It’s growing, it’s moving, it’s fluid.
And it’s not that God changes, it just that our understanding of God and God’s ways change and develop the more and longer we live in God.
The Pentecost experience or moment of salvation is just the beginning, it is, quite literally the New Birth, the rest of the journey is learning what it means and putting that learning into action and this takes a lifetime.
To be stuck at the beginning all our lives is to be a Christian who never develops or fails to grow and mature.
On the very first day of the Church something amazing happens.
There is a radical social equality for those who receive God’s Spirit…
…for those who become siblings in God’s family through faith in Christ.
Everyone is on the same footing—the old, the young, women, men, slaves and free people, the rich and the poor—they all receive the power of God to prophesy, see visions and dream dreams.
And all these different characters come together to form one Church where, as we are told in Acts 2:44-46:
They were all “together and had everything in common.
Selling their possessions and goods, they gave anyone as he [or she] had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.
They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God…” just as a healthy family should.
And, of course, as the story continues, as they were eventually persecuted and scattered.
But all this did was to make them grow faster.
After they scatter, one of the early Apostles, Phillip, meets an Ethiopian eunuch—a person so different from himself—a sexual outcaste.
And they stop his chariot, and go down into the water and Philip baptizes him.
Another time, Peter stays at the home of a Roman Centurion named Cornelius.
While at his house, Peter has a vision where he sees “heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners.”
It contained all kinds of animals and creatures that had always been considered to be unclean and forbidden by God to eat.
But a voice from heaven tells Peter, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.
Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
And thus, the Jewish dietary Laws become null and void.
During this same stay, Peter preaches the Gospel of Christ to a large gathering of non-Jewish or Gentile people.
And Peter proclaims, “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit them.
But God has shown me that I should not call any person impure or unclean.”
This was brand new stuff that Peter and the early Church were learning little by little, bit by bit.
This was radical.
It went against everything they had ever been taught about God and how they were to relate to other people—people who looked different from them, acted different, ate different, thought different, believed different, behaved different.
Their understanding of God was evolving.
And it took a long time for the church to embrace these changes.
And many of us are still wrestling with some of the same issues to this very day.
The Church is always a work in progress.
It is always under construction, changing, growing, moving according to the leading of the Spirit and the maturing of God’s children.
What new things is the Holy Spirit teaching you about God and how you are to relate to others, to those who are different?
Peter received a lot of criticism from the other apostles and believers throughout Judea when they heard what he had done.
It was scandalous.
So scandalous that Peter had to go to Jerusalem, the home base of the early Church and explain himself to those who were saying: “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them”???!!!
They were dealing with a lot of change.
The children of God are at different stages on the journey of development.
And so, we need to somehow learn to be patient with one another, understanding of one another.
This, is perhaps one of the most difficult things, and one of the most devastating things in our witness to the world.
God is a VERY BIG GOD.
And sometimes, I make God too small.
I try and create God in my image rather than the other way around.
How about you?
I lay on God my small thinking, my worldview, my idiosyncrasies, and when I do that, I pass those ideas on to others.
In Acts, we are able to see a group of believers, people just like us, who make mistakes in their understanding of God and eventually change their thinking as they allow the Holy Spirit to lead.
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free,” Paul tells the Church in Galatia, “do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery…”
…he continues, “The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
I’m still trying to figure out exactly how to do this, how about you?
A friend of mine recently said, “You know what makes Christianity different from all the other religions?
Christianity is about loving God by loving other people.
That’s it.
When we are actively loving and serving other human beings we are actively loving and serving God.”
“Whenever you have done it for the least of these, you have done it for me…”
Jesus said in Matthew Chapter 25.
On the day of Pentecost there were staying in Jerusalem, people from every nation under heaven.
When the Holy Spirit filled Jesus’ first followers, they began to speak in other tongues which means languages as the Spirit enabled them.
“A crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language.”
“Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs.”
Pentecost was the inbreaking of God’s purposes for all of us; bringing people together despite our differences, and it still is…
Whenever and wherever the Church is open to the rush of the Holy Spirit; God is making changes in the way we see ourselves, one another and ultimately—God!
And so, in a very real sense, every day can be Pentecost for this Church as we continue to broaden our understanding of God’s love and put that understanding into practice sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with a world that so needs to be saved and so needs the assurance that they too are the beloved children of God for whom Christ has died…whom God so loves.
May it be so.
Happy Pentecost my brothers and sisters in Christ.
May we allow God’s Spirit to lead us, change us, and make us more and more like the loving, patient, and kind Christ Who came and died so that we can live?
Amen.
