"united For A Purpose"

“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.