Scripture: Acts 2:1-4; John 14:8-17; Genesis 11:1-9; 1 Corinthians 12
Pentecost sends the Spirit not merely for conversion but for transformation, so that the whole of our ordinary, everyday time is redeemed and given over to God rather than hoarded.
Illustrations: jewish-friends-shavuot, passover-wine-hungover-friend, tower-of-babel-reversal, multilingual-congregation, azusa-street-pentecostalism, peter-too-early-drunk, selling-ordinary-sales-pitch, restaurants-dishwashers-ratings, living-on-a-mountaintop, cant-be-half-pregnant, church-storm-damage-insurance
June 8
Pentecost
Show us the Father
Acts 2:1-4
John 14:8-17
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. - Acts 2:1-4
Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, but if you do not, then believe because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you. - John 14:8-17
Growing up in College Station, I had a number of friends who were Jewish. They celebrated Passover and Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah and Hanukkah and those were the visible holidays. I had a friend who in middle school had too much Passover wine and like came to school hungover the day. And that was my memory as a kid. My friends didn’t talk about celebrating Pentecost, the festival of weeks: Shavuot. It is the day to celebrate the handing of the law to Moses on Mount Sinai.
It is one of the three great pilgrimage days for Judaism. That is Passover, Sukkot (the festival of booths), and Shavuot, when all Israelites who were able were required to make the trip to Jerusalem. With the destruction of the second temple, 37 years after the death of Jesus, pilgrimages were no longer mandatory. This is why my friends growing up didn’t make a big deal about Shavuot, but it was a big deal at this time.
This is why people are in Jerusalem at Pentecost. This is why the disciples are in Jerusalem at Pentecost. They are there for a specific reason that, for Christians, becomes transformed through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
There’s a lot of things we can talk about with Pentecost. The law of Moses was given at the first Pentecost. The grace of Jesus shared at the second.
It is an incredibly rich day. We also have kind of a reversal of the Tower of Babel. Whereas at Babel, in the book of Genesis, humans try and build this tower to touch God. God destroys it and scatters the people across the world and causes different languages so that people can’t understand each other. At Pentecost, the people are drawn together. They can understand each other through the Holy Spirit. The tongues at Pentecost are not the speaking in tongues of a Pentecostal service. It’s that when I speak English and Alina speaks Hungarian and Younee speaks Korean and Alexander speaks Spanish, we all understand each other. When we’re speaking our languages, we comprehend each other; the translation is through the Spirit. Instead of speaking in tongues being a separate thing and a misunderstood thing, it is a way to be fully understood, yet also fully be yourself. That’s the power of it. You don’t have to let go of yourself to communicate. You don’t have to let go of your native language to share, to worship, to give. How amazing is that?
When you say Pentecost nowadays, it often connects with the Pentecostal tradition. A type of Protestantism, which has expanded around the globe, and continues to be the fastest growing. Pentecostalism came out of the Wesleyan movement, came out of the Methodist movement.
You can trace the revival at Azusa street in Los Angeles, where Pentecostalism was born, to Methodism. And again, the speaking in tongues. The works of the Spirit of Pentecostalism comes more from First Corinthians than it does from the day of Pentecost. But that tradition is here as well. You have the disciples gathered together, unsure of what to do next, and then given a mission. Peter and the other disciples are given a mission. And Peter is offered the opportunity to preach the good news to a crowd that has been swaying and moving in erratic ways. So much so that people think that they’re drunk. And Peter’s argument why they’re not drunk is because it’s too early in the morning for people to be drunk. Which most likely shows that Peter has not experienced a lot of drunks in his life, to think that 9am is going to stop an alcoholic from drinking. In the text from the Gospel of John that I read, Jesus is talking about sending the Advocate, the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, to be with the disciples, to be with us. But first Philip asks, “Lord, show us the Father.” And Jesus responds in a frustrating manner, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”
Christian Pentecost is about the Holy Spirit, but it’s also about the Trinity and about who God is. Trinity is not just a term for people going to seminary or academics. It is about the reality of who God is and who God is for us. That in Jesus we see the Father, and through the Spirit that was sent by the Father and the Son, we are able to see Jesus and know God the Father’s love for us. And these three are one. Jesus is God, the Father is God, the Spirit is God. They are not separate actors in this world. They are not separate agents in this world. The Spirit is sent at Pentecost not just for conversion, but transformation, so that people can follow the Son, see the Father, share the Spirit, so that their time can be transformed.
This is really what I want to hone in on today: this question of time and this language of time. In the Christian calendar, the longest season of the year is called ordinary time. Ordinary time covers everything from today, Pentecost, all the way to the first Sunday in Advent, which is November 30th this year. It is 24 weeks. Sometimes it’s longer. This year it is 24 weeks.
And the weeks are designated after Pentecost, the third week after Pentecost, the sixth week after Pentecost, the 19th week after Pentecost. Advent sets in motion the beginning of the Christian year. And we have this kind of dramatic up and down of Advent and then Christmas and then Epiphany and then Lent and then Easter. And it’s just like boom, boom, boom, boom, banger, banger, banger, banger. And then we are left with ordinary time.
Some of you have had careers in sales and you can probably imagine what it would be like to sell something that is called ordinary. “Hey, Mr. Smith. Yeah, I’m just call and I got something for you. I think you’re gonna really love it. It is ordinary.” We usually don’t want to buy something that’s ordinary. We usually don’t want to do something that’s ordinary. We want to think about what we’re doing as extraordinary. When we’re looking at restaurants in which to eat, most of us are not drawn to the three out of five star restaurant that is ordinary. When we’re looking at which dishwasher to buy, we don’t think, oh, I don’t know, what Wirecutter said is just too good for us. We need to get the one on the bottom. We need to get the two star one. We need to get the ordinary one, not the best.
What is the deal with the Christian faith naming half of the year as ordinary. What it comes down to is truthfulness. There’s a truthfulness in naming this time as ordinary. Mountaintop experiences are lovely. But have you ever tried to live on a mountaintop? It is challenging. Mountains are exposed to really heavy weather events. Storms come so fast on the mountains, you gotta go down the mountain to live.
What Pentecost is trying to show us and what Jesus is trying to say in John 14, in the sending of the Holy Spirit, is that God has called us to new life. God has saved us, not for the mountaintops, but for the ordinary, for the everyday, for living our lives right where we are in new and transformed ways.
Pentecost is about how you get up in the morning, what you do after you wake up, how you drive to work, how you go to your appointments, how you call your family, how you eat your meals, how you treat your neighbors, how you deal with your finances, how you relax in the afternoons, how you plan your trips, how you spend your time volunteering, how you give to your church, how you give to things that matter to you? If Jesus Christ saved you, he saved all of you, or he saved none of you. I’ve never been pregnant. Just, you know, going to confess that to people. But one of the aspects of pregnancy is that you can’t be half pregnant. There’s no partial. Nobody can be kinda pregnant. And I think a lot of times Christians try to be kinda saved, kinda loved by God, kinda forgiven. You know, it’s good to be a part of a church. It’s good to feel good and feel included. But there may be some days when you think, “oh man, are you asking a lot, Jesus.” The answer is yes. Jesus asks a lot. Jesus also gives a lot. We are not alone. If our time has not been redeemed, if our time is not in the process of being redeemed, we’re only kind of saved. And I’m not saying if you’re kind of saved, God isn’t going to save you or love you. The real issue is: what are you doing right now? How are you living right now? An amazing gift has been offered to you. Are you using it? Or are you putting it in the storehouse? Are you wasting it?
Christ has offered his life for you and offered a new way of life, not as a totalitarian dictator ordering you to do such and such, but that we all have an opportunity, through the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, to live into Christ’s new creation and new kingdom.
This is why the Spirit was sent at Pentecost. This is the opportunity we are all given. And it impacts all of our time. It impacts the mountaintop experiences. It impacts the stories we like to tell about funny things we’ve seen or experiences we’ve had. It also impacts the stuff we don’t talk about with others. It impacts how we do our taxes. It impacts how we plan for our retirement or live into our retirement. It impacts all of these things. There’s grace in the midst of it. But don’t leave the blessings of God aside because you want to cling to the expectations of the world. There are blessings too manifold to be described in serving, in giving, in sacrificing.
Don’t build storehouses for your stuff, for your things when you can share it. Saving up for a rainy day when the rain is falling around you. The rains a few weeks ago hit the church hard. We had an AC unit go out, the internet going out, and a lot of water get in the building which is going to take a lot of money to remedy. Well, we saved a little for it and is going to hit harder than that. And insurance for churches has gone insane the past few years so that the only insurance we could get had $100,000 deductible. The summer is usually a down season in giving and we need your support in this time because challenges keep coming. We also need your time.
Don’t build storehouses for your time when you can give it. An hour given for others is an hour sanctified. Doing something different shows that your life is different and your life can be different today.
New life is offered this day. The spirit of fire has descended receive it. You are loved. You are forgiven. Now accept it. Seek it. If you don’t understand, seek me out. Talk to me. Talk to Pastor Brenda. God has offered new life for you. This is a new day. What used to be ordinary and boring has been transformed. This new ordinary, this Christian ordinary, is a life of vibrancy and sacrifice every day in all that we do. Because Christ has offered himself for you.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.