Pentecost 2014

Pentecost Sunday – Year A

June 8, 2014

Acts 2:1-21
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.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 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 — in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

'In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
   and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
   and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
   in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
     and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
   and signs on the earth below,
     blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
   and the moon to blood,
     before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'

The summer months have finally arrived. I've been waiting for the last nine months for this time of year. As much as I can appreciate the colors of fall, the still beauty of winter and the burst of new life in spring, I really, really like summer. With the arrival of summer all sorts of other things have begun. We send the kids outside to play. We her their shouts and cries through our open windows. The sound of lawnmowers in the neighborhood has become an almost daily occurrence. We get to spend more time outside. All of our winter clothes have been packed away, or shoved to the back of the closet. Instead of having a hot meal all the time for lunch or dinner, we sometimes will have something cold. We see our vegetable gardens slowly growing, and look forward to fresh salads and meals prepared from our own produce. The kids go swimming. We all tend to get a little tanned. Summer is awesome.

Of course, not everything is always wonderful with summer. With the suntan can also come the discomfort of sunburn. The summer months can also be filled with the buzzing and biting of bugs and insects. As the really warm months come, most of us will close our windows to the fresh breezes and turn on our air conditioners. With the longer days and later sunsets, just try and get your kids to bed at a regular bedtime – every night turns into a battle, and every morning comes too soon. And of course, with the arrival of summer also comes the arrival of storm season.

Just this last week southwest of us storms came through with hail and tornadoes. The pictures of what baseball sized hail and 70 mile-per-hour winds can do to the siding of a house were amazing. Thankfully, we have been spared destructive storms for the last few years, but we too know the power and chaos that comes from summer storms. Our prayers go out to those whose lives have been affected and will continue to be affected in the coming months.

Here, in the Midwest we know a little bit about the power of wind, and it's not just tornadoes I am talking about. Driving on the highways and interstates can sometimes be an adventure as we are buffeted from one side to another. Driving on country roads we see the dust devils, those little spinning vortexes that can pop up, seemingly out of nowhere. I remember when I was much younger driving past farms with old battered windmills poking up above the house. Now, windmills are used for much more than pumping water out of the ground.

We have tons of wind, and thankfully in the last few years as a state we have begun to make us of this resource that we have been given. Iowa is rising quickly as a producer of wind energy. The latest figures say that almost 28% of the electric power in Iowa is being produced by our increasing number of wind farms. When you head just a little bit northwest of us toward Charles City, there are literally hundreds of wind turbines to be seen. There are plans to have even more added in the coming years.

Wind has likely always been seen as being something beyond our understanding. Our ancestors looked to the wind as a sign of the presence of the holy. The first few verses of the Bible declare how the Spirit as wind swept across the primordial waters of creation. When Moses stretched out his hand at the Red Sea, a wind came and held the waters back. We think about Elijah and the wind rushing by as he hid in the crack. We think about Jonah and the wind that forced his ship to turn, and the wind and sun that weakened him after his protective tree had withered. We remember a Spirit-filled King David dancing before God. We think about the wind-driven storm that battered the boat the disciples were in as Jesus slept. And of course, we think of the winds of Pentecost that heralded the arriving of the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Most of the time in the church we think of the Spirit in welcoming terms. We pray for the Spirit to be present (like it ever isn't!). We pray for the Spirit to guide us. We declare the Spirit having strengthened us in times of weakness and need. We thanks and praise the Spirit for equipping us with the abilities and gifts we have. But do we always welcome it?

This past week, a study was released that revealed that the public responds differently to the powerful wind storms we call hurricanes depending on their name. Hurricanes with female names tend to cause a greater loss of life than those with male names. The study revealed that hurricanes with male names tend to be respected more so than those with female names. The public 'believes' that the male-named storms are more powerful and the warnings of their potential destruction should be heeded, thus there is less loss of life from those storms than from equally powerful and destructive storms that have female names. How often do we look at the Spirit in the same way, thinking that some forms are safer than others?

We pray for a Spirit of wisdom and understanding, but when someone tells us they can speak in tongues because of the gift of the Spirit we may roll our eyes. We thank the Spirit for strengthening us, yet we may wonder about the visions the Spirit allowed another person to see (especially if those visions challenge what we think or believe.) How often do we explain powerful, spiritual, unexplainable events in the lives of people (I've seen God) as moments of lunacy in the other? “They must be crazy, they must be seeing things!”

The Spirit can be frightening, Look at the early church, the initial freedom of form and function that was so Spirit led and Spirit driven gave way rather quickly to a hierarchical form where theology and forms of expression were either affirmed or condemned. “You can't let people just do whatever they want, can you? There has to be some order to this.” As that structure increased in size and power, the freedom of the Spirit lessened, and our questioning and distrust of the 'effects' of the Spirit became commonplace, even as we continued to pray for the presence of the Spirit.

The presence of the Spirit brings vitality and freedom, but it's not something we can control. Even in the early church the Spirit fostered differences of thought and theology among the believers; think about how strongly Peter and the church in Jerusalem disagreed with Paul about witnessing to non Jews.

So, if we can't control the gift of the Spirit, what can we do? The powerful winds of the Midwest are being used to create electricity. So, the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit must also be used. Our reading from 1 Corinthians today (1 Corinthians 12:3b-13), tells us that the gifts of the Spirit are many and diverse. Yet, they are all to be used for the same purpose. The many gifts we have are for the support and building up of the people of God, of the people that God has surrounded us with. The Spirit is given so that we might in our lives declare and witness to the glory of God, the Spirit is given that we might be free.

As frightening as wind can be, we have to remember there is a phrase about a 'breath of fresh air.' The Spirit is a breath of fresh air into this world, a world that is in need of breathing free. The breath of God, the fire of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is given that the love of God may be declared and in so doing people may be set free from the things that bind them, the things that keep them from breathing freely. It is through the church, whose very life is dependent on that breath of Christ, and whose very life is itself a gift, that God's breath of fresh air will stir and renew the world. So breathe deeply, that we might breathe more freely and then be used to breathe new life into the lives of those who yearn to breathe free. Amen.