2nd
Quarter 2002
One of the problems with wind is that you never know from minute to minute which way it's going to blow. If you've ever sat next to a campfire, you know that. One moment the smoke is being blown in your eyes, so you get up and move to the opposite side of the fire. Yet within seconds the wind shifts, and the smoke follows you.
A popular movie a few years ago, Twister, focused on how powerful, yet unpredictable, wind can be. Despite the storm chasers' best efforts to study tornadoes, so that meteorologists would be better able to understand them and forecast their movement, the tornadoes did not allow their hidden secrets to be revealed.
In a similar way, the Pentecost story is an example of that same kind of power and unpredictability. Right before Jesus went up into heaven, he told the disciples to wait for the arrival of the Holy Spirit. But as the disciples waited, they didn't know for sure what they were waiting for. From which direction would it come? What would it look like? What kind of power would it contain? Those were all questions for which they had no answers.
Finally, though, on the day of Pentecost, as the followers of Jesus gathered together, they suddenly heard the sound of something like wind coming into the room where they were. As they looked around, they noticed that over each person's head there appeared to be something like tongues of fire. When they at last opened their mouths and attempted to speak, they all began talking in different foreign languages. Each of them, each in a different language, began to tell about the amazing things that God had done through Jesus Christ.
Very quickly a crowd gathered, and they wondered what was going on. In that crowd were Jews from virtually every country of the known world, but each of them was able to understand in his or her own language what was being said about Jesus. As a result, by the time that Pentecost day came to a close, about 3000 people had become believers.
When was the last time your church took in 3000 members in one day? If your church is like most churches, it has probably been a while. But why is that? One of the things that the Pentecost story teaches us is that the good news about Jesus is a message that is waiting to be heard by every person on the face of the whole earth. So the job of the church is to take that message not just to some of the people, but to all of them. But to get that message across, like they did on Pentecost, we need to get people's attention.
One Sunday a man named John Wimber went into a church for the first time. He went to church expecting some dramatic things to happen. But after three Sundays he was disappointed. So he went up to the minister of the church after the service and asked, "When do you do it?" "Do what?" the minister asked. "You know, the stuff." The minister paused for a moment and with a puzzled look asked, "What stuff?" The man said, "The stuff in the Bible. You know, multiplying loaves and fishes, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and giving sight to the blind. That stuff." "Oh," the minister said, "We don't do that here. I want you to understand that we believe in those things, and we pray about those things. But we don't do those things." Needless to say, John Wimber never returned to that church again.
The amazing things we read about in the Bible are not just supposed to be interesting little stories that we are to look at and then forget. Instead, those miracles and those other amazing things are to be examples for us of the kind of things are able to happen even today, if only we would allow ourselves to be pushed and moved in the ways that the Holy Spirit wants us to go. After all, the early church grew, not because they handed out nifty pens to people or because they had a catchy jingle on the radio. No, the early church grew because those people were empowered by the Holy Spirit. They were out in public view healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and preaching to people in a language they could understand. That is why the early church grew. That is why crowds came running together to see what was going on.
What would it take for us to be the kind of church where people looked at us and asked, "What's going on here?" Wouldn't that be the highest compliment a church could receive? Of course, there is a downside. If next Sunday three thousand people want to become members, we're going to have to figure out where to get all the extra hymnals and pews that we'll need. But I believe that's the kind of problem the Holy Spirit would like us to have.
In a recent best-selling book, Bowling Alone, Harvard professor Robert Putnam examines the breakdown of the social fabric in American culture. He begins his book by observing that bridge clubs that had 40 members in them in 1990 have now disbanded because they are no longer able to get even four people together for a game. A group that in the mid-1980s had 50 people to help with hearing- and speech-impaired people now has a regular attendance of only 7 people. The Roanoke NAACP membership went from 2500 to a few hundred in the past couple of decades. Tewksbury Memorial High School, just north of Boston, opened in the fall of 1999 with 40 brand new royal blue marching band uniforms, but they remained in storage because only four young people signed up for the band. People today do not naturally gravitate to community activities, church included. If we want a crowd to gather, as happened on the day of Pentecost in Acts, it will not come about naturally. It will most certainly require a movement of the Holy Spirit.
THE ONE LANGUAGE IN CHRIST
In the year 1838, a number of persecuted Christians belonging to Madagascar left that island secretly on board ship, bound for England. On their way they stopped at Mauritius, and afterward temporarily landed at Algoa Bay, where they found many Hottentot Christians.
These good people were very kind to the refugees. But as they did not understand each other's language, they could not, of course, talk together. Both, however, had Bibles. One translation, indeed, was in Dutch, and the other in Malagasy, so that the sacred volume could not have helped them to converse together but for one circumstance—that the names of the different books of the Scripture, and the figures which marked the chapters and verses were nearly the same in both. To express their sorrow that they could not talk together, they both turned to the eleventh chapter of Genesis, which gives the account of the confusion of tongues. Then, the Hottentots, wishing to describe to their friends what they were before their conversion, pointed them to the second chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians, from the second to the fifth verses. Smiles of love and joy lighted up the faces of the Malagasy as they read the words: "But God who is rich in mercy, has raised us up together...by grace are ye saved," and they immediately pointed their Hottentot friends to the fourteenth and fifteenth verses of the same chapter and also to the words in Galatians: "Ye are all one in Jesus Christ."
In this manner these brethren in the Lord kept up their pleasant intercourse as long as the Malagasy remained at Algoa Bay. And the simple-minded Hottentots, many of whom were more experienced Christians than their visitor, knew how to comfort their friends by pointing them to such texts as John 16:33; 2 Timothy3:12;Avts 14:22; Romans 8:35-39; to all of which our readers should turn.
The parting service of these brethren was a singular one. It was proposed that they should sing a hymn together. But the only thing they both understood was the tune. Still that was enough; and each party—one in Dutch, the other in Malagasy—joined in this not very melodious exercise. Here friends raised money to help the refugees on their way—the faithful Hottentots freely giving what they could. (From Juv. Miss Mag.)
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Now they were ready to build upon the only foundation: the Lordship of Jesus Christ, because now they were empowered to GO.
Power, on the other hand, includes authority. It does not require human resources to be present. The miracle that occurred at the ears of the people on Pentecost was nothing this world had ever seen before. "Lo, I am with you always, even to the ends of the earth." supposes the presence of Power.
Thoreau said of men, "They gather their tools to build a temple or cathedral, but as their day ends they build a woodshed." Punch requires cooperation between bickering camps. Power welds into one all people present and available. Punch plans in day-tight compartments and suffers from the "littles." Power speaks of eternity and of the unfolding of the kingdom of God.
Where God's Spirit reigns, there is power unto salvation. Where God is quenched, human-sized projects are punched across to feed the need to feel good about oneself.
Festival of Homiletics 2002
PUTTING THE HOLY INTO WORDS
May 21-24, 2002
Chicago
Fourth Presbyterian Church and Art Institute of Chicago
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Thomas G. Long
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