Sermon 130
‘SPIRIT-FIRE’
GEN.11:1-9; ACTS 2:1-21
INTRODUCTION
A Sunday school teacher had taught her class to recite the Apostles Creed by giving each
child one phrase to learn.
At the Sunday School presentation the class was asked to give their recitation. They
began beautifully:
“I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth” said Sarah.
“I believe in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord” chimed in Rachel.
Everything went smoothly … one after the other … and then there was a long pause.
Finally, a little girl spoke up and said: “Uh, the little boy who believes in the Holy Spirit
is absent today!”
Today it is birthday time – the birthday of the church – Pentecost.
But, as always, this celebration of unifying relationships and love is held against the
dreadful backdrop of disintegration and pain.
The world is all too familiar with death and dying. Not so familiar with Spirit-inspired
life and living.
The world has endured many times of dying, of destruction.
The O.T. story of the building of the tower of Babel marks one of those times. Such
episodes litter history, as they are traced in our own personal lives also …the death of a
dream, of a relationship, of dearly held hopes.
Fifty days after the Jewish celebration of the Passover feast came the feast of Pentecost,
at the end of the wheat harvest in Palestine, featuring two symbolic loaves of bread,
baked with flour from the new wheat (or, apparently, of barley).
But today is Christian Pentecost – for on a particular feast of Pentecost, about 28AD,
following the rising of Jesus from the dead, God came in a special way bringing into
being the Christian church, the body of Christ - baptised by the Spirit of Jesus into one
body.
We are correct in down-playing the person of the Holy Spirit: the Spirit is self-effacing.
Always, in the New Testament, the Spirit seeks to give glory to Christ, and Christ seeks
to give glory to the Father.
"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."
(Acts 2.1-2)
For Greeks, Hebrews and Romans, ‘breath’ and ‘spirit’ were essentially synonymous. We
are alive, physically and spiritually, because God breathes his like into us!
1. WIND … FROM GOD TO THE BODY
The symbol of invisible power.
“and suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled the
house where they were sitting” v.2
God’s siren: “Here I come”
We are in the presence of a God who is unpredictable, irresistible. Who would want to
interfere with the wind of God’s Spirit?
We have been spoiled by the air-conditioning engineers....we can travel, sleep, work and
shop without ever feeling the howling wind!
Let's declare this place, this sanctuary, a non-airconditioned zone! Feel the wind!
We can never presume to know how we will be inbreathed by the Spirit. But we can trace
in our own fragile histories the moving, the touch, of the Spirit – yes – even in our
fragile, ordinary lives…., our bumbling, mistake-ridden lives!
1. OTHER LANGUAGES … FROM GOD THROUGH THE BODY
“and they were all filled with the H.S. and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit
enabled them” v.4
“we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God” v.11
…people hear the message in 16 different languages!
God is declaring himself, and his people declare how magnificent he is…young people,
older folk all see and hear God.
This is not the gift of tongues being demonstrated; it is the gift of powerful, effective
communication in the spirit!
The body, the church, is not a secret society, with special code-words and signs and
cliques and in-groups that fragment the body…it is a society, a family, that shares and
gives and grieves and laughs and loves and grows
…3,000 people were swept in the kingdom that spring day in Jerusalem
"A colleague has recently described to me an occasion when a West Indian woman in a
London flat was told of her husband's death in a street accident. The shock of grief
stunned her like a blow, she sank into a corner of the sofa and sat there rigid and
unhearing. For a long time her terrible tranced look continued to embarrass the family,
friends and officials who came and went. Then the schoolteacher of one of her children,
an Englishwoman, called and, seeing how things were, went and sat beside her. Without a
word she threw an arm around the tight shoulders, clasping them with her full strength.
The white cheek was thrust hard against the brown. Then as the unrelenting pain seeped
through to her the newcomer's tears began to flow, falling on their two hands linked in
the woman's lap. For a long time that is all that was happening. And then at last the West
Indian woman started to sob. Still not a word was spoken and after a little while the
visitor got up and went, leaving her contribution to help the family meet its immediate
needs.
That is the embrace of God, his kiss of life. That is the embrace of his mission, and of our
intercession. And the Holy Spirit is the force in the straining muscles of an arm, the film
of sweat between pressed cheeks, the mingled wetness of the backs of clasped hands. He
is as close and as unobtrusive as that, and as irresistibly strong."
HOLY SPIRIT.... ('THE GO-BETWEEN GOD', J V TAYLOR)
(John Vincent Taylor died early 2001)
2. FIRE … FROM GOD IN THE BODY
“and there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each of them”
v.3
‘Beauty captivates the flesh to obtain permission to pass right through to the soul.’
(Simone Weil)
Jesus, said John the Baptist, would baptise with the H.S. and with fire!
The fire of God can touch us all! Like beauty, it seeks to pass right through to the soul.
For each and every one of us…..Not only some elite group of Christians
…the purifying, passion-stirring Spirit of God can transform us all, repeatedly.
…we do not always welcome such a presence among us
What difference does it make that we are Easter people,
Formed in the crucible of crucifixion,
Bathed in the light of the risen Christ,
Singed and sustained by the fire of the Holy Spirit?
…thank God that we, today, are hearing and responding to the stirring of the Spirit.
Let us come to God now with our prayerful desire for a fresh encounter with the Holy
Spirit…let the fire fall!
Inhale the fragrance of God!