Pentecost Year B
5/24/15
The Rev Roger Hungerford
Readings:
Acts 2:1-21
Come Holy Spirit fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in us the fire of your love. Amen
That is a perfect prayer for our Pentecost service. Pentecost for we Christians is when we celebrate
the Holy Spirit coming to the church and more importantly filling us and energizing us. Energy is
symbolized by fire and the color red. Liturgically we adorn with the color red, and as members we
wear red to show we are all part of the God's holy fire.
But our prayer goes beyond Sunday. We should be asking the Holy Spirit to kindle a fire in us each
morning when we get up, and we should follow it up with "Lord what is that you would have me do
today. Lord how can I be an instrument of your peace?"
That is a great way to give focus to your day. Then get cleaned up, dressed, and read the paper or
watch the news and you will see how the world needs a lot of instruments working to share God's
peace.
In their way that is what the disciples were doing, praying to become instruments of God's peace.
But for them to become instruments of God's peace they had to patiently wait.
Interestingly the spirit came to the disciples in the midst of a significant annual festival. Pentecost, or
the fiftieth day, was how the ancient Jews who had adopted Greek customs identified one of the
major Jewish festivals - Shavout. This festival occurred seven weeks after the Passover and commemorated the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.
Shavout was one of the festivals where Jews were required to present themselves before God. No
work was to be done, so no one had an excuse to skip the festival.
So Jerusalem would have been packed for Shavout – just like it was at the time of the Passover.
During this time, the disciples were in the upper room doing what Jesus had commanded ten days
earlier just before he ascended to heaven. He told them to wait in Jerusalem for the fulfilling of the
promise that they would be baptized by the Holy Spirit. He didn’t say when or how this baptism was
going to happen. The disciples wouldn’t have known what to expect.
Now the disciples were a devout group of Jews, so they would have gone to Temple as required to
pray and offer sacrifices. But they also prayed together in the upper room listening for Jesus and
seeking their connection to God. Additionally, they would have carried on with day to day living
while they were filled with anticipation awaiting their spiritual baptism.
Then it happens – out of the blue, no time to plan, totally unexpected right in the midst of a festival.
Isn’t that how most of the radically life altering events happen to us - they come unexpectedly,
quickly. We all wish we had time to plan and prepare, but most often we are caught off guard.
For the disciples it was a wind event. Scripture reads “from heaven there came a loud rush of a violent wind and it filled the room where they were staying.” Their wind event was depicted on the TV
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Pentecost Year B
5/24/15
The Rev Roger Hungerford
show A.D. as a tornado that had swirling lightening. This wind event was punctuated by “divided
tongues of fire resting on each of them and then they began to speak in other languages.”
This wind event drew the attention of the many visiting Jews in Jerusalem, and so they rushed to see
what was going on, to see of everyone was ok. They found that everyone in the upper room was uninjured, but acting differently. The baptism of the spirit had occurred, the disciples were transformed.
And just like the disciples when we are blessed with the Holy Spirit we are transformed and act differently.
Now most of us have not had a tongues of fire spiritual baptism event. Just because we did not receive as the original disciples received does not mean we have not been baptized by the Holy Spirit.
The blessed truth is we all have received our spiritual baptism. For some it may have been an emotion-filled, mountain-top experience at a service or a retreat, but for others it may have been when
you received communion and your heart felt warmed, and for still others it has been the gentle
growing love over time that gives them a deep seated peace. Some may not even be aware they have
been blessed by the spirit, yet they have.
Returning to scripture, the reading from Acts notes how some who came up to the room in response to the wind, heard and understood what the disciples were saying in their own language, but
others did not. They thought the group was drunk.
But isn’t that like what we, in our contemporary culture, experience too? All of us have an opportunity to hear the word, and some get it while others just consider it unsubstantiated, musing that are
distractions.
In response to the Jews commenting in either awe or doubt, Peter took advantage of the opportunity and he preached explaining the event and its connection to scripture.
Through the connection to scripture, Peter let the community know that spiritual baptism was
meant for everyone. This would have been a different perspective for the Jews of Peter’s time, because they had been taught that the spirit usually came to a few people like the Judges or the Prophets.
Peter tells them the wind event is actually the fulfilling of scripture and that the spirit is no longer
reserved for a select few, but is going to be poured out on all flesh – young and old, women and
men, even the lowliest of the lowly slaves will have the spirit poured upon them.
Notice how it is poured in to each individually, but that this was revealed through a community
gathering. This shows how the spirit works in two ways. It energizes us as people to do the work
God sets before us, but it is revealed and enhanced through our community.
Each of us are blessed by the spirit with unique gifts and when we work together there is a synergy
that occurs to make even greater things happen.
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Pentecost Year B
5/24/15
The Rev Roger Hungerford
So come Holy Spirit fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in us the fire of your love, so that we
become instruments of God's peace and as a community may do the work our Lord sets before us.
Amen.
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