"On The Journey, In The Spirit" Pentecost 2009 May 31, 2009

(First, read the passages for this sermon: Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15)

God the Holy Spirit has assembled us here. God the Holy Spirit has created us, as a worshiping community, at this time and in this place.

Indeed, God the Holy Spirit has been bringing us along since we were baptized. In this morning’s gospel story, Jesus promises, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” Since the day that we were baptized into the resurrection of Jesus, we have been on the journey, in the Spirit.

On this day of Pentecost, this is our particular theme.

On the journey, in the Spirit, our question always is: What is God up to?

What is God doing that is new?

What is God creating?

Those are the questions in the story that we read each year on Pentecost, from the Acts of the Apostles. First – why are the Roman authorities unable to stamp out the Jesus movement? They tried to do that, by executing Jesus. But some of Jesus’ followers have reported his grave to be empty! Some of Jesus’ followers have seen him alive, after they had seen him dead.

Are these reports of crackpots?

Or is God up to something? Is God creating something that is new?

That leads us into this morning’s phantasmagorical story, from the second chapter of Acts. (You know that the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts was written by the same anonymous author. Luke is “Part 1,” telling the story of Jesus, and Acts is “Part 2,” telling the story of the first-generation church.) In the story from Acts this morning, Jesus has been executed only weeks ago. Those appearances of Jesus – or, at least, we think it’s been Jesus – what is going on? What is God up to? What is God creating?

Jesus disciples, observant Jews that they are, have gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish festival of Pentecost. It’s an agricultural, religious festival. The city of Jerusalem is crowded with Jewish pilgrims from all over the region. And God does something new!

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. The polyglot of pilgrims are amazed! Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene – all of these people understand words of their languages! They are being spoken by followers of Jesus – who are themselves astonished by what’s coming out of their mouths! What is going on?

Some bystanders sneer and say that the Jesus people are drunk! But Peter says this, in one of the best comic lines in all of Scripture: “We’re not drunk! It’s only nine o’clock in the morning!”

No, Peter says, what you are watching and hearing is the Holy Spirit creating the Church. It is to be a community in which the words of the prophet Joel are fulfilled:

and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.

John Howard Yoder writes that God the Holy Spirit is here creating a new way of behaving: “a kind of life strikingly, offensively different from the rest of the world; it dared to claim that Christ himself was its norm and to believe in the active enabling presence of the Holy Spirit.”

You and I have been baptized into this same Church; into this behavior, into this kind of life that God creates: strikingly, offensively different from the rest of the world. Here’s how Bryan Stone describes this new creation of God: “the marks of the early church are concrete and visible: jubilation, unity, consensus built on spiritual discernment, material sharing, inclusive table fellowship, bold proclamation, and public defiance of the powers.” In other words, among us, in the church, God the Holy Spirit has created the presence of the kingdom, now come, into daily human life! “Your kingdom come.” It is answered prayer.

On the journey, in the Spirit, with each other who are on pilgrimage, in this community that we call “church,” “our lives are patterned together into the narrative of [Jesus’] life.” God the Holy Spirit “[scripts] our minds and bodies through worship and ministry into a new timeliness,…’gospel’ time, resurrection time. Learning to be a Christian, then, is not just learning about a story; it is learning to live into a story.”

That is what we are about, on the journey, in the Spirit, in community with each other. We are learning to be Christians. We are learning to see the resurrection, the kingdom come, in our daily lives. On the journey, in the Spirit, the Spirit is forming us into God’s point of view! We are learning to repent from cynicism and despair, and to live into hope – because God is always doing something that is new. We are being formed by God the Holy Spirit in the distinctive and strange Christian life of “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience,” as Paul describes this life in one place (Col. 3:12). We are rejoicing to see in ourselves the fruit of the Holy Spirit, as Paul describes this in another place (Gal. 5:22-23): the distinctive and strange Christian life of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

How does the Holy Spirit form us into lives of such strange distinctiveness? It happens as we practice the faith. The Spirit changes our priorities and behaviors as we do the things that those affirming their baptisms this morning will themselves promise to do:

to live among God’s faithful people,
to hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper,
to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed,
to serve all people, following the example of Jesus,
and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.
(From the Affirmation of Baptism liturgy in Evangelical Lutheran Worship, page 236.)

What a strange, distinctive, utterly joyful way to live: on the journey, in the Spirit; watchful and open to what God is doing that is new; embodying that new creation; inviting others into the journey; into life in the Spirit.

God is no less active now than in that story from the Acts of the Apostles. On the journey, in the Spirit, our questions are always: What is God up to? What is God doing that is new? What is God creating? And what is God calling us to do, in response?

Thanks be to God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia