Pastor Dismer’s sermon for May 11:

Pentecost is the story of the birth of the church

Acts2:1-21

Dear friends, happy Pentecost! Do you all have your Pentecost trees decorated? Or did you hide painted Pentecost eggs for your children to find?

Maybe you have a festive family dinner planned for all the relatives, and some Pentecost gifts for everyone?

No, maybe not? But maybe, after today’s sermon, you might want to celebrate this day in some fashion.

This is why I hope you will. Pentecost, to a Christian, should be right up there with Christmas and Easter.

On Christmas we celebrate God’s faithful love, expressed in the gift of his son, so that we could see and hear and understand God’s love. We could call Christmas: GOD WITH US

On Easter we celebrate God’s sacrificial love, expressed in the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ, so that we could know and understand the gift of forgiveness and salvation. We could call Easter: GOD FOR US

On Pentecost we celebrate God’s empowering love, expressed in one more gift, one very precious, life-affirming, life-changing gift: God’s own spirit – THE HOLY SPIRIT, bestowed on each of us so that we can live as God’s children. We could call Pentecost: GOD IN US.

God with us, God for us, God in us.

Is Pentecost important? Does it make a difference? Look at the disciples who followed Jesus. They knew him. They watched him heal people and even raise people from the dead.

They listened to Jesus teaching about the Kingdom of God. When Jesus died and rose again, they understood, at last, that he had died for them. AND, they knew that Jesus had called them to carry on his ministry by teaching and baptizing and making disciples.

What they didn’t know was how they could actually DO this. And then they received the empowering gift of the Holy Spirit.

What an amazing and thrilling story Pentecost is. It is the story of the birth of the church.

The 12 disciples had gathered in Jerusalem, along with other followers of Jesus, in all about 70 people. They were there at the time of the Jewish festival of Pentecost, which was a harvest festival. Little did they know what a harvest they were about to experience!

These followers of Jesus had gathered together, and were suddenly astonished by a violent wind and the appearance of what seemed to be tongues of fire hovering above each person’s head. And more astonishing, they all began to speak, in various languages.

As if all this wasn’t amazing enough, a crowd of Jews, attracted by their noise, gathered outside.

They listened, and wondered among themselves how these simple people, all from Galilee, were able to speak in so many different languages, so that all in the crowd understood what was being said.

And all this was just the beginning of the astonishing things that happened that day.

Because next, Peter, the disciple who three times denied he knew Jesus, suddenly found that he had a great deal to say about Jesus.

To this crowd that thought Peter and his group were just drunk, Peter preached a sermon. They were Jews, as he was, and so he began by telling them that something the prophet Joel had said a long time had just come true before their very eyes!

“In the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.

Peter was quoting this Scripture to Jews. They knew something about God’s spirit. If I asked you to take a few minutes and write down what you know about the Holy Spirit, what would you write?

Would you think back to the first 2 verses in the first book of the Bible: Genesis 1:1-2?

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. The Spirit is the power by means of which God acts.

God called out, “LET THERE BE LIGHT.” And there was light. God’s word became reality, by means of God’s spirit.

Would you recall that God often sent his spirit to prophets in the Old Testament, giving them the power to prophesy to his people. The verses Peter quoted from Joel are a case in point.

Surely we would all remember and write down that it was God’s spirit that descended on Jesus the day he was baptized.

By the power of God’s spirit within him, Jesus performed many miracles of healing. In the Gospel of Matthew it is written that Jesus said to his disciples: “If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.”

Yes, the Jews knew something about the power of God’s Spirit. They could have believed that these strange things they were witnessing: wind and flames, and people speaking in tongues, were evidence of God’s spirit in action.

However, most astonishing of all, Peter promised them that because of Jesus – his life, death and resurrection – God’s Spirit was now available to EVERYONE.

Peter explained to them that the Jesus they had crucified, God had raised to life. Furthermore, Jesus was exalted to God’s right hand, and had received the promised Holy Spirit, which this day he had poured out on them.

Seeing the evidence for themselves, and hearing Peter’s explanation, the people in the crowd were “cut to the heart.” They wanted to be a part of what was happening. “What shall we do?” they asked.

Peter answered: “Repent and be baptized in Jesus name for the forgiveness of all your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

That day, 3,000 were added to their number!

What a harvest!

The Spirit who was active in the creation of the world, who guided the prophets’ words, who empowered Jesus to heal and teach and save, THIS SPIRIT, on Pentecost, was given as a GIFT from God for all his people.

The people, his CHURCH, were now, each one, God’s agents for the mission of preaching and baptizing and making disciples.

We know, from reading the book of ACTS, that the disciples, those men who often hadn’t even understood Jesus, and who ran and hid when he was arrested and crucified, THOSE disciples became mighty witnesses for God, carrying the kingdom and its message wherever they went.

And through the ages there have been an endless of number mighty witnesses, people empowered by the Holy Spirit, preaching and teaching, baptizing and serving others in Christ’s name.

The question for us today, on this Pentecost Sunday, is: Like the crowd of Jews observing the tongues of flame above the disciples’ heads and hearing them speaking in many tongues, are we “cut to the heart”?

Do we want to be empowered by the Holy Spirit to be powerful witnesses as Christ’s church? Do we know what this means?

In the final Lenten study on discipleship, which many of you participated in, there was this question: What has happened in the church? Why aren’t we producing servant leaders who make a difference in the world?

Five reasons for this failure, taken from George Barna’s book, “The Second Coming of the Church,” were listed:

• Most Christians see Jesus as a “quick fix” for their problems.
• Most have stopped growing in their faith, thinking they are already a “little better than the next person.”
• Most think their purpose in life is to have good health, a good career, a comfortable lifestyle. “IF we are happy, God is happy.”
• Few Christians understand that we are blessed to be a blessing.
• Christians are not prepared to fight the good fight of faith. We are not ready to work for a harvest such as the first disciples experienced in Jerusalem.

But these descriptions do NOT have to define us. We can invite the HOLY SPIRIT into our church, transforming us into dynamic witnesses and servants of the church.

Consider the radical promise of Pentecost reflected in Annie Dillard’s writing in “Teaching a Stone to Talk,”: … It is madness to wear ladies straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews!”

If you do decide to celebrate Pentecost with your family today, this might be the way: hand out those crash helmets. Set off fireworks and flares. Hold hands and pray for the gift of the HOLY SPIRIT, to empower our church, our discipleship, for mighty acts of witnessing and servanthood.

And be ready for tongues of fire and many astonishing events in your life. Amen