MLC Messiah Lutheran Church

On Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. Polly and I invited the residents of OV Nursing Home to sing happy birthday in anticipation of Pentecost. We lit a candle and ate doughnut holes.

And today we celebrate one of the three great festivals of Christianity… unlike Christmas and Easter, the retail business hasn’t discovered this one… and maybe that is just as well.

Pentecost was originally a Jewish agricultural festival when the first harvest of spring was dedicated to God …

It was celebrated 49 days after Passover; the day before SHAUVUT, the 50th day is Pentecost. Eventually the day became associated with the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai. The story is found in the OT book of Exodus.

That is why Luke uses the occasion to write about the giving of the Holy Spirit... just as the first giving of the law celebrates the birth of Judaism, for Luke and those gathered it now celebrates the gift of the Holy Spirit.

It is loud, large, and people from all over the known empire are gathered… there is the sound of a deafening wind and flames that looked like fire and people speaking in tongues… the other account is in the Gospel of John. More on that in a moment!

In today’s account from Acts, Peter is the guest preacher and by the time he finished we are told that 3,000 people were baptized.

Luke remembers the Exodus story in the retelling of Pentecost -- it is a strange day…

Cloudy with thunder and lightning all around. The people are afraid. They tell Moses to go up to the Mountain and ask what God wants…

The other Pentecost (the one that is in the Gospel of John) is quite a contrast… it is quiet. It is in a house in Jerusalem. The disciples are gathered in a room behind locked doors… they are scared.

Jesus had been crucified. They wondered which one of them was next. And then standing there is Jesus. He says four words “Peace be with you.”

And then “As the father sent me, now I send you.” In other words what I have done now you will continue.

There is no violent wind, no flames, but a human breath and a human word. “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

While in Luke’s account we hear the rumblings of, and see the fire of, Mt. Sinai. John’s account is that of the creation story in Genesis 2.

In the beginning God made everything, Birds, Fish, Leopards, Elephants, Ostriches, Llamas, Squirrels… even Earthworms… and all the stuff that is now growing in your garden.

What if, what if, God had not breathed into our first parents the breath of life? His own breath.

Our existence would be consumed in eating, drinking, sleeping, eliminating, procreating, and dying… like all animals.

Now animals can be trained or taught to do tricks. And some of us could even be trained to do work. Animals can be groomed and be paraded around on a stage in front of a crowd on TV cameras.

There are TV shows that judge people based on the tricks they can do…“American Idol?”

Without the Spirit of God, humans could even develop lines of pedigree and like dogs and cats. They could be registered and call themselves purebred… and claim to come from the best line.

They could go to debutant balls “she comes from one of the better families in town.”

So if God had not breathed into us this Spirit, his own breath – we could strut and show off our pedigree, eat, drink, sleep, and die and that would be it.

But God took this creature made from earth, held it up like a mother who holding up her baby and breathed into her his own breath and she became a living Soul like GOD. And God said, “this one is like me.”

He might have said, I am proud of the Elephant, the Whale, the Eagle, and the Llamas… Even the Earthworms and the plants in the garden, but that one is like me.

In this one I have breathed my own life… that is why human beings are restless and not content with just existing like animals.

Eating, sleeping, working, breeding and dying. To be a human being is too long for more…

To be human is to explore, to write and play, to paint and hope and dream of a life beyond this one. The poet Herman Hesse said it best:

This longing for God is so powerful that the worst thing imaginable is for the breath of God, the spirit of God, to be taken away from YOU.

Do you remember the OT story of King David? He was one of the great Kings of Israel from whose lineage Jesus was born.

He had had it all… but he wanted more. He wanted Uriah’s wife and to get her he had Uriah killed. Out of that illicit moment, a son was born whom God let die, and David said “I am nothing more than an animal.”

and he prayed (Ps.51) “Oh God, do not take back your breath. Do not take your Holy Spirit from me, because I would be an animal again.”

The Spirit of God took some fishermen, a tax collector, a militant – Simon the Zealot, a sword swinging Peter, and breathed on them and said “Receive the Holy Spirit” and they became the first church…

They went out and healed others, prayed with others, sang hymns, emptied their pockets for widows, orphans, fed the hungry and lit the lamps for those who’s oil was gone, mowed church lawns when their own lawns needed mowing.

“Take not thy Holy Spirit from me” because that is what makes us the church.

Most Lutherans wouldn’t feel too comfortable there – It’s an ok Pentecost, but it is not the only one.

The breath of Christ touches the heart and lives of his followers as they sing hymns, and proclaim:

“Spirit, Spirit of Gentleness, blow through our wilderness, calling and free; Spirit of restlessness, stir me from placidness, wind, wind, on the Sea. Amen

Adapted from “The Softer Side of Pentecost” by Fred Craddock, Westminister John Knox Press. 2001.