Taking Time to Remember
5-24-15 (Pentecost B)
Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
This weekend, and especially tomorrow, it’s important for us to take time to remember and to give thanks. We’ll take Memorial Day together to step back, to spend time with family, and to be thankful for the men and women who have given their lives in the service of this country, who have enabled us to take days like this and to celebrate them together freely and without fear.
But as you can tell by the red throughout the sanctuary today, it’s also Pentecost - it’s the day in the year of the church when we celebrate what could be called the church’s “birthday,” the day when the Spirit was poured out to the disciples and to the entire world. I faced a quandary of sorts this week as I prepared my sermon and looked at today’s familiar texts. Pentecost and Memorial Day don’t intersect all that often, and they’re both such important days that you want to at least recognize both, even when we know that we confess our loyalty to Christ as above all other loyalties and allegiances.
It was when I started looking deeper into Pentecost that I made an interesting connection, though: Pentecost isn’t just a Christian holiday - it’s not just the birthday of the church. In fact, Pentecost finds its own heritage in the traditions of the Jewish festival of Shavuot. In the Jewish tradition, Shavuot was the day when the Jewish people celebrated God giving the people of Israel the Torah, the teaching of God’s law and ways. It was a harvest festival, as well - in the Torah, it is also called the “festival of weeks,” the “day of the first fruits,” or the “festival of reaping.” It comes at the end of a period of time called the “Counting of the Omer,” and was the first day that the people of Israel could bring the first fruits of their wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates to the temple to give them over to God in thanksgiving.
So as the day of Pentecost comes at the temple, there are literally people from all over the known world who have made their pilgrimage to the temple to worship, to give thanks, and to bring their first fruits as sacrifices. They gathered as a people of faith, a people filled with gratitude and celebration for the gifts that God had given them. And in the midst of their celebration, in the midst of this festival of worship and thanksgiving, God was at work in a mighty way. God once again broke into the world dramatically and forcefully, and took action to do something completely new. The Spirit sweeps into the place where the disciples are gathered in worship - like a mighty wind it sweeps in. And the disciples, those men who we’ve seen all these weeks since Easter in so many different lights - men we’ve seen full of doubts, full of fears, at loss for words to say what they have experienced, to understand what has happened, men who have been astounded, surprised, and overwhelmed at the appearances of their risen Lord - these men are suddenly and powerfully given words. And they preach it - in every language, every person present hears the disciples speaking clearly and emphatically about God’s deeds of power.
It was a moment that defied belief - so much so that some even accused the disciples of being drunk off of new wine, despite the earliness of the hour. And to be fair - wouldn’t your first reaction to an event like this be something along those lines, too? Perhaps even more so today than in the first century, we’ve been trained to be skeptical of any such event anymore - we start to look for the wires, the smoke and mirrors, the man to come out from the woodwork and tell us to look over in that corner over there and smile at the hidden camera because we’re on a television show.
But instead of a laughing “Smile, you’re on candid camera moment,” Peter stands confidently in the middle of the gathered crowd and not only defends, but explains what has happened to the eleven disciples gathered in that place - he points to the words of the prophet Joel, that God would “pour out [God’s] Spirit on all flesh,” that wondrous things would happen and that the world was being invited to participate in the coming Kingdom. We only get a snippet of the great sermon that Peter delivers to the gathered crowd, but as he continues past the portion we’ve read today, he lays out the entirety of the Gospel before them all - he tells of Jesus, how Jesus was the Messiah, how he was handed over to be killed, how God raised him up on the third day, and how Jesus had ascended back to heaven and given them the gift of the Spirit that they were now all seeing at work that day.
The texts tells us that the people who heard Peter’s message were “cut to the heart” and roughly 3,000 persons repented and were baptized that very day. It was a moment that sparked a movement, and that movement has been carried on the winds of the Spirit all the way to us as we ourselves are gathered here today. That wind has blown through persecution, through oppression, through war and rebellion, through times of prosperity and decadence, through times of growth and expansion, through hunger and fulfillment, through centuries of change… and as that wind blows, it continues to shift us, to move us, to guide us and drive us forward, ever closer to the Kingdom of Christ.
And so that wind draws us together once again today as we gather to celebrate and to give thanks. We gather at this table, ready to celebrate the birthday of the church, the continuing presence of the Spirit in our midst. We give thanks for the way that God has led us and continues to provide for us as we proclaim the message of the Gospel to all the world. And we give thanks for those who have given everything that we might continue to have the freedom to preach this message of God to the world. And yet, even as we celebrate, remember, and give thanks, we also know that the Spirit continues to move, that the wind continues to blow, to shift, to guide and to move us ever onward in our journeys together. We gather at this table, not only to give thanks for the gift of life given to us by Jesus Christ, but also to look forward even as we look back, with thanksgiving and celebration - we look to where the Spirit leads us, however uncertain the future may be, and know that it is God who leads us wherever we may go. To God be the Glory. Amen.
Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
Taking Time to Remember
This weekend, and especially tomorrow, it’s important for us to take time to remember and to give thanks. We’ll take Memorial Day together to step back, to spend time with family, and to be thankful for the men and women who have given their lives in the service of this country, who have enabled us to take days like this and to celebrate them together freely and without fear.
But as you can tell by the red throughout the sanctuary today, it’s also Pentecost - it’s the day in the year of the church when we celebrate what could be called the church’s “birthday,” the day when the Spirit was poured out to the disciples and to the entire world. I faced a quandary of sorts this week as I prepared my sermon and looked at today’s familiar texts. Pentecost and Memorial Day don’t intersect all that often, and they’re both such important days that you want to at least recognize both, even when we know that we confess our loyalty to Christ as above all other loyalties and allegiances.
It was when I started looking deeper into Pentecost that I made an interesting connection, though: Pentecost isn’t just a Christian holiday - it’s not just the birthday of the church. In fact, Pentecost finds its own heritage in the traditions of the Jewish festival of Shavuot. In the Jewish tradition, Shavuot was the day when the Jewish people celebrated God giving the people of Israel the Torah, the teaching of God’s law and ways. It was a harvest festival, as well - in the Torah, it is also called the “festival of weeks,” the “day of the first fruits,” or the “festival of reaping.” It comes at the end of a period of time called the “Counting of the Omer,” and was the first day that the people of Israel could bring the first fruits of their wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates to the temple to give them over to God in thanksgiving.
So as the day of Pentecost comes at the temple, there are literally people from all over the known world who have made their pilgrimage to the temple to worship, to give thanks, and to bring their first fruits as sacrifices. They gathered as a people of faith, a people filled with gratitude and celebration for the gifts that God had given them. And in the midst of their celebration, in the midst of this festival of worship and thanksgiving, God was at work in a mighty way. God once again broke into the world dramatically and forcefully, and took action to do something completely new. The Spirit sweeps into the place where the disciples are gathered in worship - like a mighty wind it sweeps in. And the disciples, those men who we’ve seen all these weeks since Easter in so many different lights - men we’ve seen full of doubts, full of fears, at loss for words to say what they have experienced, to understand what has happened, men who have been astounded, surprised, and overwhelmed at the appearances of their risen Lord - these men are suddenly and powerfully given words. And they preach it - in every language, every person present hears the disciples speaking clearly and emphatically about God’s deeds of power.
It was a moment that defied belief - so much so that some even accused the disciples of being drunk off of new wine, despite the earliness of the hour. And to be fair - wouldn’t your first reaction to an event like this be something along those lines, too? Perhaps even more so today than in the first century, we’ve been trained to be skeptical of any such event anymore - we start to look for the wires, the smoke and mirrors, the man to come out from the woodwork and tell us to look over in that corner over there and smile at the hidden camera because we’re on a television show.
But instead of a laughing “Smile, you’re on candid camera moment,” Peter stands confidently in the middle of the gathered crowd and not only defends, but explains what has happened to the eleven disciples gathered in that place - he points to the words of the prophet Joel, that God would “pour out [God’s] Spirit on all flesh,” that wondrous things would happen and that the world was being invited to participate in the coming Kingdom. We only get a snippet of the great sermon that Peter delivers to the gathered crowd, but as he continues past the portion we’ve read today, he lays out the entirety of the Gospel before them all - he tells of Jesus, how Jesus was the Messiah, how he was handed over to be killed, how God raised him up on the third day, and how Jesus had ascended back to heaven and given them the gift of the Spirit that they were now all seeing at work that day.
The texts tells us that the people who heard Peter’s message were “cut to the heart” and roughly 3,000 persons repented and were baptized that very day. It was a moment that sparked a movement, and that movement has been carried on the winds of the Spirit all the way to us as we ourselves are gathered here today. That wind has blown through persecution, through oppression, through war and rebellion, through times of prosperity and decadence, through times of growth and expansion, through hunger and fulfillment, through centuries of change… and as that wind blows, it continues to shift us, to move us, to guide us and drive us forward, ever closer to the Kingdom of Christ.
And so that wind draws us together once again today as we gather to celebrate and to give thanks. We gather at this table, ready to celebrate the birthday of the church, the continuing presence of the Spirit in our midst. We give thanks for the way that God has led us and continues to provide for us as we proclaim the message of the Gospel to all the world. And we give thanks for those who have given everything that we might continue to have the freedom to preach this message of God to the world. And yet, even as we celebrate, remember, and give thanks, we also know that the Spirit continues to move, that the wind continues to blow, to shift, to guide and to move us ever onward in our journeys together. We gather at this table, not only to give thanks for the gift of life given to us by Jesus Christ, but also to look forward even as we look back, with thanksgiving and celebration - we look to where the Spirit leads us, however uncertain the future may be, and know that it is God who leads us wherever we may go. To God be the Glory. Amen.
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