Flaming Disciples

The story goes that the disciples were on fire that day.
They were celebrating the day of Pentecost, which commemorates the day Moses brought the commandments down from the mountain of the Lord. When Moses came down from the mountain, his face was radiant with the presence of the Lord-- so shiny the people couldn't bear to look at him and asked him to cover his face. Moses was the one who first heard the voice of God coming from a burning bush that was not consumed. God was present with Moses, and through the law which Moses brought to the people, God was present with all the people who followed Moses, and with their descendants forever.
As they were all together, praying, and celebrating how God was present with Moses, suddenly they experienced the powerful presence of God for themselves, first-hand, in the wind and the fire. It was the gift of the Holy Spirit, the same spirit which was with Moses and Elijah and Jesus.
That is the second chapter of Acts, the Acts of the Apostles, which really ought to be called the Acts of the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is the power that inspires and moves (sometimes literally moves) every act in the book. The Spirit moves like a fire, setting hearts aflame with passion for God and for each other and for all the people, friend and foe, slave and master, prisoner and jailer. The Holy Spirit seems to have no standards at all. Whatever, whoever is combustible will catch the Holy Spirit's fire.
The real wonder is why some people seem to be flame-retardant.
When the apostles received the Spirit they began to tell the story of God's saving love, and everyone could hear and understand. Except those who couldn't. Some people just thought they were aflame with a different kind of spirit, the kind that comes in wine skins.
But note that the apostles didn't spend a moment agonizing over those who didn't "get it." They continued to move with the Spirit, to speak as the Spirit gave them the ability, to go wherever the Spirit led, and to allow that they did not own the Spirit of God, rather, the Spirit used them. As the Spirit of God uses us, to reach others.
We burn with the Spirit and yet we are not consumed-- like the burning bush in the Moses story. When we come together to worship, we devote yourself to prayer, which is perhaps the drying room for damp tinder, and perhaps lifting our voices in song is the bellows that makes the flame burn brighter. So we can go out, flaming with the Spirit of the Lord, ready to share the love of God, in ways that all people can hear and understand, and catch fire. Amen.

Many Gifts, One Spirit

Pentecost is a celebration of the “birthday of the church,” because it is the day when the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles, and gave them the ability to tell of God’s deeds of power in voices that everyone could understand. The church in the book of the Acts of the Apostles is sent forth by Jesus, and empowered by the Holy Spirit to go into all the world (in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, Acts 1:8) to be witnesses. What does a witness do? A witness tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about Jesus, and about the God we come to know through Jesus.

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. (1 Corinthians 12:4-7)

Pentecost day was a day of power and a day of unity, a day when many people were added to the number of those who followed the way of Jesus. The apostle Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, made an appeal for unity in the Spirit. Apparently the church was having some “diversity issues.” Corinthians came to the church with different ideas of how to be the church. There are varieties of gifts, Paul said, but it is the same Spirit who gives them for the common good.

The United Church of Christ is a diverse body, and so is our own particular congregation. We bring to church our varieties of experience and expectations of what it means to be the church. How can we use our varieties of gifts for the common good, so that we can be witnesses to the power of God in Brainerd, and Minnesota and to the ends of the earth?

The Day of Pentecost

For Sunday May 11

Sunday Bulletin Service theme: "Life-giving Spirit"

Acts 21: 1-21 When the day of Pentecost had come....

Psalm 104:24-34, 35b How manifold are your works... O bless the Lord, my soul.

1 Corinthians 12:3b-13 Many gifts, one spirit.

John 20:19-23 Receive the Holy Spirit....

When the day of Pentecost had come, the city of Jerusalem was crowded with pilgrims who had come to observe the festival of Shavout, which falls seven weeks after the Passover, and commemorates the presentation of the Torah to Moses on Sinai. The disciples were praying together in an upper room (perhaps the same room in which they had shared the Passover with Jesus), when they received the "power from on high" which Jesus had promised them.
The gospel of John includes a different version of the apostles receiving the Holy Spirit, directly from the mouth of Jesus, on the day of resurrection. There is no fifty day wait, as in Luke's version (the Acts of the Apostles is volume 2 of Luke's story, see the first chapter of each book). This suggests to me that Luke is making a deliberate connection between the gift of the Torah (what we know as Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Numbers and Leviticus, the first five books of the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures), and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit, law divine, reign within this soul of mine.
Be my law, and I shall be firmly bound, forever free.
--Hymn #63, New Century Hymnal

Shavout observance includes an offering of the first fruits of the harvest at the Temple, as a testimony that the land which produced the crops has been received from God.