Winds of Spirit, Winds of Power
Psalm 104:24-34; Acts 2:1-21
Rev. Laura J. Collins
Pentecost Sunday 2003
Today is Pentecost -- the birthday of the church and the celebration of God's Spirit! For me, the book of Acts is where the whole story of Scripture really comes home. This is where the rubber hits the road. Acts is where the church gets going and from it, we can learn a great deal about what church is -- or can be. And it starts with this story -- the disciples are hanging out in Jerusalem, they get filled with the Holy Spirit, other people hear the noise and come running, Peter has a chance to preach to the crowds and voila -- the church has started!
Now let's note some things about this first Pentecost.
Let's start with weird. 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.
Ok, that's just weird. I don't know that I need to elaborate a great deal on that. Tornadoes bringing heads full of fire -- which like Moses' bush, burned but were apparently not consumed. That would have been even weirder.
So on to two: it was international. Jerusalem was an extremely cosmopolitan city. If you look at a world map it is impossible not to notice that Jerusalem is located right at the point where we say that East meets West and North meets South. Now, I don't think it is coincidental that this is where God chooses to show up, do you? Jerusalem was a crossroads of all the worlds cultures and on the first Pentecost, that was an extremely important point. At communion we say "They shall come from East and West, from North and South, to sit at table in God's realm," and, in fact, that is what happens at Pentecost. We've got folks from Mesopotamia and Parthia in the East, Rome and Crete in the West, Libya and Arabia in the south, Pontus and Cappadocia in the North. Hearing a commotion, they go to see what's happening.
Now, imagine the chaos. All these followers of Jesus, standing around with their heads on fire, talking about Jesus, supposedly in Arameic with a Galilean accent, but everyone listening hears them speaking in their mother tongue. They were all "amazed and perplexed," wondering what on earth was happening and blaming it on an early morning drinking binge. I don't know about you, but personally, I've never found early morning alcohol to improve my fluency in any other language!
Peter, who only days before had denied knowing Jesus on the night of his arrest, now sees his opportunity and stands up to preach. He quotes the prophet Joel and announces that this is what the prophet had predicted: God's spirit would be poured out on all people -- young and old, men and women, slave and free -- and that all would be able to dream dreams and see visions and know God's saving grace.
Which brings us to point three: Pentecost was historic. Every now and then something comes along that changes history. Often we don't realize it until after the fact. The invention of the printing press was one such moment. So was the moment humans began to fly. There are numerous moments among nations and religions and science we could name when things changed -- and there was no going back to the old way. Pentecost was one such moment.
Suddenly, people really understood that God's spirit was global and inclusive and free and saving. No more fear, no more payment to priests, no more religious hierarchies, no more nationalistic gods -- hmm ... well, maybe we're not quite there yet. But this was the message and those who had ears to hear and eyes to see that day got it! And once they got it, they spread it -- like wildfire, one might say. Or like a mighty wind, pollinating the world with words of hope and joy.
House churches sprang up almost overnight in Africa, Asia and Europe. Christians became known for their fearlessness, for their equal distribution of wealth among themselves, for their love of outcasts, and for their healing power. And it all began with the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit coming into their lives and charging them up with energy and power.
Now speaking of energy and power, today we'll be collecting a special offering to purchase more wind power for our congregation. (How's that for a seque?) If the jump from Pentecost to wind power seems like a stretch for you, let me help connect the dots.
Pentecost is about people receiving God's spirit. And it's about what happened afterwards. One of the problems facing the early church was the clearly unequal distribution of wealth. We can read how the first gatherings of Christians shared all their possessions so that nobody had too much or too little. We can read how they organized themselves around taking care of the widows and orphans in their midst and how they collected money, even from the poorest churches, to help the poorest of the poor in Jerusalem. The coming of God's spirit was a soul-full event, to be sure, but it resulted in very concrete changes of lifestyle. Think today of those folks you find most spiritually inspiring. I would bet most lead lives which demonstrate a clear and just set of priorities for how they live and act in the world and among people.
Unequal distribution of the wealth is still a deadly problem in our world today. It breeds greed and ruthlessness on one side and terror and hopelessness on the other. I don't need to go into statistics for you to understand that most of us in the United States are incomparably richer than most people in the southern hemisphere and elsewhere. The facts are plain. And because we are aware of the global nature of wealth, trade and economics, we know that we play a role in the problem. So what is a Christian to do?
Certainly, we can share our money and I believe it is incumbent upon us to do so. And it is one of our Christian responsibilities to ask God's spirit to give us the visions and dreams that will help us make wise our use of our money, to provide more cure than Band-Aid.
Another resource we have and use in astoundingly unequal proportions is energy. Our lights, our computers, our TVS, our heat, our air conditioning, and our cars all come at a price -- not our monthly bills, but a price paid by those least able to afford it. When we rely on burning fossil fuels, we damage our air and water quality and contribute to global climate change. Those in our country most effected are children and the elderly, who are more impacted by the days of smog, for example. They are the ones developing asthma in astonishing numbers, which increase every year.
But beyond our country, those most effected by our abuse of energy are people like the Pacific Islanders of Tuvalu, a whole nation searching for a place to relocate because their islands are being submerged as global climate change means rising sea levels. Or people like our friends in Central America have seen hurricanes and droughts in succession, unprecedented acceleration of destructive weather patterns that ruin whole cultures. People like subsistence farmers in central Africa, who face year after year of drought, meaning no crops, no income, no food. Millions in Africa are starving this year and much of this drought is caused by human activity -- not simply the out-of-control gods of the weather.
If there is good news to be found in islands and their people are disappearing, Central American countries are being wiped out by hurricanes, and Africans are starving from drought, it is simply this: these problems are caused in large measure by human energy abuse, so human activity can change the future for all those people. And knowing this, how can we not act?
What possible reason can any of us find to not put compact fluorescent bulbs in our homes, knowing that just one bulb keeps 2.1 ounces of soot out of the air, so that we reduce respiratory diseases, saves 3.15 pounds of sulfur dioxide, reducing acid rain, reduces nitrogen oxide by 1.71 pounds, protecting the ozone and reduces carbon dioxide by 463.5 pounds, slowing global warming. That's just one light bulb! Multiply that by all of the light bulbs in your home. Multiply that by our entire congregation. What a difference one simple act can make!
That's why our congregation has already purchased some of our power from wind in this year's general operating budget. But we'd like to do more! We'd like to have all of our congregation's energy come from a clean, renewable source, not a fossil fuel. And that's why we think the Spirit is moving, like a mighty wind, to push us in new directions, for the good of all God's children.
There's an interesting thing about the word for the Spirit in Scripture, whether in Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, or Greek, the language of the New Testament. The words for spirit are the same words as the ones for breath and for wind. The ruah of God blew over creation at the beginning of Genesis. The wind of God, the spirit of God, the life-giving breath of God. And the pneuma came into the disciples at Pentecost. The wind of God, the spirit of God, the life-giving breath of God.
When we are breathed into by God, we are called to blow into the world with that same life-giving spirit. This is what we celebrate at Pentecost. And we celebrate it not just by remembering, but by praying, with fervent hope, that the Spirit of God, the Breath of God, the Wind of God, will continue to heal and save the earth and us.
Amen.
Bromiley, Geoffrey. Theological Dicionary of the Bible. (Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1985).
Eco-Insert, Vol. 2002, No. 1, pg. 2
Oxford Bible Atlas, 3rd Addition, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
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