The Spirit Abides

The Spirit Abides

Acts 2:1-21

1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 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. 3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. 5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7 Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." 12 All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" 13 But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine." 14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15 Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. 16 No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 17 "In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. 18 Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. 19 And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 20The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. 21 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'

It began as a festival for the Jewish folks from all over, one of several yearly days of obligation where Jewish people traveled many miles from their homes to celebrate their community, their beliefs, their faith. It was a festival of the harvest where they came together to laugh, to share meals with one another, to greet old friends and make news ones, to share languages and stories and experiences. It was a festival called Shavuot, which would eventually come to be known as Pentecost, a festival in which the first fruits where given to God as an act and celebration of thanksgiving for the giving of the Torah, the Ten Commandments, the law. They came from all over the place, the Medes and the folks from Mesopotamia, travelers from Egypt and parts of Libya, Cretans and Arabs and visitors from Rome. They came from all over and spoke in their native languages, shared their customs, spent time with each other.

There were hordes of worshipers and travelers all over the streets of Jerusalem, so many different people and groups clustered together on very full streets, so many folks who had come to celebrate on that festival day. The crowds were huge, but a group was missing from the celebration early that day, a small group who might have gone unnoticed had God not decided to be up to something that day.

The disciples and the smallish band of Christians, about 120 of them as the first chapter of Acts tells us, had gathered back together in their familiar upper room, still amazed and confused and bewildered from all that had taken place on Easter, just 50 days earlier. They had cast lots to decide on Matthias as the next disciple, and they were still gathered in that room trying to decide what to do next. Those 120 had been so scared for so long now, scared that their following of Christ might mean hard times or even death for them. They WERE dead, for all intents and purposes—leaderless, hopeless, visionless. They had locked themselves up, scared to death, scared OF death, not knowing what to do next. Those 120 were rudderless, and they could have stayed locked up forever in their hearts and in their room forever, not knowing what to do. They could have stayed to themselves, only spreading the news of Christ to their descendants, to the people who looked like them and shared the same language and belonged to them. They could have stayed lost. They could have safely started a small church without pushing themselves to share the Good News with new people, without the discomfort of venturing into an unknown and scary world.

But they didn’t, because something happened, something incredible and unbelievable—God had other plans for them, and sent the Spirit to do something amazing in and through and for them that day. The Spirit came in and moved among them, the Spirit that they were able to feel as the windows and doors blew open, as a mighty wind rushed through them and rattled their bones. That Spirit sat upon them, lit up like fire, resting on them, inspiring them and giving them new ability to speak and listen and understand.

The Spirit breathed through them, helping them to understand new languages, inspiring them to reach out to new people. The Spirit essentially set them on fire—in a good way—and rested upon them, giving them hope and inspiration, breathing new life into them. Inspired by the new life of the Spirit, the disciples and the other followers opened their doors, left what had kept them locked up; the came out into the crowd of festival goers. The Spirit came into their lives and lived in them, abided with them, transformed them so that they could go and transform others.

It wasn’t easy at first, as the story tells us—they were accused of being drunk and crazy and not knowing what they were talking about. So Peter helped them by preaching and sharing the news, and they all followed suit. They were drunk—drunk with the power of the Spirit, and they shared as much as they could. They shared the story of Christ and a church was born because of the rebirth they received from the Spirit. The Spirit moved in that place, on that day, moved among them so that they all understood each other, all saw each other with new eyes, all understood that they Spirit of the Lord had indeed come upon them. All of those who were gathered were transformed and made new.

The Spirit moved and breathed through the crowded streets that day, doing something new, giving birth to a new church. And the church was baptized, brought to new life, ordained and made ready for service. The initial 120 had no choice now but to go further out and share the story of Christ. Their upper room may have fit 120 of them snuggly, but there surely wasn’t room for 3,000 of them or even more. They had no choice but to go out into the world and stay there, abide there, to be engaged in the world, to be a part of its festivals, to help a church be born anew. The church was indeed born and baptized that day. The Spirit abided.

A few summers ago now, I sat at a coffee shop in Tuscaloosa with my friend James, the Presbyterian campus minister at Alabama. After a very happy and successful mission trip to Orlando to glean orange groves with our students that Spring break before, we sat down to dream about an international mission trip for our groups—Honduras? Mexico? Nicaragua? The Dominican Republic? We both remembered friends who had told us about a trip they had taken to Haiti, one that fundamentally transformed their lives. We had never even done an international mission trip, and surely had never taken one to the poorest country in the hemisphere. But there was something about Haiti that moved us, made us think, spoke to us that day. I don’t really know how to explain what happened except to say that it was a Spirit thing—a Holy Spirit blowing our doors open and moving through our room and transforming us kind of thing. The Spirit moved among us, abided with us to move us beyond our comfort zone of a safe national mission trip—moved us to open our doors and our hearts to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, God was asking us to do something risky, to fly into a third world country, to abide with folks who were born 100s of steps behind everyone else in the world, born into a country with terrible history, abusive government, the worst poverty in the world. The Spirit abided with us, blowing through us to leave our upper rooms and go out into the streets that were truly overcrowded and overrun with people, in every sense of the term.

The Spirit moved, prompted us to open our lives, open our doors, open our hearts., As our plane landed on the runway in Port-au-Prince, we all looked at each other, scared to death about leaving our comfortable lives, frightened of what we would see, the things we would experience, so apprehensive about how our lives would be permanently changed in the weeks and years to come. I probably don’t need to tell you that it was the most amazing week of my life, of our lives. There were so many Pentecost moments during our time there, so many moments where we felt the Spirit move and breath and work through us—felt it abide in us.

We listened to incredible stories of faith, faith held and deepened even in the midst of a horrific earthquake that shook the lives of the Haitian folks and changed them forever. We3 sang songs and listened to drums. We picked up and carried and fed and danced with children suffering from mental and physical challenges to hard for us ever to imagine. We cut nails and put lotion on legs and shaved the faces of teenagers dying from AIDS and yellow fever. We held babies who were probably going to die from diseases that could be healed with very simple antibiotics here in the States. We did all of that, sharing the Spirit and the message of Christ that abides deep within us.

But what was amazing was how our new Haitian friends took us in, shared the story of Christ, shared the power of the Spirit with us. How their faith transformed and deepened our own. How there were the face, the hands and feet of Christ for us. We were changed, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in ways we could never have imagined—in ways that are still changing us today.

That time was full of Pentecost moments. As the week went on, we did begin to understand each other’s languages—we began to learn Creole words we had never heard, and their knowledge of English was expanded. But those weren’t the languages that mattered during that Pentecost time. From moment one, we all shared the languages of touch, of song, of dance, of music, of Scripture, of faith. The Spirit came and blew through our lives, transformed us to the core of our being, set us on fire to share the love of Christ, to deepen our faith in so many ways. I can’t speak for everyone else on the trip (actually, I probably can), but I can say for myself that I realized how locked up I had been—I had been locked in my own upper room because of my pride, because of my calendar, because of my work, because of my fear of seeing the world as it truly is and having my life and my ways questioned. But the Spirit moved and transformed and gave us new life. The Spirit abided with us and challenged us and gave us resurrection.

Friends, the great news for us to hear today is that the same Spirit is moving through this place, challenging us, setting us on fire, getting us ready. We have to ask ourselves what is keeping us locked up in our rooms—is it our busy schedules which leave little time for true worship? Our fear of opening our lives to folks who are different from us, have different customs, worship differently, speaking different languages? Our pride of perfection that keeps us from really showing our families and friends that we are broken and imperfect? Our fear of opening ourselves to new possibilities, so that we might remain immune from the pain that might accompany them? Our fear of sharing our lives and being judged and challenging the only ways we have ever known? Or is it something else? The great news is that our locked windows and doors, our locked hearts and lives, are no challenge for God’s Spirit. The Spirit breaks in. The Spirit challenges. It prods. It moves. It breathes through us. The Spirit abides. And thanks be to God for that.