Acts 2:1-21
“Living in the Last Days”
A friend went to New York City for a meeting that lasted several days.
One afternoon he decided to go over to Central Park to see what was happening.
It was a beautiful day, the tulips were blooming in plentiful supply and he was thankful to be able to take a break from being inside.
The air seemed sweet, even in Central Park.
He sat on a bench to take in the passing parade.
He told me, during this time of enjoying the scenery, he never once heard any English spoken.
He heard French and Spanish, and German and Russian and Korean and other oriental tongues, but not a word of English.
He was surprised.
Many of our cities today have people coming to them from all over the world to start a new life….
…to make a better life, an American life.
They too want part of the “American Dream.”
The day of Pentecost was a day in which all kinds of foreign persons had come to Jerusalem to celebrate an important Hebrew Festival.
It could have been just like what my friend witnessed in Central Park—a day full of anonymous folks reaching for a common goal. (from Rev. John LeGault)
We have just read about it in Acts Chapter 2.
These people were from all over the Mediterranean area. They came to take part in a celebration.
The disciples (a larger group than the eleven) were gathered in the upper room, and something happened.
There were what seemed to be tongues of fire and a sound like a rushing wind.
The Holy Spirit had come, and wind and fire were metaphors that only weakly described the reality of what they experienced.
The best they could say was that “it was something like that.”
Then, under the power of the Holy Spirit, they began to speak in “other tongues”.
The native tongue of Jesus’ disciples was Aramaic.
At Pentecost they were able to speak in the languages of the various visitors in Jerusalem.
What was happening?
Peter was there and he said that this was what had been prophesied would happen in the Last Days.
Believers would receive the Holy Spirit and have dreams and visions, and it wouldn’t be limited to only men…
…it would include women, and sons and daughters and old men and slaves.
The scene we might think we see in our minds is frightening, but it was not meant to be.
God was doing something.
God was uniting all the races…
…He was pulling everyone together into one family of God.
Some of the people who were there remained untouched by what was going on. They said the disciples were drunk and they sneered.
There are always those who won’t see, aren’t there?
Who were they? Were they fellow Hebrews who just couldn’t buy this strange phenomenon?
Perhaps so.
For them God was in the law and the prophets, not in the wind and in the tongues of fire.
God was in the Temple, not at a Pentecost Harvest Festival.
God was where they always thought God would be and nowhere else.
Do we think like that sometimes?
Do we keep God locked up or assigned to those places where we’ve always known Him to be, our church, our prayers, our hymns, our narrow thinking and so forth?
Well we certainly can’t put God in a box…
…God is much too big for that!
We are living in what God calls the ‘last days’. Now, granted, these last days have been going on for over 2,000 years…and may very well last another 2,000 years…
…but, in the meantime, what are we to do?
Before leaving this earth, Jesus comforted His disciples.
He told them that He would not leave them like they were orphans, but would send the Holy Spirit to be with them forever.
He told them that this Holy Spirit would live inside of them, teach them all things, and remind them of everything Jesus had said to them.
He also told them that the Holy Spirit would give them boldness and power, and that through the power of the Holy Spirit, they would be witnesses for Jesus to all the world.
He also prayed to the Father that all of us, all who will believe in Christ through the message of the disciples, “that all of [us] may be one” just as the Father is in Jesus and Jesus is in the Father “May they also be in us so that the world may believe…”
I read a recent article which stated that a majority of the people involved in the world religions are becoming more and more polarized…including Christians.
People are looking for black and white answers in a rainbow world.
We see the fruits of such beliefs in what happened on September 11, in what is still happening today, and in the church’s inability to agree on issues which are fractionalizing us more and more.
The indwelling of the Holy Spirit changes everything.
At that first Pentecost the newly born community of believers was transformed from a cozy group whose members knew one another very well into a broad community of people who came from everywhere.
It’s as though the coming of the Holy Spirit reversed the story of Babel.
The community of Jesus’ followers centered on inviting and including, not rejecting and excluding.
Sadly, that did not last very long.
We see in the writings of Paul that the Jewish Christians…
…that is the Jews who had become Jesus followers…
…had a hard time accepting the non-Jewish Jesus followers.
They thought that God played favorites and they believed that the non-Jewish Christians had to become Jews and be circumcised before they could be saved.
That’s why the apostle Paul talks about grace so much in his letters.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works so that no one can boast.”
I guess we need to be reminded of this over and over again.
Learning to accept, to love, to see things the way God intends us to see them is a journey…a journey that does not end in this lifetime.
We are in the middle of “becoming”…
How has your understanding of God and God’s love for all humankind changed and grown over the past year?
Has it grown?
The opening years of the 21st Century have been devastating.
We have experienced war among nations and terrorism from groups who know of no better way of trying to call attention to their struggles.
Violence is a slap in the face of God…
…for all of us have been created in God’s image…
…no matter who we are and no matter where we live…
…we all have sacred worth…
…for we are all loved by God equally.
As Christians, we believe that God is love, and that God continues to be with us and among us.
But it’s so easy to get messed up, to lose track, to lose step with the Spirit of God.
That’s why we must strive to grow in our knowledge and love of God.
On the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came to the disciples and they became aware that God, who had been a living presence with them in Jesus, was still a living presence in their world and in their lives.
God became very real to them…
…more real than ever before.
Our experiences with the Holy Spirit are unique and personal.
One young man told about his unique experience of the reality of God. He had grown up in the Christian faith, but said that it became truly ‘real’ for him when he was involved in scientific research.
As a doctoral student in the field of chemistry, he and a team of researchers were working to fill in one of the blank spaces in the table of chemical elements.
One night, he was working late.
He was alone at the computer when he started seeing the numbers come up that meant his team was approaching the discovery they were seeking.
He felt the excitement rising within him. Then, all of a sudden, it was there. He knew that his team had been successful in making a real discovery and pushing back the limits of human knowledge. In that moment, he said that he experienced the reality and the presence of God as he never had before. He felt that he had gotten in touch with the One who is holding all things together and making them work.
A young woman shares a very different kind of experience.
She is a person who pays more attention to smells than most people do.
The smell of flowers, the smell of cooking, the smell of freshly turned earth in her garden, the smells of her husband and her children are all uniquely special to her.
One day she fell off to sleep on her sofa.
She dreamed that she saw God coming toward her. She ran to meet God and God swept her up in a warm and loving embrace—and she said she dreamed that she could smell God.(from a sermon by James L. Kellen, Jr.)
These people experienced the reality of God in their own unique ways.
The things that happened to them were the same thing that happened to the early Christians on the Day of Pentecost.
It would be a mistake for us to try and have an experience of God that is exactly like the experience of someone else.
How have you experienced God in a way that is uniquely your own?
What have you done with that experience.
On the Day of Pentecost about three thousand unique and different people repented and were baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins.
That same experience is open to all of us.
The Holy Spirit is here, all around us, trying to get through to us.
This is the God who created us and loves us and wants for us a life that is the very best that human life can be.
The experience of the Holy Spirit is here for all of us.
Keep on wanting it. Keep on reaching out for it.
If we are open to it, eventually it will find us!
Amen.
