The Busy Holy Spirit
The Pentecost celebration of all that we're not
When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. 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. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs-- in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
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. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
`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.”Acts 2:1-17
It is Pentecost today, “the Church’s birthday,” and what a party it was, with the Holy Spirit and the wind and the fire and the speaking in tongues that somehow everyone understood. And it’s all vibrant and wonderful. But there is a temptation to look at the ecstatic revival of that day and think, well, where is that for us? Or perhaps there’s a different temptation to look at the people with the most exciting gifts of the Spirit and say wow, how can we all be like that? Just a few years after the Church’s birthday, when the Church was not old enough to drive, we see that’s one of the problems emerging in the early Corinthian church when Paul writes them in 1 Cor 12, our other reading today.
Growing up, I wanted more than anything to be a professional athlete. Didn’t matter the sport, football, baseball, basketball, I loved them all. Like many boys, my idols were mostly professional athletes. For a kid in North Carolina, there was no greater legend than Michael Jordan, and part of the legend of Michael Jordan was that he was cut from his varsity high school basketball team as a sophomore, then worked and worked his tail off and eventually became, well, Michael Jordan. As the son of a teacher, I mean no offense when reporting that this single story of Michael Jordan convinced more young North Carolina men to work hard than anything any teacher could have told them. We all wanted to “be like Mike.”
So even though I was never that athletically gifted, and even though we had a weird, lopsided, half-paved-half-gravel driveway, I asked my parents for a basketball goal so I could practice. And for several years from about 8 years old, underneath the orange street lamp, I would head out there and practice every kind of shot, free throws, layups, three pointers. And after working my tail off, when it finally came time for middle school basketball, I discovered: I was not Michael Jordan. And no, not because I made the team on my first try. It became clear that I just did not have the gifts of my peers, and that they could not be fixed by any amount of late-night free-throws. I’d go on to repeat this pattern with other dreams I had, chasing them for sometimes months, sometimes years, whether it was actor, musician, comedian, whatever.
The point isn’t that hard work doesn’t pay off. Honestly, I probably didn’t really work hard enough at all of these things. Nor is the point that I just am devoid of anything to offer; as it turns out, I did okay at school. But I didn’t care about school. I didn’t think of anything like that as being gifted. The athletes, the musicians, the famous actors, now they had gifts. I could do well at our Sunday School Bible Jeopardy, but as a preacher’s kid, it’d be kinda embarrassing if I didn’t.
I think it’s far easier for us to see the things we can’t attain as gifts than the real ones God gave us. There’s an old observation to this point: every rock star really wants to be a comedian, and every comedian wants to be a rock star. Maybe because when you’ve been given something by God it may not even feel like a gift. You may think, “This is just who I am. It’s just what I can do. I mean, how else could I be?” Even with deeveloped skills, someone might compliment you, “Oh you’re such a good carpenter,” and you might think, “Yeah, well, just cause my dad showed me how.” Or, “You’re such a good pianist,” and you think, “I don’t even really like piano that much but, okay.” Or someone could even say, “I’ve had a lot of friends but you, you’re such a loyal friend,” and you might think, “Well, how the heck else are you supposed to be a friend if you’re not loyal?”
There are so many ways to envy so many gifts we don’t have. But this robs us twice: first, robbing us of seeing that we do have gifts, and then robbing everybody by failing to use them to the fullest. Multiply this across a whole subculture and an even weirder thing happens, where only a couple of types of gifts are seen as truly valuable gifts: athlete, musician, comedian. And then you really have a bunch of unused gifts, and a bunch of people trying really hard to make themselves have a couple of gifts they don’t. After all, we saw what happened when Michael Jordan tried to play baseball (and, to be fair, he still made the minor league team).
Why am I saying this on Pentecost? Because of all the wonderful outpouring of spiritual gifts on that Pentecost day, something strange started to happen in churches that still can happen in churches to this day: Christians started to think that the gifts of the Holy Spirit that really mattered looked a certain way. For the Corinthians, it was miraculous tongues, big pizzazz, an emotional fever pitch. You can imagine them hearing the reports of Pentecost and wanting to say, “Well we want our Pentecost,” and then everybody wanted the glory of being the tongue-speaker, and suddenly more and more Corinthians were speaking in tongues than, frankly, could have possibly been gifted by the Holy Spirit.
And so Paul says hold on now—every gift is spiritual, and it’s all from God, and they all can be used to build up the church (or drive churches apart). If you are a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit indwelling in you, and the Holy Spirit has given you a gift that is just as valid as any other, and more than that, Christ’s body needs you. “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.” (1 Cor 12:4-6) From wisdom to knowledge to faith to healing to power to prophecy to discernment to tongues to interpreting the tongues, and this isn’t a complete list, “All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” (1 Cor 12:11-12)
So first and foremost, on this Pentecost birthday celebration, do not be jealous of another church’s celebration, and don’t be jealous of another’s gifts. We should rejoice and recognize how it all glorifies God, absolutely yes, but don’t be Michael Jordan playing baseball (or me playing baseball). Look at what God has given you and glorify him with that.
And I don’t want to embarrass her, but if I were to think of someone who has magnified God today, today I’m thinking of Elsie.1 I can’t think of anybody who has done more for the quiet work of the Holy Spirit that we should lift up on this Pentecost Sunday. All the emails, all the little things, all the preppings of communion, making sure tablecloths are clean, the livestream is doing okay…I mean, I know she says she retired from being a church administrator, but I don’t know if you could really retire the church administrator out of her. An old Methodist bishop said, “Sometimes the Holy Spirit wills us to do things we wouldn’t want to do, or else it wouldn’t require the Holy Spirit to get us to move,” and based on how many times she had to email me to get the bulletin right, I can tell you the Holy Spirit was at work where she was tired of going!
But it’s not just Elsie. I think of the way the Holy Spirit has moved in folks like Lisa, the dedication and willingness to show up and be the point person for our organ playback—thank you Lisa.2 And thank you to our organists who have recorded our hymns, whose gifts pour through those pipes even though they’re not here, just as the gifts of saints gone by hold us up in these pews and this pulpit and this communion table they carved. The Holy Spirit has been at work in the unsung work that’s not listed in our bulletin, folks like Keith, Woody, and Natalie helping people cross the street and doing a thousand other things over the years. I don’t know what else needs to be said about what Tom does for the livestream and keeping our building functioning, or Jenny for the work of the Spirit has kept her going another year as clerk when she is well due to retire there, or Jane for her gift of beautifying the church, or Vicki’s gifts of testimony and interpersonal love, or Sandy’s gifts of technical support and emotional support, or Dave’s gifts of patient wisdom, or our other Dave for all you’ve done for this church, or Bruce’s gifts of historical memory, or Kay’s gifts of lightheartedness, or Valerie’s gifts of faithful dedication, or Jane’s work at the 4C’s and ongoing friendship, or all Neil and Kristin have done for our community through the library, or how the Spirit is moving in Lori to pick up where Elsie has left off, or Paige’s passion for the poor in our community, or Anne Page’s dedication as our treasurer, or how I see the Spirit at work in the kindness of Joyce, Ernie, Sally, and Yvonne each week at the 4C’s, and I feel bad that I know I can’t list everyone, because the Holy Spirit is busy!3
So we may not have tongues of fire appearing anytime soon. But if you’ve stuck around, you’ll see that Pentecost did happen and is here, because the Holy Spirit has been at work this whole time. Because part of the point of this wild firey event happening on Pentecost was to show that the gifts of the Holy Spirit were not only for the apostles, who had already received the Holy Spirit from Jesus (John 20:19-23), but were being poured out on the whole church. Ordinary folks who had traveled from far and wide to be there for that Pentecostal festival, what they called shavu’ot, the Feast of Weeks, and suddenly felt that God had gifted them all. Not just the musicians or the prophets, but the people who just did good, humble work, who cooked meals for their families, who kept the shop running another year, who harvested another crop after another year of working in the fields.
Today, we celebrate that God has blessed all of us who are gathered in Jesus’ name, all of you, with spiritual gifts. We celebrate that yes, the Holy Spirit is in you! Do you believe it? Do you know that the Holy Spirit is in you? And now what are you gonna do about it?
If you don’t know, there’s a way to find out. In fact, I may have made a mistake in this sermon, because we don’t find out what to do with our gifts by looking at each other. That’s not why we gather here each week. Looking too much at each other is the disease that had me shooting free throws at 9pm on a school night. We gather here as spiritually gifted sinners who look not at ourselves for inspiration, but at Jesus Christ, who had every spiritual gift imaginable, and did not hoard those gifts for himself, but emptied himself and gave up everything for his beloved children.4 Don’t look at each other’s gifts. Look for the ways you can give the gifts you already have—the gifts that you may have forgotten or never realized were gifts—and use them to glorify God and bless your neighbor. As your pastor, I bear witness that you have already done so. If you have forgotten, remember your gifts. When we forget again, let us remember the cross. And may we all go and do likewise. Amen.
Elsie is our long-time church member who is moving away this week to be closer to family.
We have a system that allows our organ to record hymns through the pipes themselves in a program to a file, and then we can play back the hymns not through speakers, but on Sunday morning through the live pipes as if they were being played in person.
I rarely spontaneously say “Can I get an Amen?” but at this point I did.
Phil 2:1-11