Neill Morgan
Sermon Delivered May 27, 2007
2When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
5Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” 12All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
14But 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. 15Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o”clock in the morning. 16No, 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. 18Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. 19And 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. 21Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
On Fire
My father was about ten years old when he was initiated into the community of cotton pickers in Hunt County. In the nineteen-forties, cotton was king around Greenville, and when it came time for the harvest, every hand was needed, so my father and two of his ten-year-old friends, Joe and Billy, each bought a long cotton bag, a bag that looked like a ten-foot-long pillow case, (the bigger kids and teenagers who had the strength to drag more cotton behind them had bought larger, and more expensive bags.) It was hard work, it bloodied their hands, and the bugs bit them and even though they got paid in cash at the end of every day picking, the pay wasn’t much for the ten-year-olds who had never picked before and therefore couldn’t pick as much as the bigger kids.
But the fun part, the part they had always heard about, was spending the night camped out on the edge of the cotton field. All the kids camped out so that with the first light they could be out in the field picking in the cool of the morning and take off in the heat of the day and find some shade.
By the end of the day, they were hungry and ready for whatever it was that the cotton pickers cooked on the campfire. “What are we having for supper?” they asked Joe, the biggest kid, the leader of the cotton-picking pack. He said, “Snipe, if we can catch them.”
“How do you catch them?” Dad asked.
“We divide into two different teams. One team holds the cotton bags open across the field, and the other team takes sticks and goes through the field banging them together to scare the snipe into the open cotton bags. Then you close the bag on them and there you have supper.”
The ten-year-olds, Irvin, Billy, and Joe, were left holding the bags, so to speak, while the older kids, trying not to smirk, walked off to the other side of the field, banging sticks together and chanting, “Snipe, snipe, snipe, snipe . . .”
And so, they waited. At first, they waited with great anticipation, an expectation that any minute a bunch of snipe would run into their bags, and they would catch them. As the minutes passed, and the sound of the older kids banging sticks and chanting faded into the darkness, and then an hour passed, and they saw a campfire across the field, and they heard laughter and singing, they realized that at least some of that laughter was at their expense.
Waiting. . . . waiting. . . . and waiting for a promised event. It’s easy at first, but over time enthusiasm begins to wear off, cynicism begins to set in, and, if enough time passes, the expectation fades away completely.
In Acts, Luke tells us that Jesus left the disciples with very simple instructions: “Wait. Not many days from now, you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Just wait.”
“When, exactly?” they asked. “Is it now? How many days.”
“Not long now. It’s not for you to know exactly when. But when the Holy Spirit comes, you will receive power to witness here, there, and to the ends of the earth.”
So, they were left with only the promise that it will be great when it happens, but, Jesus said, “It’s not for you to know exactly when.”
If you add it up, from the crucifixion at Passover to the resurrection to forty days of appearances, and then from the day of Ascension to the festival of Pentecost, Luke gives us a picture of about four months of waiting by the time the second chapter of Acts begins. Which would not be so hard if they had known, “four months, mark it on your calendar.” But this birth of the church was not to be a scheduled Caesarian. It was gestation of undetermined length.
“I can’t wait.” That’s a phrase we hear and use all the time, though we don’t mean it literally. Whatever we are waiting for, a phone call from a relative in Iraq or Afghanistan, the birth of a child or grandchild, a visit from family members we haven’t seen for ages, we have to wait, we have no choice. But that phrase speaks to our condition: we can’t wait, we need to get on with it, make something happen. And if nothing happens, boredom, and even cynicism begin to creep in.
Knowing how difficult it is to wait, especially when we don’t know exactly when an event will happen, we can be impressed with the disciples. At the end of 120 days, “They were all in one place.” Luke tells us they had devoted themselves to prayer, and they had used the time to choose an apostle to take the place of Judas, but other than that, they were waiting together. Any day now, something is going to happen. I have to admit, with my impatience, if it had been me, after a couple of weeks, I would have felt like a snipe hunter holding the bag.
When it happened, when the Holy Spirit came blowing in like a violent wind and tongues of fire rested over the heads of the disciples, and suddenly they were able to speak in languages of all the people who had gathered from the far reaches of the earth, they were ready for it. Those who had spent that time together in prayer understood what was happening.
Here’s the surprise. As amazing as this event was, there were people there who didn’t recognize what was happening. Luke tells us they were amazed, they were perplexed, they asked, “What does this mean?” but there were those who said they knew exactly what this means, “It means these guys have been up all night drinking wine!” They just couldn’t see it.
A few weeks ago, during youth Sunday, Kaylie, Kirsten, Elise, and Rachel stood in this pulpit and told us, “God is at work in my life through this church.” As teenagers, they have all kinds of uncertainties in front of them – they don’t know for sure what college will be like, what exactly it will look like to use their God-given gifts in meaningful work, or what their relationships that mean so much to them now will look like a year or two from now. But all of them know, “God is at work in my life.” What a sense of adventure they conveyed when they told us of all the unknowns that God has yet to reveal. As we celebrate graduations today, and baptism and confirmations, this story in Acts promises us great adventure to those who wait.
The remarkable thing about this passage is that the Spirit does not come to give them great comfort and rest, peace and quiet in the faith of Jesus Christ. Instead, the Spirit comes to stir them up, energize them, send them out on great adventures as they tell the world the good news of Jesus Christ.
This passage speaks to us, this congregation, with a striking resonance at this time. For the nearly eleven years I have lived in Sherman, I have heard that the population shift is coming North from Dallas, Plano, Allen, McKinney, to Van Alstyne and then Sherman. Just wait, it’s coming, here it comes, oh, wait, not quite yet, but soon. We don’t know exactly when, but look at the retail growth, they must know something. . . .
Here’s what we know about the condition of churches during fast demographic changes – they change very quickly. Even in times of very fast population growth, some churches stagnate, wither and die. Others grow quickly, find excitement in the newcomers who join with them in their ministry. Some of those congregations become much larger congregations, some of them decide to stay the same size, but plant new congregations that grow in both number and spiritual vitality.
What’s the difference between those congregations that wither and the congregations that flourish in the face of demographic shifts?
A major difference is the level of joy in ministry the church experiences. How much prayer for one another, love for one another, how much laughter is there, and how much company do we have in our time of tears?
In these healthy and vital churches that continue to flourish in times of demographic change, the ministry itself is a joy. Committee meetings are events we look forward to because we will be with friends, we will be spiritually fed, and we will work on something God has given us the gifts and call to carry out.
I believe an exciting time is about to commence here in Sherman, and here in this congregation. As we think about the early church’s experience, the question for us is how will we wait for it?
We cannot make this congregation grow in numbers, in faith, or in spirit. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit. What we can do is wait faithfully, feeding one another spiritually, praying for one another, making sure that the ministry that we are doing fits our gifts.
So, if you want to help us wait faithfully, to be ready for a new opportunity given by the Holy Spirit, here’s what I believe we can do:
1. If you are engaged in a ministry that feels like a misfit, brings you little joy and satisfaction, and demands gifts you don’t have and don’t find joy in developing, quit. Find something that’s a better fit. You are all gifted people, and the best response of thanks we can make is to use those gifts joyfully.
2. If you are not engaged in the ministry of a committee or a small group, find something out of all the ministry going on here that lights your fire. Get to know the other people in that group, have coffee with them, pray for them, have a party and invite them.
3. If you are engaged in the ministry of a committee or small group that fits your gifts and lights your fire, start looking around for others who could find joy in the ministry your group does. Invite them in. If the committee meeting is not the kind of event that you think would be enjoyable for a newcomer and make them want to come back, help your committee reinvent itself. Help your group see itself from the standpoint of a gifted outsider and rewrite its agenda so that it becomes a time and place of spiritual sustenance and joy for its members, never a duty, but always a time you can’t wait to arrive.
When my father told the story of the snipe hunt, he always grinned when he got to the end. “When we finally figured out what the big kids had done, we decided it wasn’t that far a walk to the hamburger restaurant on the edge of town, and we had money in our pockets from the cotton we had picked. So, we gathered our own cotton bags up and put all the big kids’ cotton bags in a pile. Before we left, we lit their cotton sacks on fire.”
The good news is that as we wait for the Holy Spirit, we don’t need to light our own fire. That is the job of the Holy Spirit. Disciples who wait on the Holy Spirit can wait with faith and confidence, knowing that we will not be left alone. God is always up to something. Are we ready to see what that is?
Thanks be to God. Amen.