HAPPY BIRTHDAY Y’ALL

Readings: Psalm 104:24-34, 35b, 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13, John 7:37-39, Acts 2:1-17
Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY, June 12th 2011

A printable PDF file can be found here

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy birthday. "But it's not my birthday today!" Maybe not, but today is the birthday of the Church and you are the Church, the people of God, called to be God's servants and witnesses to the whole wide world.

The day of Pentecost, Whit Sunday, is the day that many traditions look back to the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples in Jerusalem, an event foretold by the prophets, promised by Jesus and that filled the disciples with a new sense of power and boldness to accomplish the things that God was calling them to do.

There are three great celebrations in the Christian Year. Christmas, well we know about that. Easter, we have just celebrated; yet in an increasingly secular society, the message of the cross and resurrection is often lost in the midst of Easter bunnies and Spring Break. However Pentecost is the churches almost forgotten festival.

Pentecost means "The Fiftieth", so called because it fell on the fiftieth day, a week of weeks, after the Passover (or for the church a week of weeks after Easter). For the Jews it was a dual celebration. It had a historical significance for it commemorated the giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinia. It had a religious significance in that it was the day that thanksgiving offerings were offered to God for the blessings of the Harvest.

The coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples gave the celebration a deeper meaning for Christianity. As the Hebrews celebrated the completion of the law giving and the start of the old covenant of law, so Christians celebrate the completion of Christ's earthly ministry and the beginning of the New Covenant of Grace. As the Hebrews celebrated the Harvest, so the Church celebrates the spiritual harvest that the Holy Spirit brings to people’s lives.

Before the Jerusalem Pentecost, Christianity consisted of a very small group of disciples who had personally witnessed the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. They had soaked up His teaching and been transformed by His works and words, but they didn't know what they were supposed to do with all that experiences, except their Master had told them to wait and pray in Jerusalem.

On the day of the Jerusalem Pentecost, the disciples became witnesses. Peter became a preacher. Many people believed the disciples message and the Church was born. So… happy birthday y’all. It all started in that place of waiting and prayer during the Jewish festival of Pentecost. It all started when the Holy Spirit of God came upon the disciples in a new and vibrant way, with the sound of a mighty rushing wind and the sign of tongues of fire and they were filled with spiritual energy and power.

On this birthday morning I'd like to reflect on the sort of people the disciples were who gave birth to the church. My hope in so doing is that the Holy Spirit can weave into our lives the grace necessary for us to be faithful.

Firstly, the disciples were ... A people of promise

From before He even called the disciples Jesus had recognized that they were people of great potential. What the world saw was a rag-tailed gang of fishermen, laborers, clerks and hangers on who were so insecure in themselves that they left everything to follow a local carpenter with delusions of being the savior of the world.

What the world sees is not how God sees things. By the grace of God those disciples were transformed. By the grace of God the deluded carpenter turned out to be the bearer of light, truth and all that God had promised since before the foundation of the world; the Word of life in whom all creation could find meaning.

We all have a choice. To see things as the world sees them or as God sees them. We can look at our own lives the way the world does or we can see them the way God does. People will tell us all sorts of things about ourselves. They will enclose us behind all sorts of barriers.

"You can't do that. You could never manage that. You aren't capable. You’re not that sort of person. We tried that and it didn't work. We don't do things that way around here. You don't understand. You’re not listening. Stay where you belong. Do as you are told. Don't think that you are anybody ".

They were the sort of things that people said about Jesus. They are the sort of things people say about the church today. "Happy Birthday, ya bunch of losers". That's the way the world looks at the church. Are we going to listen to that? Or do we hear the voice of a God who sees in us so much more than we dare dream?

What kept the disciples from being people of unrealized potential was that they became people of promise. We are all people of potential and as we listen to God we become inheritors of promise.

In John 7, during a previous Pentecost celebration, Jesus said, “He who believes in me, as the Scripture said, “From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water”. John explains, “This He spoke about the Spirit whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given.”

The Spirits coming was the fulfillment of a promise. There are many promises in Scripture, The promises are there to unlock our faith. They are things to believe upon, to act upon. They are things to help us realize our potential.

They are gifts of grace for our life. Miss out on them and we miss out on things God has for us. How sad it would be to have birthday presents you never get around to opening because you were to busy with other things.

The disciples were also... A people of prayer

In the Pentecost room the disciples weren’t just hanging out with no particular place to go. It wasn’t the dentists waiting room. They weren’t idly perusing back copies of the Readers Digest looking for some inspirational morsel that would take their mind off their coming examination.

These people were pumped up, excited, and expectant. Jesus had promised that if they waited in Jerusalem something good would happen. They had seen Him crucified then risen again. He had been coming and going, spending time with them, teaching them things that their minds could never have grasped before the resurrection. They had witnessed His Ascension and must have been wondering, well, what next? How much more awesome can things become?

Imagine the difference it would make to our services if every time we entered this sanctuary we were pumped up ready to meet with God? I’m reminded of those weightlifter characters from Saturday Night Live. “We are here to pump you up”

“We have been praying this morning and God has said He will meet with us in our service of Worship. We will hear God’s Words in the Scriptures and the Musik, God will speak to us through the preacher and through the prayers. And when we leave we will be ready to take on what ever the devil throws at us.”

The disciples weren’t weight lifters. They were wrestlers. They wrestled with God in prayer and by grace became empowered, not with muscle power, but Holy Ghost power. We need to be a people of prayer, to claim the promises of God and realize the potential God sees within us. In doing so we will discover another characteristic of the disciples.

The disciples were..... A people of praise.

What drew the people to marvel at the disciples on the day of the Jerusalem Pentecost was the way they were praising God. It didn’t matter where all the onlookers came from, when the Spirit fell, they all heard the good news in their own languages, they all heard those disciples praising God for what was happening to them.

It would be easy to get bogged down in theological debate, about speaking in tongues, and the significance of wind and fire and living water and a whole lot of other things in the second Chapter of Acts. Do that and we miss the point that praise in a universal language.

If your heart is lifted up to God.
If you believe on His promises...
If you build your life on His Word..
If you prayerfully live out your days..
then praise just bubbles out.

An exuberant British evangelist by the name of Ishmael had a little chorus that said:

“It’s amazing what Praisin’ can do,
It’s amazing what Praisin’ can do,
If you should doubt it
You should learn to shout
It’s amazing what Praisin’ can do”

It is the work of the Holy Spirit to turn dead end lives that can be self focused and full of ungodly troubles into eternity bound, Jesus focused, Spirit filled, God honoring, Grace empowered, experiences of the awesome love of a Creator God.

In a nutshell that’s what Pentecost is all about. The power of the Holy Spirit to take prayerful lives and turn them into something powerful for God. Good News in a world full of bad news. Seems to me that is something worth celebrating.

So “Happy Birthday y’all.”
As disciples of Christ may we seek to be filled,
with the power of the Holy Spirit,
that God’s church may continue to grow!

Rev. Adrian J. Pratt