love is a banquet

on which we feed

It’s Pentecost!

The truth, however, is we’re not sure what to do with this day, with Pentecost. All that business of coming of the Holy Spirit, the rushing and violent wind, the ecstatic speaking in tongues, the uncontrollable wildfire; all that just makes us a little too uncomfortable for some reason… 

Now during middle school I took much pleasure in doing what middle school boys do; causing trouble in small but obnoxious ways. 

One summer my friend Jacob went to vacation in Branson and while he was there, he was able to lay his hands on fireworks. That entire summer we’d sneak away, roaming town, waiting for the all clear. When the moment was right, we’d light the fuse and run. *BOOM* It was great.

As that summer wore on his stash got smaller and smaller. As fall was winding down there were only a few black-cats and smoke-bombs left. So, one afternoon, while his sister was watching us, we finished them off. 

We were having fun lighting black-cats under his sister’s bedroom window and running off. Then in a fit of joy Jacob threw a smoke-bomb into the harvested corn-field behind his house…

In no time at all those dried husks were burning. Jacob was barefoot, so he yelled at me to stomp the fire out. Only I was wearing new shoes; and my mom had ordered me, upon threat of death, not to ruin this pair as quickly as the other.

So I ran to the garage, found a bucket and filled it with water from the spicket. Running back to the fire I poured out the bucket. Only the fire had grown quickly between my run to the garage and back, the water from the bucket didn’t make any difference whatsoever. Jacob and I looked at each other and immediately we sized-up that this fire was going to be out of our control soon, if not already.

As we freaked out, the way only middle-school boys can; Jacob’s sister saw our pathetic panicking. She connected the hose to the spicket and sprayed down the fire.

And that’s the story of how I almost started a hundred acre fire…

It’s also a story, though, about why sinners like us get so uncomfortable when the Holy Spirit gets talked about. 

We can’t control it. 

All we have to do is read the story of Pentecost to size-up, as quickly as Jacob and I did in that corn-field, that the Holy Spirit threatens to overtake everything. It threatens to consume everything - to do what it will.

And we will just not have that. 

We prefer to be in control, thank you very much. We prefer to be in control even as we drive the Church into oblivion. We’d even prefer to be at the helm as we go headlong into the ditch, rather than give up our pathetic control…

The tradition of the Church, however, in all its wisdom, has insisted we must come face to face with the story of Pentecost at least once a year.

And that’s for the best. Because, for as insistent as the writer of Acts is that the moment of Pentecost is essential to understand what the church truly is, we’re not convinced we want to give up our control, that we want to let the Holy Spirit do it’s thing. 

Year after year, when Pentecost rolls around, we get uneasy. We come, rigid as possible, hoping nothing happens and even breathing a sigh of relief when the day comes and goes without notice.

Or on the other hand, maybe we don’t even bother getting anxious anymore. We figure Pentecost, and the Holy Spirit, doesn’t mean a rotten thing these days. 

We’ll wear red. *yawn* Treat this day as some kind of odd birthday to the church, maybe even getting a cake, and *giggle* sing “Happy Birthday.”

Either way, though; rigid resistance or skeptical indifference, both these responses betray the way sinners get uncomfortable by the freedom of the Holy Spirit. Both of those reactions reveal the ways we try to domestic the promise of Pentecost, the work of the Holy Spirit.

Both responses make it clear; the Holy Spirit is not welcome here. 

We prefer to be in control; doing as little and expecting even less.

And that’s tragic; and it’s probably why folks aren’t dying to gather with us…

A pastor tells a story about the first congregation he was called to; a little, country congregation in the South. After he had been there a month or two he decided to offer a class on “The Faith.” He put announcements in the bulletin and newsletter, talked about the class in sermons, and so on.

When the big day came around, he got to his office early to get ready. As An hour before service, he opened his door for the class, and there stood two young girls…

That’s all.

Now he was disappointed, but he went ahead. After all, at least these two were interested…

So he decided to start by teaching the Church Year. “Do you know what Christmas is,” he began. They nodded, and he went on to talk about Advent and the Christmas season as moments in year organized by the story of faith. 

Next, he asked about Easter and the girls, again, nodded. So he talked about Lent and Easter as two other moments in a year organized around the faith. 

Then he asked if they knew about Pentecost. 

The girls looked back at him, shaking their heads ‘no.’ So he explained the Pentecost as the moment when the Holy Spirit fell upon Jesus’ followers, and they all spoke in tongues telling others about God’s mighty works.

After he finished one of the girls eyes were big and she said, “Pastor, I think I missed that day.”

Now this story is cute, but it serves a significant point.

That young girl approached the story of Pentecost in an entirely different way than we all too often do. Rather than resistance or skepticism; this girl, with no little fear and trembling, believed something like that could happen. She believed that something like that could happen in the little country church he parents brought her to week after week…

It is precisely that girl’s approach to the story of Pentecost that serves us best. Rather than making Holy Spirit dress-up in red and have another slice of cake - doing what we want; we should let this story have it’s way with us - tell us what to believe.

This story of the Holy Spirit’s coming ought to be real enough to matter, hold enough promise to get us agitated at the thought of missing the Holy Spirit’s rustling…

When we let ourselves listen to the the story of Pentecost on it’s own terms, like that young girl did, we discover this story is indeed quite unsettling. 

This story isn’t disquieting, because of the rushing wind, the speaking in tongues, or the wildfire, though. No, the story of Pentecost is frightening because it promises that God actually does give two whits about our lives, about the world - it promises that God cares enough to break into your life again and again.. 

In a world of shootings, accidents and all the little ways we cut one another down, though; this promise of God’s love is hardly welcome - we prefer our pathetic control.

The story of Pentecost, however, insists that God cares so deeply about you and me that God will come into this broken world, break into our lives, burst into our hiding places and even barge over our fears;

and there’s not a thing we can do about it…

The theologians in the Old Testament described God as an all-consuming fire; and that’s right-on.

God is an all consuming fire; a wildfire, in fact. God is a wildfire that can’t be controlled, a wildfire that will consume everything in it’s path, a wildfire that will transform this broken world in love. 

And that’s Good News. 

That’s the Good News of the story of Pentecost.

The story of Pentecost is about is the story of God’s love for each of us that burns red-hot.

What the story of Pentecost proclaims is that nothing can control, contain or domesticate this fire of God’s love; and that makes all the difference.

The point we’ve been trying to hammer down this entire sermon series is that the church is not something we control. The church operates at the discretion, or more accurately at the blazing, of the Holy Spirit. 

So, again, we come to Pentecost. 

And again, we come struggling to keep control, hold our lives together, keep God at arms length. 

All we’ve managed to do with our control, though, has been too tragically similar to those disciples who were hiding in the upper room before the Holy Spirit, the fire of God’s love burst in.  All we’ve managed to do with our control has been to cower at the threats of Sin and Death. All we’ve managed to do with our control is to give Sin and Death have the last word. 

Just like those first disciples, though, the Holy Spirit, the fire of God’s love has broken upon us as we’ve been busy hiding, hiding behind fear - we’re too old, we’re too small, the budget is too tight, we’re too shy, too dead.

As we’ve been busy trying to hole ourselves up, though, the Holy Spirit has found us out and caught us in the blaze of God’s love. 

The story of Pentecost is about the promise that the fire of God’s love is on the loose, even here - especially here.

You’re here because perhaps you’re felt that fire, maybe you’ve been consumed by it. No matter what, though, you’re here because God has plans for you. God intends to consume you in God’s all-consuming love to transform you, change you, claim you.

Admittedly, the promise of the all-consuming fire of God’s love may sound like a threat, but remember what our Lord and Savior already promised; those who lose their life for his sake will find it. 

Your life is in the fire of God's love, your true life, your life nothing can destroy.

Amen