The Itinerant Yet Intentional Spirit (Acts 2:1-11)

From Acts 2 onwards, those who believe in Jesus are never the same.  The Day of Pentecost is our day to remember the coming of the Holy Spirit who fills the Church with power to live in and testify to the fullness of the gospel.  The Spirit descends to help the believers, still a bit dazed and confused from the events of Jesus’ death, resurrection, and subsequent ascension.  From this small gathering shall come forth a movement of people, summoned for ministry and mission, aiming for the fulfillment of Christ’s parting words: “to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

The Day of Pentecost serves as a witness to the Church, now two thousand years later, to remember that the winds of the Spirit have yet to quiet down.  To understand Pentecost, you must not speak of it as a day long ago, or of the Spirit in a manner that presumes the “work” of the Spirit is done.  The Spirit summons the whole people of God to the ministry and mission of the Church, gifting each Christian and calling the many to be “Church”.  With the Spirit, Pentecost is the beginning and the winds of the Spirit have yet to die down. 

Recently, I read a recent spiritual memoir by Episcopal writer Sara Miles, who coordinates a major food pantry ministry out of her home congregation in San Francisco.  Miles is the grand-child of American Baptist missionaries, yet in her own upbringing, she had no connection to Christianity.  She shares, “I came late to Christianity, knocked upside down by a midlife conversion centered around a literal chunk of bread.”  Her previous memoir Take This Bread is a remarkable celebration of how the Eucharist became such a transforming experience for her. She became involved in a food pantry ministry distributing hundreds of pounds of food each week, using the very sanctuary of the Church as the distribution site. The Food Pantry has become a parable for what happens when the Spirit works in the midst of the gathered people. Miles writes, “The immediacy of my conversion experience left me perhaps freakily convinced of the presence of Jesus around me.  I hadn’t figured out a neat set of ‘beliefs’, but discovered a force blowing uncontrollably through the world” (Jesus Freak, HarperOne, p. xi.) 

Sara Miles’ books celebrate this unshakable belief that the Spirit is moving in the world.  Unfortunately, Miles has discovered in her encounters with churches around the United States, the feeling is not readily shared.  When Miles serves as a guest speaker, she notes how many clergy and laity will praise her work with the Food Pantry ministry project or the creative energy that her home congregation is known for, all while claiming that such things are not possible elsewhere, especially in their own parishes.  Miles finds the claims of insufficiency disappointing to hear.  “What more permission do they need?” she asks her priest.  “‘Receive the Holy Spirit’ isn’t enough?” (Jesus Freak, p. 42)

“Receiving the Holy Spirit” runs throughout the Bible, imaged as seemingly “tame” concepts.  Trace the presence of the Spirit in the sacred texts, and you will see the Spirit as “dove” empowers Jesus for his ministry, the Spirit as flame ignites the Church for a worldwide mission, and the Spirit as wind can be a gale force wind, bringing new life and renewal to the people of God.

In the history of the faith, Celtic Christianity has an image of the Holy Spirit quite unlike any other.  The Celts described the Spirit to be like “a wild goose”:  a bird that is unpredictable, chaotic, and really could shake up the fellowship if turned loose in their midst.  The Spirit as “wild goose” is a good image as we sometimes talk of the Church needing change or improvement, yet we are unprepared when the Spirit works in a manner that is unpredictable, chaotic, and really shakes up the fellowship. 

I shared this “Spirit as wild goose” image awhile back with a friend, who is now preparing to start a new ministry position.  The other day he received a “welcoming” gift from one of his new congregants.  The gift was a “goose call”, sort of a wooden whistle that mimics the sound of a goose.  My friend remembered our conversation about the Spirit as wild goose and started laughing.  What better sign of a new ministry about to begin, in my friend’s life as well as the life of the congregation he’s about to serve as their new minister?

On a recent Sunday morning, I received a gift from Joshua Perkins. He decided I needed something new to wear that would help people know I serve as the minister.  With great skill, he made a sign with a piece of construction paper and drew a yellow cross upon it.  The sign reads “from Joshua” to “the minister”. 

Reading the Acts 2 narrative, it would be most appropriate if we contracted with Joshua to create several dozen more of these signs.  (Stephen and Galen, does Joshua work by commission or through an agent?)  The story of Pentecost is not about particular persons being called above the rest.  The story of Pentecost affirms that all Christians are called to be part of the furtherance of the Church.  There may be persons ordained to ministry as a life calling, however, “ministry” is the work of the whole people of God.  The sign should not be just “for one”.  A sign saying “minister” should be around each of our necks!

The Book of Acts stresses that the Spirit empowers the many, not the few. Each of us is considered “a minister”, perhaps not in the “professional” sense, but rather in the understanding that each of us as Christians are called to live out and share the gospel.  Baptists have kept to this strand of New Testament belief with fair consistency over our past four centuries as a movement.  We speak of “the priesthood of all believers”, believing that the ministry is shared among the many, not the work of one or the few. 

On the day of Pentecost, Acts tells us that the Spirit summoned into being a people, not an institution.  Early Baptists reflected this through their practice of referring to their congregations as “a gathered people”.  We reflect this in the governance model of the church.  Not one of us, ordained or lay elected is given “the last word”.  We work together to do the ministry and mission of the Church.  We can have structures galore, yet the New Testament affirms that each of us is “equal”.  We may be different, but each of us is on the same footing. 

Being the same but different is one of the more delightful and challenging assertions to make on Pentecost Sunday.  Jesus’ disciples were suddenly able to speak in the languages of the world, offering their witness to the gospel.  Again, the last words of Jesus before His ascension are reflected here:  to be Christ’s witnesses to the ends of the earth.  The gospel is meant for every nation and every people, without partiality or particularity. 

The “Church” is meant to reflect the multi-hued face of humanity, its prayer and praise offered up in a multitude of tongues.  The story of Pentecost is often called the reversal of the story of Babel, where the many languages of the world were scattered, and language became a “barrier” between peoples.  In Acts, the Day of Pentecost audaciously claims that what was separate can be united.  In her last work, the theologian Letty Russell observes, “God’s intention is to ‘remove all the bars’ and create a world full of riotous difference” (Letty Russell, Just Hospitality, Westminster/John Knox Press, 2009, p. 53-4).  We see this vision lived out in the many and diverse people gathered together at Pentecost, and it is our challenge to live into that vision as the church of the present generation.

That can be a tall order.  There are many persons in our community and around the world who often feel invisible or marginalized due to something that others have deemed less desirable or commendable about them.  Sometimes, persons will self-disclose some involvement with a church at some point in life, yet they have parted ways with “the Church” after getting treated as “different”. 

The Spirit at Pentecost challenges barriers, asking the Church to live into the divine intent of Creation in all its splendid diversity and help others see “riotous difference” as a good thing, not aberrations to be dismissed, ignored or deported.  What happened on the day of Pentecost is a multinational, multicultural, multilingual, “riotously” inclusive story that Christians are called to tell and live out.  The day of Pentecost gave the Church a vision of its true calling: to be a place beyond borders and boundaries, open to the many.

For the past three years, I experienced a bit of this ongoing “Pentecost” experience when I attended the annual meeting of the Baptist World Alliance.  Each morning’s worship service included hymns and songs in varying languages.  Even though many of us did not speak the language being featured in a hymn, somehow the crowd worked together to learn the words and sing.  It was less of a “singing in a foreign language”.  By the time we reached the last verse, the crowd sang together in one of the many languages through which God is given due praise. 

In our worship and in our common work, the many and different were able to be the “one” body of Christ.  We did not lose our differences in this experience (indeed, other parts of the meeting bore witness to the differing theological worldviews and perspectives among the participants), yet we knew the presence of the one Spirit moving among us, summoning us to be the gathered people called “Church”.  And together we sang of the Spirit who invites us all to live and testify to the gospel way of Jesus Christ.