Reflections on Pentecost

Note: This is a revised version of something I wrote and preached about a couple of years ago. Please don’t take me literally when I say things like ‘get out’, etc. But I do think we need to be, phased in, or not, about the business of being the church!

This Sunday is ʻPentecostʼ. Pentecost is a day to remember the coming of the Holy Spirit to the church following the Ascension of Jesus. We read in Acts 2:2 – “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.” It always raises in my mind this question, If the Holy Spirit is indeed like a “violent wind,” like an untamed hurricane, or a sudden and destructive tornado, what makes us think we want it in our lives?  Growing up in the Methodist Church we sang a song that goes, “Breathe on me Breath of God.” Itʼs a comforting image; like a baby sleeping on your chest, or a wife or husband curled up, dozing at your back, breathing a sweet gentle breath. Or, have you heard this one? “Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me, Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me.” Or, do you know this one? “Thereʼs a sweet, sweet spirit in this place, And I know that itʼs the spirit of the LORD.” Comforting songs about the “Comforter”—songs that give you a sense of peace, just as Jesus said when he breathed the Spirit upon the disciples in the Upper Room on Easter evening. But as you read what happens in Acts 2 on that day of Pentecost, you get a different feeling than the songs I remember growing up. 

Reading it again, I donʼt think the Spirit is always all that sweet and gentle. Indeed, I think the Spirit is a lot like how my Aunt Sarah (my Dadʼs youngest sister) told me a story about  “Mama Mac, my paternal grandmother. “Mama left the house one day with orders for us to do our ‘chores’.  We got busy with others things when: suddenly, from the kitchen door there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire room where we were sitting . . . and the name of that wind was Mama Mac, and she was not happy! She came home unexpectedly and instead of finding her children busy with the tasks she had left them to do, she found them sitting around doing nothing. Mama Mac roared into the den, the fly swatter in hand. We quickly scattered to finish the jobs she had given us earlier that day!“

But this is a different time you say. We have been, in this time of pandemic and turmoil in need of that gentle breath of God, that “Sweet, Sweet Spirit” that I sang in church growing up!  At a time when many of us are at least cautious, if not still shut in and away from the world, perhaps a dose of “mighty rushing wind” and “tongues of fire”, those phrases used to describe the outbreak of the Spirit on that first Pentecost is needed to move us back out into the world and to the tasks we were given by Jesus as he left us.

It was fifty days after Easter and the disciples had done very little in that time but hang out with Jesus, spending some quality time with their Risen Lord. Then he left, really left, ascended into heaven left. (As we preached about last week!) And before he went, he told them to get busy, he told them in Acts 1: 8, “you will be my witnesses . . . to the ends of the earth.” And then he ascended. After he went up, angels came to them and said, in essence, “Quit standing around. Get busy” (Acts 1:11). But, they really hadnʼt been doing anything yet. And as our story opens, they 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 .” And, as the rest of the story tells us, that wind gave them a job, and the ability to do the job, and then it drove them out into the street so that they would get busy doing that job. Which is why the Holy Spirit, the mighty and powerful wind of God, is more like an Mama Mac than any sweet baby or gentle lover.

And, as we prepare to mark Pentecost in 2020 the Holy Spirit is after us:

• It is after us to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with a world that has not had much good news lately.
• It is after us to get busy with what we have been called to do.
• It is after us to quit worrying about being together in one room and to start worrying about finding ways to witness to those in need of Godʼs love. 
• It is after us to look around us and see who it is that we know or know about who needs to know about the love and grace and healing of God in Christ. 
• It is after us, and the only question right now is this: Are we going to go voluntarily, or is ʻMama Macʼ Spirit going to have to make us go?