May 30, 2004 (Pentecost Sunday) - Dr. Stephen C. Lien, "Like a Mighty Wind"

In a moment, I am going to invite you to turn to page 1303 in the back of your maroon Good News Bible where the text for today is recorded from Acts, the second chapter. But before we get there, there is a line from that text and a line from the drama that we saw that occurs to a lot of us on Pentecost Sunday. What does this mean? What are we supposed to do? You know, there are some holidays and observations in the life of the church that make some sense to us-Christmas and Easter are two of them, but when we come up against Pentecost, I think many of us in mainline churches think, "What on earth do we make of this? We don't do Pentecost, do we? That's for the Pentecostals, the charismatics-people who are "slain in the spirit" and who talk in tongues and get all sweaty during worship. We don't do that. Do we? We normally have some decorum; we are relatively dignified; we think more than we emote."

I think there is a legitimate question that comes to us, and it troubles me, and I am obliged as a pastor to come to Pentecost every year, but it just feels so weird, so strange. And I wonder if it does for you too? I would like to pose that question, and perhaps posing that question will raise as many other questions as it gives answers today.

Once again, I think we must go home and struggle and work through what Pentecost is for us in the 21st century. Perhaps it can help if we set this in context first. We come to the Book of Acts for the first time in many months in our exploration of Scripture. It is important for us to know that Acts is basically the gospel of Luke, Volume II, by the same author. Luke tells us the whole story of the life, death and resurrection and some post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. He ends his gospel with Jesus being taken up in the air, having told the disciples to now go back to Jerusalem and wait for Him to send them the power of the Holy Spirit. So we open the Book of Acts, and Luke continues his writing. The first chapter records how the disciples replaced Judas Iscariot, who had betrayed Jesus and committed suicide, and they were down to 11 disciples. The disciples decided that they would elect another one, and so they cast lots, and Matthias was elected, and then they sat and they waited.

Okay. What 's going on? What's coming? Where's the power of the Spirit here? You remember Jesus was crucified during the feast of Passover. The Jews knew that the Festival of Pentecost would come in 50 days. This was not something new that was started after Jesus died. This was an annual feast for the Jews. It was called the Feast of Weeks or the Feast of Harvest. Pentecost came seven weeks, or fifty days (Penta means 50), after Passover. Fifty days after they put in the sickle to till the soil, they were to come before God in the celebration of Pentecost. Hundreds of people from the entire surrounding world were obliged to come to Jerusalem for the Festival of Pentecost, so they were in Jerusalem that day celebrating.

When Jesus had ascended after 40 days, there were 10 days where these disciples sat there: gathered together, cowering, worrying about what was going on. And I think it's much the same situation we face today in the 21st century. Truly, we come here today and a lot of us are pretty bewildered, watching and waiting and thinking that there should be something dramatic that happens in our lives of faith. I am one of those. I have always looked for something dramatic. I like drama. I want my faith to be full of drama, but it usually doesn't happen that way.

I went to Bible School in Seattle, Washington in the early 1970s, and there was this big revival sweeping across the United States - this charismatic movement - some of you will remember that. And I read a book called Like a Mighty Wind about revival in New Guinea. I am embarrassed to say I was in a singing group called The Mighty Wind! Nevertheless, during this Bible School time, I knew there was a revival going on up the street at the Assemblies of God Church, and I was going to get me revived. This staid Lutheran-I went up there and I wanted a dramatic change in my life of faith, no matter what. I went in there during this service, and people were being "slain in the Spirit." I don't want you to think that I am discounting this. Be careful here, because the Holy Spirit comes in radically different ways to all of us, whatever our denominational persuasion, and it is not for us to put God in any sort of a box. So hear that clearly. But I wanted to speak in tongues in the worse way, and I knelt there at the altar, and they laid hands on me and they said to say "Baby" backwards a few times, to prime the pump, but it didn't happen. I was really disappointed.

But I have discovered something else - that God meets us where we are. God meets us in our own personalities, temperaments, backgrounds, churches, and denominations. God meets us here today in remarkable ways. The basic truth of this story of Pentecost is that people's lives were changed. Through 12 disciples the world was changed. Acts tells us the story of how Jesus passed the baton. Okay folks, you have watched me do it for three years. This is how it is done. This is who you are to become, now here is the baton - go and change the world. It happened because the Holy Spirit came in a new way and took control. I have learned that it is not that I need more of the Holy Spirit. I've got all there is, and so do you. It's the Holy Spirit who needs more of me.

I don't believe that God parcels God's self out. Another dose, okay, another cup and a half. We have all of God, but God doesn't have all of us. There is a famous quote, I think it is by Teillard de Chardon, that someday "… after mastering the winds and gravity, man shall harness for God the energy of love and then, for the second time in history, man shall have discovered fire."

After mastering the winds and gravity, we shall harness for God the energy of love and then for the second time in history, we shall have discovered fire.

I believe that God comes and kindles this flame in us. God speaks to us, whatever our temperament, whatever our need, sometimes in a still small voice, sometimes in the roar and the rush of the mighty wind, sometimes in the flames of fire that ignite our hearts. God comes to us all-desires to change our lives and transform our world. We can't do it on our own strength, with our own resources. The task is too big; the message too great. So we rely on the power of God's Holy Spirit, and God comes to change our lives.

I'd like to read to you from the Acts of the Apostles (which might be better titled the "Acts of the Holy Spirit"), the second chapter, the first 21 verses. This is God's Word to us today:

When the Pentecost came, all the believers were gathered together in one place and suddenly there was a noise from the sky that sounded like a strong wind blowing. And it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And then they saw what looked like tongues of fire that spread out and touched each person there and they were filled with the Holy Spirit and they began to talk in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak. There were Jews living in Jerusalem, religious people, who had come from every country in the world. When they heard this noise, a large crowd gathered. They were excited because they all heard the believers talking in their own languages. In amazement and wonder, they exclaimed, "These people who are talking like this are Galileans. How is it that all of us here hear them speaking in our own native languages? We are from Parthia, Media, Elam, Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia; from Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, from Egypt, the regions of Libya belonging to Cyrene , some of us are from Rome - Jews and Gentiles converted to Judaism, and some of us are from Crete and Arabia. Yet all of us hear them speaking in our own languages about the great things that God has done." Amazed and confused they kept asking each other, "What does this mean?" Others made fun of these people, saying these people are drunk. But Peter stood up and in a loud voice began to speak to the crowd. "Fellow Jews and all you who live in Jerusalem, listen to me and let me tell you what this means. These people are not drunk as you suppose; it is only nine o'clock in the morning, instead this is what the prophet Joel spoke about. 'This is what I will do in the last days,' God says. 'I will pour out my Spirit upon everyone, your sons and daughters will proclaim my message; your young men will see visions; your old men will have dreams. Yes, even on my servants - men and women - I will pour out my Spirit in those days and they will proclaim my message. I will perform miracles in the sky above and wonders on the earth below. There will be blood, fire and thick smoke; the sun will be darkened and the moon will turn red as blood before the great and glorious day that the Lord returns. And then whoever calls out to the Lord for help will be saved.'

This is the Word of the Lord; thanks be to God.

Let us pray.

God we come to you with the same questions that those people raised 2,000 years ago: What does this mean? What shall we do? We too are "dazed and confused," amazed and filled with wonder. We don't understand. And yet this power of love, this power of your Holy Spirit, this power of transformation, is something we desperately hunger for. So often it is contained under a thin varnish of "everything is okay" and our outward signs of security. Lord, we pray that you take your varnish remover and open us up. Make us vulnerable. Make us new today. Transform us in whatever way you choose. For we give you permission; we invite you. And we claim that you do that very thing, O Lord, we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen

Dear friends in Christ, Grace to you and peace from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen

What does this mean? What does Pentecost mean for us? It is the birthday of the church. We put on a party hat. We celebrate the birthday of the church. We hear beautiful and unusual music. What does it mean for us? Does not the church need a revival of some sort today? It seems to me that so often we have a comatose faith. We come stumbling in here with sleep in our eyes, not expecting much to happen. Certainly nothing that is not scripted in the bulletin. We put God in the box. We know what it is to be a Presbyterian Christian. We know the Order of Worship. We know how routine our lives of faith can often be. You know what the world sees: status quo, business as usual, people asleep at the wheel. And I wonder what we are waiting for? Does the world today marvel at what the Christian church is doing? Is the world just flabbergasted at what the church accomplishes in the name of Christ? Is there all kinds of joy, excitement, enthusiasm, feeling from the church? Not very often; not at least as far as the world sees.

Lloyd Ogilvie was pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Hollywood and chaplain of the United States Senate. He has written all kinds of books, and many years ago he wrote one on the Book of Acts called, The Drumbeat of Love. He says this:

Everywhere I go these days, I hear the same urgent appeal from Christians - they want their lives to count. The greatest fear is that they might live their lives in ineffectiveness, ineptness or insipidness. They long for a challenge big enough to demand their allegiance, exciting enough to rally their enthusiasm, crucial enough to warrant their time. Restlessness invades both clergy and laity today - impatience with business as usual and dull churchmanship. People are asking, "Isn't God up to something more exciting in the world than this?" Something is missing. Beneath the highly polished surface, incompleteness engulfs us. Our churches are filled with people who long for zest and gusto to life. All of the icons of security just don't satisfy. There must be something more. The church casts about to provide interesting and entertaining programs but few of the efforts have anything to do with the central mission of the church.

Ogilvie continues:

One man recently said to me, "I've been a deacon in my church for years. We've built a church building, raised money, served on committees, but the one thing my church never gave me was a relationship with Christ that would make my life exciting.

The problem, Ogilvie writes, is that our faith has been domesticated to suit our culturally conditioned lives rather than dramatized as the ultimate purpose, which gives meaning and direction to all other secondary loyalties.

There is a restlessness among us today. There is a restlessness among us that I feel is the stirring of the Holy Spirit. God is creating in us a sense of a need for fulfillment and purpose and direction so that we can become something other than a memorial society - that we can become shakers and movers in our world. You see the church is to be the joyous fellowship of those who will write a new chapter in the Book of Acts. We are not to be embalmers of the past, but enablers of the present and the empowered people for a new age.

How is it working here? What are we doing? What difference does it make? We heard in February about our vision of reaching out and welcoming disinterested and secular people from the Westside of Los Angeles - 34,000 of them just in our zipcode - 51% have no faith involvement at all, over 17,000 people. How are we doing? How are we doing reaching out to those people? Because we said in the vision that we are to welcome them into a dynamic, Christian faith community, to a life-changing relationship with Jesus and together to change the world for the better.

How are we doing? How are you doing? Who have you prayed for? Who have you invited to church? There was a motley crew of these disciples that sat behind dead-bolted doors, maybe with an armchair underneath because they were so frightened. They were uneducated, motley with callous hands, but through them God changed the world and transformed the course of human history. Jesus said you should receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. What are we waiting for? You know, the word "power" in Greek is "duneamis" from which we get our English word, "dynamite." You shall receive power. Do you have any dynamite in your life? Is there power in your life?

I heard a joke a number of years ago about this particular town where no one could touch any fish except this one particular fisherman. He would come home with armloads of fish every time he'd go fishing. The game warden went up to him once and asked him how he did it. And the man said, "Come fishing with me tomorrow and I'll show you." Once they got out to the middle of the lake, the man took out his stick of dynamite. He lit it and threw it in the water. And after the explosion, fish started floating up to the top of the water and the man took out his net and started picking up the fish. The game warden was aghast. "This is illegal, don't you know that?" he aaid. The man took out another stick of dynamite, lit it and handed it to the game warden and said, " Are you going to fish or talk?"

Are we going to talk or are we going to fish? Are we just going to gather here or are we going to fish to change the world? It is up to us - each one of us. I don't think it has to come in dramatic ways. The subtle, quiet still voice of God, the flicker of the candle is all that is needed in a very dark place. A word of hope and encouragement, the ministry of your presence and love and caring without ever speaking the name of Jesus, a phone call, a letter, a lunch with a co-worker who is hurting, maybe a casual mention that I'm in a small group and we'd love to have you join us. You know come with me to church on Sunday-maybe you will hear something that will help. Maybe, as for these young people who have spoken today, it will be something more dramatic where God calls us to serve for a period of time in Mexico and other parts of the U.S. and around the world. Maybe God will call you to Columbia, like God has called Ruth. Ruth was raised there as the daughter of a missionary. She has gone back as an advocate - a ministry of presence. To come alongside, which is the word for the Holy Spirit-one who comes alongside - and has been an advocate for peace and justice there. Ruth, I would like you to come forward and tell us your story how God has worked in your life.

Ruth shares her faith story:

The people in Acts II who heard this explosion of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the people who were following Jesus said, "Each of us hears them declaring the wonders of God in our own language" and they were amazed. The Holy Spirit is like that. The Holy Spirit was showing that God is multilingual. God doesn't have just one culture or one language. God speaks one language-the language of our hearts, and sometimes God gives us the privilege of speaking the language of another in a deep way.

I was six when my parents followed the call of God to Columbia and my siblings and I grew up there. It was a wonderful privilege to learn Spanish right away and to have playmates and peers who were Columbian. We maintained a balance in our lives between English and Spanish. English mostly in the home and Spanish everywhere else. We studied at home with U.S. textbooks and so there were strong parts of both cultures in our lives.

I was back in the U.S. for college and that was a good experience, but sometimes it was lonely. I felt out of place. Anthropology class helped me to sort through what I was experiencing, and I realized and made an image of it for a project I did. The United States, I saw as a blue culture and I drew a blue circle. Then I drew a yellow circle for Latin America because that color symbolized Latin culture to me and I had them overlap. The color that happens when blue and yellow overlap is not the same as either one-it is green, and I was a little stick figure in that green section of intersecting circles. My inside language is green. It is cross-cultural to speak to you even though I look the same as you and we have a lot in common.

It is also cross-cultural for me to go back to Columbia. But my life for many years was mostly here in the blue culture and Columbia went through a lot during those years. A civil war has been going on for some 40 years in Columbia and then the drug trafficking started and that was after my time. You know, here in the United States, we are the main market for the cocaine and the heroin that comes out of Columbia. We are very tied to what happens in Columbia and yet we are very unconscious of it most of the time.

In my personal life, I was going through some very painful things. I don't know about you, but pain sent me to the arms of God and I began to know the Holy Spirit on a very deep level that I had not known before. It was like God carved out a space in which I could know God in a new way. I went through a lot of healing.

I have a daughter and a son. They grew up and they were getting ready to leave the nest and there is going to be a lot of space in my life for new things and I wonder what is going to come. It is funny how things come. Sometimes it is very gradual, but this was very sudden. One morning in 2001, I even know the exact day, August 31 of that year, I was getting ready for the day and listening to a report on Columbia on National Public Radio and the thought just hit me. U.S. people should go to Columbia to stay in remote parts of the country where there is conflict and perhaps serve as a peace presence in some way, a witness, and maybe deter violence in some degree by being there. And immediately, I thought, "I can do that!" And it seemed really crazy. I knew that Americans had been kidnapped and even killed in Columbia and, of course, Columbians, themselves are in a different social class and subject to a different kind of violence and struggle. But at the same time, the thought came wrapped in peace. And if you are ever wondering if a thought comes from God that maybe sounds risky, then consider whether there is peace in it somehow when you think about it. And that is how I sensed this is probably from God in some way for me, and I need to find out what it means. And so I prayed about it and called a few people over the next few months - actually it was about nine months, and I suddenly began to find out that there were U.S. and international organizations that are sending people to Columbia to do exactly what I had thought was an original idea.

And I started learning about an Afro-Columbian community that was asking people to come and stay with them. Now this was something I had not known, even though I had grown up in Columbia. After Brazil and the United States, Columbia has the third largest African Diaspora population in the Western hemisphere and they came to Columbia the same way that African-Americans came to the United States. They were forced there in the slave trade and they have continued to be marginalized in Columbian society. They have had a long struggle even though emancipation came in Columbia before it did in the United States. This community, up in the northwest corner of the country and you know where Columbia is-in the northwest corner of South America connected to Panama.

They're in a remote area. They had been forced off their land and many of them have been killed by the army and paramilitary. These are right-wing paramilitaries who are security forces for economic interests in Columbia and their reason for being is to fight the left-wing guerrillas that have been attacking the government in different ways over the years. But they came and attacked this community accusing them of being guerilla sympathizers and collaborators. And the people were forced off their land. They were later able to return and organize themselves into a very tight-knit community, but a number of their community have been killed since their return and they knew they would only be safe if there were international witnesses with them.

So I could come in and be one of those "acompañantes" (that is what they call those who come and stay with them-companions-people who come alongside.) It blessed me deeply to be even speaking Spanish and reading Spanish as I prepared to go. I realized then, as I had experienced before in my life, that when God calls us to take a risk and do something that really seems like a giving away of ourselves for others, it actually feeds and blesses us in very deep ways and we find that out in the experience. Well, there is not time to tell about my months in Columbia and the wonderful experiences I had there in 2003. I was with the Cararica community for six weeks and another community for a week, and my presence as an helped to diminish their fear. In the Cararica community, I was able to do a lot of portraits of community members and a few of them were made into cards. Some of you may have bought them I the Angel Store last Christmas, which is a way of continuing to spread the word about the community and their struggle.

I also had the experience of facing the paramilitary on three occasions in the second community. The role of the acompañante is to stand out in front of the assembled community and basically say "I am here with them. If you are going to deal with them, you have to talk with me and I am going to let it be known if anything happens here." It was not a violent attack on that occasion; it was just threats. We had to help the community evacuate, but on that occasion, actually, English was the appropriate language to speak.

Columbia is the third largest recipient of our foreign aid. It has been for several years and most of that aid is military aid, unfortunately. Social aid would be very helpful, but most of what we send is arms buildup, and it supports the military. Because the military is tied to the paramilitary they both are benefiting in one way or another. So to be there and to speak English creates a sense of accountability, and they want to clean up their image with us. So I pretended I did not know much Spanish.

Since I have come back I just have continued to advocate for Columbia. I cannot just look back and say that was a very exciting experience, but it actually continues to be a calling in my life. This summer, we are taking a whole group of Americans to Columbia on a short trip to visit this community and to learn about how they are standing up non-violently and not cooperating with either side in this civil war, and just to give them support and encouragement. If you are interested in going, there is still room and you can talk to me out on the patio.

More and more I learn in my life and I see in what God is doing in the world in calling people to justice and calling people to peace that the Holy Spirit is our "acompañante." The Holy Spirit is our model for coming alongside others-speaking our language and then we speak their language. And the Holy Spirit sometimes allows us the privilege of being peacemakers and brings the peace of Christ into some corner of the world. I close with the words of Jesus that are recorded in John 14 when He was promising the coming of the Spirit:

I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. [The "acompañante" - ] The Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name will teach you all things. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. [It is not military aid.] Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

Thank you.

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