What Happens When the Spirit Comes?

Acts 2:1-21

May 11, 2008

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

Divide congregation in sections: Wind and Flame, with Choir as disciples. Flames have some kind of red crepe paper or handkerchiefs or a cut up sheet to wave. Wind makes sounds with mouth. Disciples speak in different languages.

First we hear the wind. Then the flames begin to move. Then I begin in English, and I have other languages written on papers in the choir for people to read, each starting after the first one has spoken two words (John 3:16). I have someone in the congregation shout out, “Oh, they’re all drunk!” in the middle, but we keep going through the whole thing twice. Then we slowly stop the wind and the flames go back and sit down.

Wow! That’s what it was like when the Spirit moved over a whole bunch of people! No more doled out little by little on the chosen prophet here and there over the years, but now the Spirit spreads out and moves through all kinds of people, even people not expecting it to happen! Amazing!

Even more amazing is that we claim as Christians that the Spirit that flowed so freely and wildly on Pentecost did not then go away, but continues to be part of our life. Here at Redeemer we often begin meetings with inviting people to complete the sentence, “I know the Holy Spirit is at work because…..” I know not everyone here has a clear idea of what that means, so on Pentecost, we are called to remember and pay attention to what the marks of the presence of the Spirit are.

What happens when the Spirit works among us? Look at the story!

Sometimes, when the Spirit moves, things get a little out of hand, maybe even out of control. Unexpected things happen, or maybe things we’d like to expect but have given up hope of happening. Like the Berlin Wall falling peacefully. Like People Power toppling a dictator in the Philippines. Like a woman named Sara Miles in the book the noon book group is reading who started a food pantry right in the sanctuary of her church that ended up bringing together the most unlikely of people to work together to feed hundreds of people each week. Things can get a little messy when the Spirit lets loose, because the Spirit is not big on order or predictability.

What else happens when the Spirit works among us? Barriers between people disappear. People who could not communicate with each other find ways to communicate. Don’t speak the same language? No problem for the Spirit of God! Come from different ethnic groups or social classes or educational levels? Come from different religious backgrounds or, God forbid, political parties? We know the Spirit is a work when folk who are different from one another, whose experience of the world is different, come together and communicate deeply with each other. I saw it last Sunday back in the hot and crowded Phillips Room where we all heard Fatima, a Moroccan Muslim, and laughed with her and learned from her and taught her. I see it every time one of you reaches out to a visitor or to our children or to the people at Columbus House or Habitat or to the folk in need in Mississippi.

But there’s also another kind of communication that the Spirit is really good at. The Spirit breaks through barriers people have put up to communication with God. We’re all seeing that today as Phil comes as an adult for baptism, for the Spirit has been chasing after him for many years and led him through the most bizarre and unexpected ways to let God in. I have seen the Spirit at work so many times in my ministry when people have come to me confessing shame or guilt over something that has kept them from prayer, from seeking forgiveness, from reaching out to receive what God yearns to give them, sometimes for many years. They have a moment like some of those folk in Jerusalem that day whose response to Peter’s sermon was to feel, “cut to the heart.” The Spirit has found a crack in which to plant a seed and a tree of new life grows in them despite all the odds.

What else happens when the Spirit works among us? Community is formed. It started with 12 disciples, a few other men, a group of women, and Jesus’ mother and brothers. By the end of the day, 3000 people had been baptized. Community had been created, not a perfect community by any means, for whenever more than one human being is in a room, things can get complicated, but when the Spirit moved among these folk, they found amazing joy in not being alone. They found joy and purpose and home in being together. Parthians, Medes and Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Asia, Africa and Europe were there that day. Merchants and Rabbis, fishermen and prostitutes, widows and mothers, the deeply religious and the skeptic. How improbable is it that somehow these people would start the first Christian church? How improbable is it that they would then leave Jerusalem and, hungry for the kind of community they found there, start other churches in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe and eventually North and South America? How weird is it that we come here each week to be together, to sing together, to pray together, to eat and drink together, to love one another, people with whom, for the most part, we do not interact at work, at home, in our neighborhoods or schools. We come because the Spirit draws us together and we find God here, in one another, in what happens in worship, in how we support one another in times of joy and sorrow.

How do we know the Spirit is at work? In holy chaos that shakes people out of complacency, in breaking down barriers between us and God and between human beings, in creating life-giving communities, the Holy Spirit worked the day of Pentecost and works still. Once you recognize the Spirit, you begin to see it (actually, the early church often portrayed the Spirit in artwork as female and maybe Mother’s Day is a good day to revive that custom) all around, and when I see her working, I laugh and whisper or shout a thank you. I believe because I see too often that the wind still blows, the flame still burns, and the Spirit still provokes us to let God loose in our lives, to reach out to people we fear or don’t understand, to come together and find the power in our oneness.

And I believe she is here today, right now, as Phil Stoller comes to us to receive the sacrament of baptism, to risk entering these waters moved by wind and touched by flame, to risk coming into community not only with us at Redeemer but with Christians all over the world. If you’re still willing to let the Spirit loose in your life, Phil, come to the water.