Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: John 20:19-23 and Acts 2:1-13
Note: For the last fifteen or twenty years, I have institutionalized the annual observance of Pentecost on the first Sunday in June. Occasionally the liturgical calendar of Christendom concurs. Other years, not. My reasons for doing this are largely personal. I simply grew tired of trying to blend Pentecost with Mother’s Day, with Memorial Day, or with the annual children’s musical (all of which occur in May). By setting aside the same Sunday in June for a Pentecost observance, I have been able to place a singular spotlight on the celebration, to the degree that it has become (in the churches I have served) an exciting and much-anticipated Sunday morning. I add this explanation for the liturgical purists who may read these sermons, the better to explain my logic rather than reveal my ignorance.
Sermon
For as many years as I have been preaching Pentecost Sunday sermons, I have customarily begun with Luke’s wonderfully visual story from the second chapter of Acts. It’s dramatic. It’s ecstatic. Lots of sound. Lots of fury. It takes place in Jerusalem, a couple of months after the Resurrection. There are 120 people in the house and a whole lot more outside the house. That’s because it’s a Jewish holiday, a holiday to celebrate the giving of the Law. Which explains why everybody was “hanging out,” don’t you see. Because “hanging out” is one of the things you do on holidays. You don’t go to work. You don’t go to school. You don’t put the trash out by the curb. Because who is going to pick up the trash on a holiday? Nobody. So you hang out.
Which is when it happened, Luke says. It was early in the morning….too early for people to be drinking. So if (a few minutes after 9:00 a.m.) it looked like people were drunk, it must have been Spirit rather than spirits. For it looked like people were drunk, what with everybody talking funny. You should have heard it. There were sounds coming from everywhere. Multiple languages. Exaggerated cadences. High pitches. Nobody understanding it. But, in a strange kind of way, everybody “getting it.” You might say these people were “fired up.” Which is what Luke said. And I have no reason to disbelieve him.
Except to concentrate on the fire, as some of us are inclined to do, is to overlook the wind. Which was how it all began.
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. When suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind.
And maybe there was such a sound. And maybe there was such a wind. Or maybe Luke borrowed the sound and the wind from the occasion which created the Jewish holiday in the first place….borrowing both sound and wind from the book of Exodus when God gave, not the Spirit, but the Law. You remember it. Surely you remember it. The people were at Mount Sinai. They’d been out in the wilderness for a time. Too long a time. So much so, that it felt like God had forgotten them out there. Which made them afraid. So they said to Moses (in effect): “We can’t stand it. Why don’t you climb that mountain and find out what God wants. Then come back and tell us.” So Moses did. And scripture records that there was a storm….accented by thunder and wind….followed by fire and smoke. And then came the Commandments. All ten.
It is as if Luke is saying in the book of Acts: “Whenever God gives us something truly significant, it is always windy and fiery.” And anywhere in the Christian world where a church wants to lock in on those stories (or those images), that church is called “Pentecostal.” And if you go to one of those churches in search of the Spirit of God, you expect to shaken up by the experience. But after 37 years in places like this, I have learned that those churches ain’t us….ain’t never been us….probably ain’t ever going to be us….so that the second chapter of Acts (taken as a text) doesn’t really fit us.
But, as I told you several years ago, Luke’s version of the coming of the Spirit is not the only version. And the one that contrasts with it most vividly is John’s version. We are still in Jerusalem. We are still in a house. But there are far fewer people. And the clock is set at a far later hour. There is no holiday. There is no “hanging out.” There is just a group of disciples hanging tight. Because they’re scared. Scared for their lives. For Jesus has been put to death. And who knows who might be next?
The door is locked. But Jesus is suddenly in the room. No knocking on the door. No going to the door. No looking through a peephole in the door. No recognizing Jesus on the other side of the door. No throwing wide the door. There is nothing having to do with the door. Just Jesus….in the room. Don’t ask. I don’t know how he got there. He’s just there. And, in this visit, there is no touching of wounds….just a viewing of wounds. Touching comes a week later when Thomas comes back from the Seven-Eleven.
This time there is just a twice-repeated phrase from the lips of Jesus….“Peace be with you”…. followed by: “Just as the Father sent me, I am sending you.” And then this. He breathed on them. That’s right, he breathed on them. Then he said: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” No wind. No fire. Noblowing. No burning. No babbling. Just breathing. And that is how John says it was when the Spirit came.
Not to be outdone by Luke, John also has an Old Testament point of reference. But it’s not in Exodus, it’s in Genesis. And it’s not at Sinai, but in the Garden. Where, in that most primitive of stories, God fashioned dust into something more than dust and breathed into its nostrils. Whereupon dust became a living being.
Leading one of my esteemed colleagues to say:
What if….let’s just scare ourselves for a minute….what if God had not imparted God’s own Spirit to this being? The human would be just like the animal, don’t you see. Can you imagine people living like animals because they hadn’t received the Spirit of God? Why the whole of our lives would be devoted to eating and drinking, sleeping and eliminating, being attracted to the opposite sex, and dying. Like animals.
Now I know that animals can be trained….some of them, anyway. It makes them a lot more cute. It may also make them a tad more valuable. Some can be trained to do work. Others can be groomed to the point where they can go up on stage, do a few tricks, and people applaud them. And I suppose that, had God not breathed into our nostrils, many of us could be groomed and trained….maybe even bred….so that it could be said of us that we had good lines, came from good stock, or descended from the best families. So if God had not breathed into our nostrils God’s own breath, we could still have our shows, strut our stuff and brag about our breeding….in addition to eating and drinking, sleeping and eliminating, fooling around with the opposite sex, and dying.
Oh, but we’re so much more than that. At least some of the time. Because while God said, “I’m so proud of the squirrels. I love the llamas. I stand in awe of the elephant. And the horse, I can’t get enough of the horse,” I believe God also said (after dusting and forming and breathing): “Ah, this one is like me.”
You remember King David, of course. And I’m sure you remember the Bathsheba story. Beautiful woman. Rooftop bath. King sees her….desires her….sends for her….has his way with her….leaving her with a remembrance of their encounter that neither of them planned for. Which means that the king has to figure out a way to get her husband….her soldier husband….her loyal soldier husband….killed. Which he does….get him killed, that is. And it works (thereby enabling him to go back to eating and drinking, sleeping and eliminating, along with fooling around with the opposite sex). Until he gets a case of the guilts, that is. I mean, “severe guilts.” Which leads him to pray.
And do you remember what he prayed? Sure you remember what he prayed. Although, like a lot things from the Bible, you just can’t place it in context. David prayed: “O God, do not take (back) your Holy Spirit from me. Do not reinhale your breath….sucking it back, as it were….for then I would be an animal again.”
Which all of us are, in part. And which some of us are, in whole. Animals, I mean. Even proudly so. There was a time when, had someone said of me, “Ritter….what an animal,” I might not have minded. But I wouldn’t brag about it now. Even though I occasionally revert to it now.
As do you. And others. Both in and out of church. So what would happen to you if the Spirit be withdrawn? What would happen to me if the Spirit be withdrawn? What would happen to “church” if the Spirit be withdrawn? I’ll tell you what would happen. It would be like a zoo. Maybe even a jungle.
But back to our story. The room was locked. Jesus found his way in anyway. Where, after a bit of showing and telling, he breathed on them and said: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Then he sent them out….as if to say: “Not everything that starts here, stays here.” To which they may have said: “But it’s safe here.” In response to which he may have said: “But I do not intend for you to stay here.”
Picture a little girl lost in a big city. There she sits, crying on the curb. A policeman finds her, puts her in his cruiser and drives her up and down the streets, hoping she’ll recognize something familiar. Which, at last, she does. She sees a steeple with a cross on it. Tears vanish. Speech returns. “That’s my church,” she says. “I can find my way from here.”
You’re not the only one, little girl.
The last time I was in aPentecostal church (I mean a really Pentecostal church), I noticed that the ones who really got the Spirit fainted. Fell right over backward. They had nurses there (or at least ladies in white uniforms dressed to look like nurses). They were there to catch the fainting people. They call that “being slain in the Spirit.” Well, whatever floats your boat, I guess.
Except I’ve got this text that seems to say that the true measurement of Pentecost is not how many the Spirit slays, but how many the Spirit sends.
Note: I first explored the differences between Luke and John (as regards the coming of the Spirit) in a sermon several years ago and have been working with the distinction ever since. I was greatly aided by Fred Craddock and his linkage of Luke with Sinai and John with creation, in a sermon preached several years ago (from which I also borrowed the title). The story about the little girl searching for a familiar landmark is one that I have borrowed (with slight adaptation) from Ann Lamott in her book, Traveling Mercies.
