Acts 2:1-6
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 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. 3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.
Acts 2:38-47
38 Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” 40 And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” 41 So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. 42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
43 Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. 44 All who believed were together and had all things in common; 45 they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds[a] to all, as any had need. 46 Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home[b] and ate their food with glad and generous[c] hearts, 47 praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
I'm not sure what Jen had in mind with her title, but I’m not going to try to repeat that or guess at it. I just want to share some thoughts with you.
Pentecost is the 50th day after Easter. On that day the Holy Spirit rushed into the Upper Room with wind and flames, empowering and energizing the disciples to understand and to proclaim the good news of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
After more than a year of pandemic, we may not feel very empowered or energized to engage with the celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit. We can see that the end of the lockdown might be near, but it feels very far away. We could use a moment of the Holy Spirit rushing into our lives to lighten the path that will lead us to the other side of this pandemic. Let us embrace the celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit to remind us of the strength and hope we have in our risen Lord. Let our prayers be a loud response to the joy of the birth of the church on that first Pentecost and a celebration that the church continues to be reborn through many struggles. So come, Holy Spirit! Come.
It is significant that this day was when the disciples experienced the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Jesus had fulfilled the law in his life, death and resurrection. The disciples now experience the fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy of a time when God's law would be written on the heart.
In Galatians 5, Paul teaches that those who live by the Spirit and produce the fruit of the Spirit need no law. This is because it is written on their hearts. So in a way, the disciples were receiving the new law much as Moses received the old law on Mount Sinai a millennia before.
In addition, the followers of Jesus and those who came to faith on that first day were the “first fruits” of the new community that God was bringing into being, based on the message and mission of Jesus -- bringing God's Reign of justice, peace and love into the world. But, in the new ability to speak in different languages that the disciples received, God demonstrated what kind of community this was to be.
Language so often divides people, as it did in the Babble story—remember that story in the Old Testament when God supposedly came down and confused their languages? But God enabled the disciples to overcome those divisions and create a diverse, inclusive community in which all are welcome. Pentecost is about a personal gift of power; and, as we see here, it is also about so much more.
George Weber, one of the founders of the East Harlem Protestant Parish years ago in New York City wrote a book called Salty Christians. In it, he outlines what the Parish discovered to be the essential ingredients of the church's life as a Christian community: teaching and Bible study, fellowship, corporate worship, and prayer--the same four elements that describe the life of the early church, in what we just read this morning from the book of Acts: “They devoted themselves, the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
Notice that worship is spoken of in terms of “the breaking of bread” -- which suggests to me that in this sacrament, the breaking of bread lies at the very heart of Christian worship, in the Christian community. When Christians gather at the Lord's table, to break bread together, that is when the church is most nearly what it ought to be, that is when the oneness of the people of God is most evident, that is when worship within the community of faith becomes most meaningful and real.
Weber puts it this way: “For the early Christians, worship in the homes was primarily the receiving of the Lord's Supper.....Here, in some sense, but with great reality, Jesus Christ was present and entered into their bodies as they were bound anew to his body. Wherever I have been inspired and caught up by a sense that some genuine renewal was taking place in the church, it is a fact that Holy Communion was a very central act of that community”
Weber continues, “Communion... is an expression of the reality of our life together, through which we are caught up again into the power of God in Christ.” It seems to me that's a pretty good working definition of communion. And it all begins here, most concretely here, in this sacrament. Here, the love of Christ, in all its fullness and grandeur and depth, is offered to us as we gather with God's people around this table. Here we can begin to grasp the extravagance of a love that will never let us go, a love that goes all the way to a cross for us, a love that cares enough to die. Here we can catch at least a glimpse of a God who gives the God-self, who shares that self out of love for all of us, a God who refuses to stay off somewhere up in the heavens, a God, rather, who is present to us in our life, our experience, who is involved in our human situation because He loves us.
Here we begin to understand a love that loses itself, that denies itself, that empties itself, so that we can live life abundantly, and know what it means to be fully human and fully alive,
to be whole persons. Here, in short, we see and know and experience personally the consummate love of God in Jesus Christ. For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son.
As we open ourselves to that reality, as we get in touch with that amazing love, in all of its fullness, its “breadth and length and height and depth,” the best place to begin is here, in this sacrament, where we can touch and handle and taste that unbounded love of God, in a new possibility of shalom, wholeness, completeness, oneness, because Christ is somehow present in, through, under and around, this sacrament.
On this Pentecost Sunday, may we be caught up again in God's love and power and strength, and may this sacrament truly express the reality of our life together, here, in Christ's body, the church. Amen.