A People in Mission

When the day of Pentecost had come, 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. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

When the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus’ disciples, they proclaimed “God’s deeds of power” and all manner of folk heard the message in their own language. In other words, Pentecost means that the good news of Jesus Christ overcomes racial, ethnic, and geographical boundaries. Some try to explain it naturalistically by saying the disciples were just drunk. Others were “amazed and perplexed” and they asked, “What does this mean?” In other words, they were open to new understanding.

That’s what I want to ask this morning. I want to ask what Pentecost mean for us so we can reach new understanding. I think it means we are three kinds of people. First, we are people of Pentecost.

Being Presbyterian and being people of Pentecost may seem contradictory or irreconcilable. Presbyterians tend to value intellect and order. Pentecost people, at least as expressed in churches that claim the name pentecostal, tend to value emotion and ecstatic experience. Typically there is a lot of fear and animosity between Pentecostal-types and Presbyterian-types.

Perhaps we can learn, then, from the experience of a doctoral candidate at Princeton Seminary in the early 1960s. Princeton was and is a bastion of Presbyterian conservatism. But this man sometimes attended Pentecostal revival meetings, partly out of curiosity, partly to analyze revivalist preaching, and partly to study a branch of American Christianity that differed greatly from his own. Shouting, screaming, openly weeping, and collapsing on the floor, all of which were common in many pentecostal churches of the time, were not and are not typical of Presbyterian worship.

One night, to his great surprise, he found himself speaking in tongues, a form of rapid, ecstatic speech that can sound like nonsense or sometimes like a kind of musical chant. It can be a mixture of unintelligible and intelligible sounds. He was embarrassed and his friends were embarrassed. It really happened but they all knew better than to discuss this experience back at Princeton. He got his degree, became a minister, and kept his pentecostal experience in the closet.

But he valued it. For one thing, it enriched his pastoral ministry. “If someone came to me frightened by an experience of speaking in tongues or other spiritual emotion,” he said, “I might be able to tell them that they were not alone, and in some cases even guide them toward a Pentecostal church, if that seemed warranted.”[1]

The main thing, however, is that it taught him that we do not control the Holy Spirit. That may be hard for us to learn but we do not control the Holy Spirit. The gifts of the Spirit are manifested differently in different people and groups. But the Spirit is in control and we need to always be open to the mystery of the Spirit. That’s what it means to be people of Pentecost. As John’s Gospel tells us, “the Spirit blows where the Spirit wills” and we must be open to that. (John 3.8)

The Holy Spirit makes us people of Pentecost. The Spirit also makes us people of God. When the text names all those different kinds of people, it means that the good news of the gospel is not just for Jews or, as we might express it, not just for Christians. The good news is for everyone because God wants all to be in his family. The Spirit makes us people of God.

When I was a sophomore at Whitworth College I took United States History from a professor named Dr. Homer Cunningham. I flunked the midterm exam. There was no excuse for my flunking it. I was just goofing around and not studying and that was obvious by what I didn’t know on the test.

A week or so later I got a call from my father. Back then Whitworth sent grades, even midterm grades, to one’s parents and my mom and dad had just received that little surprise in the mail. The phone in my room rang and my roommate said, “It’s your father.”

You need to understand that my father never called me. He would talk on the phone when my mother called or when I called them. But he never called me. So I knew when I answered that this was going to be a serious conversation. And it was. He was actually quite composed which made me pay even more attention. All he said was that I wasn’t working up to my potential and that I had better take things a little more seriously.

What my father was really doing was reminding me of my family, reminding me of who I belonged to. My father only finished the sixth grade. But it was his goal that all six of his children complete college and I was the last one doing that. His call reminded me of what it meant to be part of the McIvor family. Now that could be a terrible burden in some families. We all know stories where the overbearing expectations of parents wrecked havoc in the lives of their sons or daughters. We know people who are forever wounded because they could never meet the excessive expectations of their mother or father. But my dad wasn’t like that. He was not concerned that I achieve a set goal. I think he could even have accepted a failure if he knew I had done my best. He did not expect me to be like an older brother who was already a Ph.D. from Stanford University. He simply expected me to be the best that I could be and he knew my best was more than a failing grade on a midterm exam in United States history.

My father’s phone call was actually very freeing. It called me back to who I was. I was my father’s son and that meant more than just his expectations for his children. They had become my expectations too. I was a part of that family which meant I had to live in a certain kind of way. So my father’s call freed me to be who I was and saved me from heading in a direction that was not me. (In case your wondering how that story ended, I worked very hard the rest of the semester. I only missed a B by a few points and that C in United States history was the lowest grade I got in college.)

When we know who we are and to whom we belong, then we know what we must do. We are God’s people and that frees us to live according to the Spirit of God.

The Spirit makes us people of Pentecost. The Spirit makes us people of God. Finally, the Spirit makes us people in mission.

The images of Pentecost — rushing wind and tongues as of fire — are images of action. They suggest that the Holy Spirit does not come to disciples so they can just sit around and be religious. The Spirit comes to get us doing things, to be people in mission in Jesus’ name. Which lets me say one more word about the capital campaign that we’re going to dedicate in a few minutes.

Over the years of my ministry, I am sometimes asked when the church will stop asking for more money, or greater commitment of time, or deeper involvement in the many ministries of the church. It’s sometimes expressed that we’re getting older and we just can’t do as much any more.

Well, we are getting older. But we cannot stop asking or stop giving because we are people in mission. This capital campaign is necessary to repair and renew this building which is our base of mission. We are blessed by what others gave — some of you included — to build and renew this mission base. Now it’s our turn and we must give because the wind of the Spirit makes us people in mission.

How would one paint the wind? One artist did it in a painting called “Parade of the Winds.” It’s by Lin Xia Jiang. In this painting, a little girl stands alone with her back to the viewer. She could be any affluent modern child, dressed in matching shorts and t-shirt, a pair of sturdy sneakers on her feet. She is looking at a billowing white sheet, stretched on a wooden frame that has been planted on an open hillside before her. It flaps like a sail in the wind. Bright light and shadows play on the sheet and on the little girl’s long, straight hair. Her limbs are strong and taut, as if she had been running only seconds before and will soon take off again, springing at any moment into action at the wind’s bidding.[2]

Although the viewer cannot see the girl’s face, her focus on the captured power of the wind seems intense, as expressed by the tension in her arms, legs, and hands. What is she thinking? Maybe she is wondering who placed the frame with its sail on the hill. Who dug the post holes, laid the crossbar, and laced the white “sail” to the frame? Someone did those things to capture the power of the wind and the girl seems to be contemplating the mystery of this wind sail as she gets ready to run with the wind again, challenged and renewed.

We need to do the same: open ourselves to the mystery of the Spirit and by the Spirit’s power spring into action as people in mission.

Dear friends, we are called today to be people of Pentecost, to be people of God, and to be people in mission. May the wind of the Holy Spirit empower and renew us. Amen

[1] Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998) 344-345.

[2] Susan A. Blain, ed., Imaging the Word: An Arts and Lectionary Resource, vol. 3 (Cleveland, OH.: United Church Press, 1996) 235.