Peace
& Grue Lutheran Churches, Ashby, MN
The Day
of Pentecost/May 20, 2018
Acts
2:1-21
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Christ is risen. He is risen indeed, Alleluia!
Happy Easter to you all! What a joy it is to gather on this festive
day to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord.
What? (you’re you’re maybe
wondering)--what’s with this guy? Hasn’t
he looked at the calendar lately?
Easter is long gone. We
celebrated it on April 1st. Easter is
old hat—we’ve moved past it.
Today is May 20th,
after all. It’s the Sunday between
Mother’s Day and Memorial Day weekend….the day after Harry and Meghan’s royal
wedding.
And on the church’s calendar
today is Pentecost—not Easter, for
goodness’ sake…
But still I say to you: Christ is risen. He is risen indeed, Alleluia!
And I am bold to repeat to
you: Happy Easter. Happy resurrection day!
I’m saying that, not just
because EVERY Sunday is a little Easter (which is true….we celebrate the
resurrection on the first day of every week, 52 times a year…)
No—I’m wishing you a happy
Easter, because this festival day of Pentecost itself is really “another Easter.” It’s not so much the start of the long Pentecost
season as it is the climax, the culmination of the Easter season.
Pentecost is itself “another Easter.”
Here’s what I mean: the Pentecost story in the first chapters of
the Book of Acts “echoes” the Easter story in some amazing ways.
First, both stories begin in a tomb. Both stories start with death.
In the Easter story, of
course, it’s Jesus who’s dead--dead as a doornail dead—that’s what “three days
in the grave” meant back in the first century.
You’re dead and you’re not coming back.
Jesus was crucified, dead and buried.
His story appeared to be over.
Jesus’ body was lying, stone-cold in a borrowed grave. Jesus wasn’t going anywhere!
And in the Pentecost story,
we also start out in a tomb of sorts—“the room upstairs where [the disciples]
were staying” (Acts 1:13)—the hideout where the disciples shut
themselves away, in fear and bewilderment, for the ten days following Jesus’
ascension into heaven.
It was as if Jesus had died
all over again. He had died on the
cross—but three days later was raised, walked among them, visited with them for
another forty days. Amazing.
But then, as we’re told in
the first chapter of Acts, Jesus left his disciples AGAIN—left them in the
lurch. One minute Jesus was there,
speaking with his followers, and the next minute Jesus “was lifted up, and a cloud took
him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9).
It was as if Jesus had been
taken from his disciples twice—once on Good Friday, and a second time on
Ascension Day. It left the disciples
dumbfounded. Acts chapter one tells us
that it took not one, but two angels to get the disciples to stop staring off
into space, after Jesus ascended into heaven.
These baffled disciples
returned to Jerusalem and they waited—waited for what, they weren’t exactly
sure. The disciples sealed themselves
in to their upper room. It became a kind
of “tomb” for them. They turned in on
themselves. They weren’t going
anywhere. Their story appeared to be
over.
Both Easter Sunday and
Pentecost Sunday begin in death, both stories start out in “borrowed tombs.” And then, in both stories, God does something
breath-taking (or should I say, breath-giving?)
On Easter Sunday, God raises
up the dead Jesus—puts death behind him.
And on Pentecost Sunday, God raises up the “dead” disciples—gives them
all a new lease on life, in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit (whom we also call The
Lord and Giver of Life in the Nicene Creed!)….the Holy Spirit moves
through the dead bodies and the dry bones of the disciples, and the Spirit
animates them, as surely as God animated the crucified Jesus on Easter morning.
Easter and Pentecost are
BOTH, you see, resurrection stories!
They begin in the dead-end of the grave, and they end--well that’s just
the thing: neither story really
“ends.” The conclusion to both the
Easter story and the Pentecost story--the conclusion has yet to be written.
All we can really speak about
is how these stories begin, and how they KEEP ON “beginning” all over
again, even today and on every tomorrow still ahead of us!
What we do know is this: when God raises the dead, God reverses chaos,
God undoes confusion, God clarifies his gracious purposes, God re-establishes all
connections, God replaces cowardice with courage—with the result that the Body
of Christ is turned inside out and set loose in the world.
On Easter Sunday that
happened—quite literally—with the body of the crucified Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus’ corpse didn’t follow the normal
route toward decomposition. No! Death was reversed—death was “undone” decisively.
On Pentecost Sunday, the same
sort of thing happened with the whole company of disciples. They were, in those ten days between the
Ascension, on their way toward “decomposition.” They were all bound up in themselves,
turned in upon themselves.
But then the Spirit rushed in
with a mighty wind and tongues of fire.
These ingrown disciples got turned inside out. The Holy Spirit goosed them out of their “tomb”
by letting them speak in languages they’d never spoken before….languages that others,
just outside, were waiting to hear.
What emerged from Jerusalem’s
upper-room-tomb was the resurrected Body of Christ, the communion of Jesus’
loved ones, now transformed from disciples (which means “followers”) into
apostles (which means “sent ones”). On
Pentecost, the Body of Christ is set loose in the world, once again. And the members of this Body just can’t
stop talking about Jesus!
You could say that Pentecost
“completes” Easter. The body of the
crucified Jesus had to be raised first, of course—like the explosion that
detonates a whole subsequent chain reaction.
But not until Pentecost do we
see the whole thing. Indeed, Christ is
not fully raised until the entire Body of Christ is raised with wind and fire
and prophetic proclamation on the day of Pentecost. We see, here in Acts chapter two, the beginning
of that story…
….and in our own lives of
faith, hope and love….as a people sent in God’s mission, you and I are inspired
by God to live out the rest of the story, the end of the Pentecost story.
You know what I’m talking
about—because our own personal stories echo the Pentecost story, don’t they?
Our stories begin with
death—the death of our sin, our waywardness, our brokenness. Something kills us, and we’re all turned in
on ourselves, all locked up in a tomb (usually a tomb of our own making). We aren’t going anywhere!
And then God in Jesus Christ
the Risen One….God in the power of the Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life…God raises
us up, holds our heads above the water, unbinds us, puts a Word on our tongues
and gooses us, to get us out into our world.
The Body of Christ is still
being re-animated by the Spirit of the living Lord Jesus.
It happens here in this
congregation, in much the same way it happened on Easter and Pentecost. It starts in dismal death, but moves toward boundless
life. Bracing baptismal water wakes us
up. Nourishing bread and wine revive
us. The Word snaps us to attention.
And we are moved from death to life, from confusion to clarity,
from cowardice to courage, from self-absorption to self-emptying love, from
dis-connection to re-connection in the Body of Christ. It’s all here in Acts chapter two
·
The deathtrap
where the disciples at first lie hidden;
·
The surprising,
reviving intervention of the Spirit;
·
The “these guys
must be drunk” confused first reaction of the crowd who hear the disciples’
preaching;
·
And then the
clarity of God’s Word to us. “Let me
tell you what’s happening…let me spell it out for you (Peter preaches): this was all foretold, this was all in the
cards, this was, is, and ever shall be God’s work among us….freeing us
to speak plainly about God alive and at large in our world.”
You and I, dear friends of
the Peace-Grue Parish….you and I are still living out this Pentecost
story.
God is still seeing to it
that the story of Jesus, the miracle of Pentecost, the truth of the gospel
keeps getting proclaimed, keeps being played out here so that “everyone
who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 1:21).
And what will be the outcome
of all of that clarifying, courageous gospel truth-telling?
The outcome will be another
Resurrection--the Body of Christ, all of us!—animated for prayer and praise and service
and mission, turned inside out, and set loose in the world!
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
