E-mail: lowell“at”revlowell.com

 Date:      Pentecost Sunday, any year

Texts:

Year A

Acts 2:1-21

Psalm 104:1-2a, 24 and 35c, 27-28, 29c-30 or 24-34

1 Corinthians 12:4-13

John 14:15-26

  Theme:      We wait for God’s Spirit to make us what we have been called to be.

 Subject:      Holy Spirit

Title:

“Come, Holy Spirit!”

Can Progressive Protestants Put Up With Pentecost?

[This sermon uses the Mission Statement of a particular church. Substitute your

congregation’s statement or covenant.]

[Solo: Where the Spirit of the Lord Is]

On Sunday mornings as they began class, the fifth graders would line up and each

would recite one phrase of the Apostles’ Creed. This went on for about four months,

until one Sunday. The class began the usual way. The first girl recited her line flawless-

ly, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” The second, a

boy, stood up and added his sentence, “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord.”

But then silence descended over the class. Finally, one girl, who felt she knew what was

wrong stood up and announced, “I’m sorry, sir, but the boy who believes in the Holy

Ghost is absent today!”

 And that’s the way it is in most Christian churches: the Holy Spirit is strangely

absent. Yet, were it not for the giving of the Spirit, there would be no Christian Church.

We celebrate Pentecost not only as the birthday of the Church, but because there is

something about the strange, ecstatic events of that day long ago that is available

Sunday after Sunday in this church and in every church.

 They were there:

 Peter, John and James, and the other apostles.

 They were there:

 the women and Mary the mother of Jesus

 and his brothers.

 They were there

 and they joined together constantly in prayer

 and they sought the guidance of the Scriptures.

 They were there “all together in one place” when the wind and the flame of God’s

presence came. They spoke a language that all humanity could comprehend. They

spoke a language that reversed the confusion of Babel. They spoke a language that

ended the separation of races, nations, and cultures. They spoke a language that lifted

women from their second-class status as men’s property and child-bearing machines --

for when the Spirit fell upon them, it made no distinction between male and female.

 They were there also:

 those who did not yet believe, did not yet belong.

 They were there

 for the Feast of Harvest, the Day of the First Fruits,

 assembled from many nations, cultures, and climes.

 They were there

 and they reported,

 “We hear the wonders of God in our own tongues.”

 We read that Peter preached boldly, quoting from the Hebrew Scriptures, that thou-

sands were converted, that they “devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to the

fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” We read that everyone was filled

with awe and wonder, that miracles were daily occurrences. We read of a unity of

spirit that touched not only their hearts but their wallets: “All the believers were to-

gether and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave

to anyone as he [or she] had need.” We read that they met together daily, “praising God

and enjoying the favor of all the people.” We read that “the Lord added to their number

daily.”

 They were there when the Spirit descended. And today we are here, waiting as they

waited for the gift of God’s Spirit.

 We wait for God’s Spirit to heal us, to take away the wounds of the past, to take

away our sense of have been shamed and betrayed by those who were supposed to love

us. We wait for God’s Spirit to heal our bodies of illness and weakness. We wait for

God’s Spirit to heal our minds of doubt and fear and loneliness. We wait for God’s

Spirit to heal us of self-centeredness, of self-pity, of self-loathing.

 We wait for God’s Spirit to renew us, to give a visions and dreams so powerful that

the very utterance of them pulls us toward their fulfillment.

 We wait for God’s Spirit to release our creativity, to call forth our gifts and talents.

 We wait for God’s Spirit to recreate us as the Church, just as the Holy Spirit melded

and empowered the rag-tag band of which we read in Luke’s account of Pentecost.

And if God’s Spirit fills and indwells and excites and validates and commissions us,

what will be the result? What can we expect as we together approach a new century?

 As I prepared this sermon, I returned again and again to the “Mission Statement” of

this church. This morning I want to lift it up so that each of us may own it as his or her

own. Let me read it to you:

The mission of the Ladera Community Church is to provide a sanctuary

where the congregation can worship God according to the teachings and

spirit of Jesus Christ; to nurture the spiritual, moral, and intellectual

growth of each person in our congregation; to serve God with our tal-

ents, our time, our energy, and our money, accepting full stewardship

for our community - the World; to encourage others to join us in our

ministries.

Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is a reason for being. That, sisters and brothers, is a

call worth responding to.

Our Mission Statement is vision of Ladera Community Church as it moves toward

the year 2001. It is a vision of the emergence of a Spirit-filled church. And what exactly

is a Spirit-filled church? Let me mention a few characteristics. Some I will emphasize;

others I will only list.

1.   A Spirit-filled church is a Christ-centered church.

What is this church’s greatest asset or any church’s greatest asset? Its buildings? its

programs? its worship services? its music? its finances? its wonderful people? Truly,

it is none of these. For these are only the temporal building blocks. The eternal founda-

tion of this church or of any church is the will of God revealed in the person of Jesus,

the teachings of Scripture, and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit.

Understand Jesus in any way that suits you. Regard him as a prophet, a sage, a seer,

a holy man, God’s most perfect image, God incarnate, the coming king, the heavenly

judge.

Consider him an historic being shrouded in mystery and ambiguity, as a shaman or

holy man. Know him as the divine spark within each of us, the true Self at the core of

each person. Know him as Jesus the man or as the cosmic Christ, as the teacher of

moral maxims or as the eternal Word through whom all things were made.

Know him in any way, shape, or form you can, but know him.

2.   A Spirit-filled church is a worshiping church.

A church is a sanctuary, a place of refuge, a place to celebrate, to rejoice, to praise

God. Worship is the central act of the believing community. It is the single act that

constitutes and maintains the community as a community. Coming to church is coming

to a sacred place at sacred time to deliberately bind ourselves to God and to one anoth-

er. Let anything take the place of the worship of God in our lives and the church

degenerates into a mailing list.

Worship is the intentional, God-directed, Christ-centered, Spirit-charged act of the

total personality within the fellowship of believers. Accept no substitutes.

3.   A Spirit-filled church is a biblically literate church.

The story is told of the time when Leopold Stokowski was conducting a dress re-

hearsal of Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion:

. . . Stokowski went through the work once with the several hundred

singers and orchestra, tapped for silence, and said, “Well, I guess you

know the notes well enough. But the spirit is lacking. I want each of you

to sit down tonight with your Bible and read St. Matthew’s account of

the life of Christ. Try to grasp it all. Who knows -- perhaps that mes-

sage is just what our listeners need in a time of doubt and despair. Then

let’s come back to our performance and try to convey to our audience the

meaning and inspiration of these sacred words.” The singers were star-

tled to hear this advice from the worldly, debonair Stokowski. But they

did as they were told. At the performance the next night they sang their

hearts out.

The secrets of life and death are there—in the sacred text. The message that each of

us needs in a time of doubt and despair is there. But we resist and we ignore that

message. We fear most what we understand least.

4.   A Spirit-filled church is a tithing church.

Worship is our way of telling God that we love him; stewardship is our way of

showing him. All that we have comes from God. He is the source of our lives and the

landlord of the universe. Tithing is merely paying the rent due to our Creator. The tithe

or ten percent of one’s income has been the standard for giving since Old Testament

times.

Nothing more obviously reveals commitment to a church than one’s personal giving

pattern. Show me a person’s check stubs and I will show you what he or she really

believes.

Nothing creates greater excitement and forward movement in a church than in-

creased financial support. And nothing better enables a church to do the work to which

it is called. If I had to choose between belonging to a small church of tithers or a large

church of moderate givers, I would instinctively choose the tithers. For financial

commitment breeds enthusiasm and outreach as surely as soil, seed, water, and light

produce crops.

Moreover, people who are generous with their money are generous in their apprecia-

tion of one another. They see life as a gift and live it with gratitude and zest. Nothing

cures depression and low self-esteem like generosity.

5.   A Spirit-filled church is a love-centered and caring-through-sharing church.

6.   A Spirit-filled church is a praying church.

Prayer is the stretching out of the divine within each of us to the God who made us

in his own image. As Henri Nouwen writes:

It is eternity in the midst of mortality, it is life among death, hope in the

midst of despair, true promise surrounded by lies. Prayer brings love

alive among us.

Prayer lies at the heart of all personal godliness. Prayer throws us onto the frontier

of the spiritual life. As Richard Foster states:

Of all the Spiritual Disciplines prayer is the most central. . . . . . . it is

the discipline of prayer that brings us into the deepest and highest work

of the human spirit. Real prayer is life-creating and life-changing.

I am convinced that every activity of a Christian church and every day of every

individual Christian’s life should begin and end with prayer.

7.   A Spirit-filled church is a culturally aware and socially active church.

8.   A Spirit-filled church is a progressive church.

Phillips Brooks has written:

We never become truly spiritual by sitting down and wishing to become so. You must undertake something so great that you cannot accomplish it unaided.

And I would add, the place for greatness is here. The time for greatness is now.

9.   A Spirit-filled church is a evangelism-intensive and evangelism-affirming church.

A Christ-centered, worshiping, biblically literate, and generous church cannot help

but attract members. A caring, praying, aware, and progressive church will always

draw like-minded and like-spirited people as surely as a magnet draws iron filings. A

Spirit-filled church is a secret that cannot be kept. A Spirit-filled church cannot keep

itself from reaching out to others.

And even as we reach out, those who are who are hungry for the Spirit of God will

be find us, and those who are being fed will stay.

They were there

and they reported,

“We hear the wonders of God in our own tongues.”

We are here this morning, ready for the wind and the flame of God’s Spirit, ready to

be part of the wonders of God here and now. And our hearts cry out, “Come, Holy

Spirit, come!”

Amen.

[Round: Father, I Adore You]

·       LDS

[1976 words]

[20 minutes]