All Together In One Place

Fifty days after we celebrated Easter in this sanctuary, we come this morning to celebrate the fulfillment of Easter’s promise.  We come to celebrate Pentecost, when extraordinary things happened to ordinary people, when patient and prayerful waiting yielded to the frightening and overwhelming arrival of God’s Spirit. 

 

And our guide for this celebration is one of the best-known, most loved and least understood passages in the entire Bible.  It’s a passage that seems, at the very least, to be improbable.  Worse than that, to others it has a kind of magical ring about it, the sort of thing only pre-scientific ancients could dream up.  It’s too strange to be accepted as fact, so it’s best to just leave it alone.

 

So what should a preacher do on a day like this? 

 

   . . . a day that the church has always regarded as one of its principal feasts? 

 

      . . . a day when many of you – and Cheryl, Emily and I – have come dressed in red for this

                              special occasion?

 

         . . . a day when our children have become our teachers and guides as they helped us

                              appreciate close up that the Spirit is here among us?

 

              . . . a day when we have heard a beautiful rendition of one of the greatest of the spirituals

                              that reminds us what happens when we feel the spirit moving within us?

 

                   . . . and yet a day when many worshipers in many churches find it difficult to get past

                              the symbolism so foreign to our minds?

           

What’s a preacher to say? 

 

Well, this morning we could go in many different directions.

 

We could, for example, look at this story in its context, seeing how Luke crafts his two books – Luke and Acts – so they are really two volumes in a matched set. 

 

     He begins his gospel account with the birth of Jesus, spending far more time on this event than

     any other gospel writer.  Then he begins his second volume with the birth of the church.  And

     in both cases each of these stories is the key to understanding the rest of the book, and each is

     preceded by a message from the spirit.

 

 

We could look at this story in the context of Luke’s two-book set.

 

Or we could look at how the church has always linked Easter and Pentecost – promise and fulfillment – and how the whole intervening 50 days were always days of joy. 

 

     The early Christians held no fasts during this period of Eastertide.  They stood for prayer in   

     celebration of Jesus’ resurrection rather than kneeling, as was done the rest of the year.

 

     All the readings in worship in this season were from the New Testament rather than from both

     Testaments, as was true for the rest of the year. 

 

     The liturgy of Pentecost linked the two high days in the Christian calendar, a ritual that will be

     repeated today at St. Mary’s across the street, where every Mass is beginning with a special

     prayer:

 

          Almighty and ever-living God, you fulfilled the Easter promise by sending us your Holy

          Spirit.

 

We could examine the close connection between the two high points in the church’s life:  Easter and Pentecost.

 

Or we could look at the two central symbols we encounter on this day: the sound of violent wind, the appearance of tongues as of fire on each head.

 

     The rabbis linked the Hebrew Feast of Pentecost with the giving of the law on Sinai.  We read  

     in the Exodus account of Moses and the giving of the Ten Commandments that the presence of

     God was indicated by loud thunder and bright lightening and smoke from the mountain – just

     the kinds of sounds and sights that would make sense to the Jewish disciples as they, too,

     experienced the special presence of God’s Spirit on the Feast of Pentecost.

 

We could look at these intriguing symbols and see what they meant to that gathering of Jesus

people in the room upstairs.

 

We could go in any one of these directions this morning –

 

     looking at how Luke tells this compelling story . . .

 

          examining the crucial connection between Easter and Pentecost . . .

 

               pursuing the wonderful symbols in this story –  

 

and find ourselves understanding Pentecost much more fully to our benefit. 

 

But today I’d like to suggest that we go in a different direction.  I’d like for us to take a look at the very beginning of the story as Luke tells it in the second chapter of The Acts of the Apostles. 

 

The story begins with what a good mystery writer – or a good television reporter – might call “the set-up line.”  Before the story can begin, we must understand where things are, how things are.  And the author of our text this morning writes in his set-up line:

 

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.

 

Who were all together?  The Twelve, of course, but also those who had followed Jesus during his life but were not among the disciples.  And, Luke reminds us, Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers were among the gathering.  This was a gathering of Jesus’ followers.  All the Jesus people were together. 

 

Where were they all together?  In what Luke calls “the room upstairs.”  It’s where the disciples had been staying

 

     after those bleak days when their world crashed  around them . . .

 

          and after they knew the Easter truth:  that Jesus was alive among them . . .

 

               and after Jesus left them and told them to wait because the Spirit was coming.

 

They waited in the room upstairs and, says Luke, they devoted themselves to prayer.  They waited and they prayed . . . waited and prayed. 

 

And then came Pentecost!  We don’t know just when the men and women in the room upstairs had this incredible experience.  It may have been during the dark hours of the night.  Days always began at sundown for Jews – and still do – so Pentecost would have begun just as the dark approached. 

 

     Perhaps the experience occurred during those long, quiet hours of the night when the praying  

     and the yearning were at their most intense.

 

     Perhaps it was just as dawn was breaking, the same hour when fifty days earlier the women had

     found the empty tomb.

 

All we know is that sometime before 9:00 in the morning the gathering left their upstairs room and came downstairs and went out among the people to share what they had received. 

 

But before any of that could happen, they were all together in one place.  This was not a brief meeting of the Prayer Committee.  Folks didn’t sign up to pray for an hour, to be relieved by someone else.  All together!  In one place! 

 

It strikes me that this is the secret of what happened – the secret hidden in plain sight.  The whole church came together in one place and prayed to God with earnestness and expectation.    

 

 

 

 

 

Not long ago I opened a box in our basement.  (Mary and I have many boxes in our basement . . . and we’d love to share some with you!)  When I opened this box, I found myself looking through some papers and articles and bulletins from the church where I grew up.  Protestant Christians were in short supply in our town, and belonging to our church meant cutting against the grain.  It often meant leaving other family members and a childhood faith behind and joining a new community. 

 

That congregation was a happy and fun-loving group, but it was also very serious.  Many years before our family became a part of the church, the Spirit had moved among the this group of Christians.  They had determined that they were not going to be just your ordinary church.  They had once been a mission church, and now they had a burning commitment to mission.  So they decided that they would give one-third of their church’s income to mission. 

 

This could not have been an easy decision; it was not a wealthy community.  Many of the families really struggled to make ends meet.  Yet even through the Depression years the congregation made good on its promise to send one-third of its offerings to others who needed help:  to missionaries whom we got to know by name, to the educational ministry of the Presbyterian Church, to the development of new congregations, to the camp we children enjoyed in the summer, to ministry among migrant laborers in our area. 

 

And this congregational concern for others spread.  During the Second World War, and later during the Korean War, weekly messages – all handwritten – were sent to our service men and women, and no one left for college or for work out-of-town without knowing that members of

that congregation would be in regular touch. 

 

There was an intensity and a level of commitment and a very close bond in that congregation that ministered to me as I grew up there and as I left for school and far beyond.  I’ve never found an exact, precise word for it. 

 

Or not until recently, and in a most unlikely place.

 

Sebastian Junger, who wrote the best-seller, The Perfect Storm, has written a new book titled, simply, War.¹  Junger was embedded with a platoon in Afghanistan, and after sharing every part of life with them for months and after following some who returned home, he is ready to say

that in addition to Traumatic Stress Syndrome and other illnesses suffered by many, there is a loss in civilian life of something special. 

 

Often, he says, these soldiers have trouble being re-integrated into society because they have become addicted to . . . brotherly love!

 

Every member of the platoon depends on every other member, and there develops a focus and a group bond that is so difficult to find in our society. 

 

“Brotherly love” – “sisterly love” – is, of course, a biblical term.  It’s what Jesus calls for among his disciples.  And it’s what I remember from my growing-up church. 

 

 

I’m sure there were problems and difficulties and arguments and rivalries and disappointments in that congregation, as there always are, but these were not obvious to a child in that church family.  What I remember was the urgency, the clear understanding of what we were about, and, not incidentally, the frequent and wonderful times when the whole congregation gathered together in one place for dinner and worship, much as did the earliest members of the Christian community.

 

-         -         -         -         -

 

Something of what I experienced in my home-town church can be found in many other congregations, as well.  It can be found here.  One of the first stories I heard when we moved to Wooster was the story of the building of this sturdy, impressive structure on College Avenue in which we are worshiping today.  Celia Gates remembers coming as a child to the dedication of this building back in the late 1920’s.    

 

Just mentioning that time ought to suggest that the congregation chose the absolutely worst possible time to build a new building, especially a new stone structure with large, beautiful windows and a soaring nave.  In retrospect, who could possibly have chosen the early days of the Great Depression for such a project? 

 

Clearly the Spirit moved among our congregational forebears.  No rational power using the world’s logic would have made such a counter-intuitive determination.  But the Spirit blows where

it chooses, and it chose to blow its energy into a group of Presbyterians in Wooster, Ohio, because this congregation was ready to receive the Spirit.

 

-         -         -         -         -

 

What is it about a congregation that makes it ready for the Spirit to arrive?  Well, it surely is not a matter of homogeneity.  It’s not because everyone agrees with everyone else. 

 

Try an experiment with me this morning.  Look at your neighbor – not a family member but some other person sitting in your pew – and answer for yourself this question:  If I write a letter to the Daily Record tomorrow morning on a matter dear to my heart, and if my neighbor in the pew with

me this morning does the same thing, is it likely that our two letters will be similar?!    

 

Clearly we don’t all think alike on any possible subject you could name.  So it isn’t that.  Well, perhaps it’s because we are all stable, upstanding, accomplished people who have never made a serious mistake?

 

Anne Lamott, one of my favorite writers, answers this for us:

 

     You’ve got to love this in a God – consistently assembling the motleyest to bring into this

     lonely and frightening world, a commitment to caring and community.  It’s a centuries-long

     reality show – Moses the stutterer,  Rahab the hooker, David the adulterer, Mary the homeless

     teenager.  Not to mention all the mealy-mouthed disciples.  Not to mention a raging insecure

     narcissist like me. ²  

 

 

No, preparing for the coming of the Spirit has nothing to do with our homogeneity or with our righteousness or accomplishment – thank the Lord!

 

The very first gathering of Jesus’ followers shows us what is needed:

 

     They were all together in one place – literally and figuratively.

 

They were preparing themselves for something they couldn’t see, couldn’t name, but knew was what they needed and wanted. 

 

     They were waiting,

 

          and they were praying,

 

               and they fully expected that this Spirit would come when it was time.

 

If the Spirit is to come among us in a special way, we can be quite sure that we won’t be hearing the rush of a violent wind, or seeing tongues as of fire above our heads.  These were signs and symbols for another group in another place and time. 

 

But if we are truly waiting and praying and expecting God to be among us, then let’s be careful! 

 

     The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it but you do not know where it

     comes from or where it goes. 

 

We will know when the Spirit comes among us in a special way.  Not just within you or within me, but among us – all together, in one place.

 

We will know!

 

And the world will know, too!

 

 

NOTES

 

¹  Junger, Sebastian, War.  New York: Hachette Book Group, 2010

 

²  Anne Lamott, Plan B, Further Thoughts on Faith.  London: Riverhead Books, p. 22

 

 

 

SERVICE  ELEMENTS

 

Scripture Readings:                 Genesis 11:1-9

                                                Acts 2:1-21    (Text)

 

Hymns:                                    “Earth and All Stars”                                      Dexter

                                                “Come, O Spirit”                                            Boundless Mercy

                                                “Come, O Spirit, Dwell Among Us”              Ebenezer

 

Anthem:                                  “Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit”                        arr. William L. Dawson