Acts 2:1-7, Pentecost 2011
Let’s fill in the blank together … “It only takes a spark, to get a ________ going!” Glad you know this! Now I’m going to take the liberty of changing up the wording a bit on this Pentecost morning by saying, “It only takes a spark to get Christian community going.”
I learned this in a very real first hand way during my college summer days as a staff counselor at Camp Johnsonburg. All across the acreage of that inspiring wood, fire was more than just a religious symbol. It truly was a center piece around which Christian community was formed.
I cannot even begin to calculate how many campfires I had a hand in building. And when I first started in the summer of 1989, I wasn’t exactly a skilled Boy Scout and didn’t even have any experience getting a fire started in a Weber grill. Not that charcoal experience would have helped anyways since camp did not allow the use of lighter fluid. We had to very carefully build an ignitable structure with whatever kindling material and appropriate wood we could find.
At times this happened in beautiful, dry weather; other times in the aftermath of a good summer soaking. Whatever the conditions were, my co-counselor and I had to work diligently to get a fire going. The communal campfire time – for singing God’s praises, discussing the biblical theme of the day, communing with marshmallows and chocolate – was too important not to make every effort each evening of camp.
The campfire locations changed, as did weather conditions and available materials. But there was one part of the campfire building process that was a constant -- the necessity of fanning flames. The tiniest sparks needed wind to grow stronger, be it wind from my breath or the push of air from a songbook or something like it. Forgetting to do this step meant failing to get a good blaze and therefore failure to experience spiritual formation while a group of people gathered around it.
In the midst of a multitude of Johnsonburg campfires, my calling from the Lord into His ministry became clearer. After three summers on staff and four years of working Fall and Spring youth retreats, I knew that I had to give my life to faithfully building Christian community. And I knew that giving my life to this meant never, ever forgetting the step of welcoming the wind of the Holy Spirit to blow upon and through me so as to ignite the formative fire of faith in the lives of those I was to be in ministry with. All my church experiences in the years since those days at J-burg root back to what happened around those campfires – sharing spoken and sung words of faith, communing together, praising God with our presence, our respect for each other and our careful stewardship of Creation. From the start, my calling has been about building spiritual campfires in every part of church life.
Luke, the Gospel writer and author of the Book of Acts, tells us this morning about a historic event in the life of the early church. It was a spiritually formative experience that centrally displayed both wind and fire.
Jesus’ disciples had been gathered together in one place, forty days following the ten day celebration of Passover when they had shared a final meal with our Lord. They did so because the Risen Jesus, before his ascension, had specifically ordered them to prayerfully wait together in Jerusalem for the further fulfillment of God the Father’s promises. This fulfillment arrived in dramatic fashion during the traditional Jewish festival of Shavout which commemorated God giving the Ten Commandments to Moses at Mt. Sinai fifty days after the exodus from Egypt. As such, there was great gathering of Jewish pilgrims in Jerusalem as Jesus’ disciples prayerfully waited in a room together for God to do the next big action on behalf of salvation history.
Prayer was answered as a tremendous rush of wind filled that sacred waiting room so that “no space escaped its occupation.”[i] This same wind then miraculously morphed into forks of fire, perhaps the very same kind of burning but not consuming fire Moses had witnessed. What was initially felt, since wind cannot be seen, “became a recognizable and expressible image – an incarnation of God’s Spirit.”[ii] These sacred sparks settled upon each disciple in the room, giving them special interpretive ability to go out among the gathered pilgrims – pilgrims of many different tongues -- in order to spread word of the Gospel. The wind of God blew and the faith-forming fire grew!
And Church was born, not Church as a rigid institution of laws and rituals, of budget items and membership roles, but Church as a place for gathered-around-the-campfire experiences of Spirit dancing, soul-restoring transformation.
Where is this holy wind blowing and where is the sacred fire burning today here at FPC, among we who are Faithful People in Christ? In what way or ways do we in this community gather together to receive the fulfillment of God’s promises through wind and word and faithful flame?
To truly acknowledge and celebrate Pentecost, we cannot be just about remembering something that happened long ago. The holy wind is very presently filling every space of our individual and our communal lives. We are very much being gifted with new ways to interpret and spread the refining fire that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Earlier this year, I, ever the campfire counselor at heart, engaged our church officers in conversation about my concern that FPC members are having less and less ability to gather together in one place for worship and fellowship. As a congregation, our families are geographically spread out. And families with school children have, it sure seems, more demands than ever before on their time. Activities, including on Sunday mornings, make it harder to commit time and talent to our FPC family life together. Of greatest importance to our congregational identity, worship attendance has remained steady but not grown, and worship is the heart hearth of our faithful community. Here in worship, generations gather together to be faithfully formed as Christ’s disciples by the Holy Spirit through prayer, praise, communion, and receiving fresh stirrings from the Word of God.
If you pay attention to reports about decline in America’s major denominations, we are caught right in this cultural thicket. And this precisely why we need to relive that very first day of Pentecost. We disciples of today do well to recall that the first disciples no doubt felt somewhat stuck and anxious without a clear understanding of what was to become of their faithful band and the entire Jesus’ movement – stuck, that is, until the great visit of sacred wind and flame and fresh interpretive power. We need today’s reminder that the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of the Living Lord -- is not stagnant and dying just because cultural shifts are occurring. Sacred wind is ever upon us, firing up new forms for interpreting and spreading the Gospel to the ends of the earth.
Blessedly assured of this, your church leadership has responded to the concern about all congregation members not knowing and being and bonding with one another. We have done so by way of our Neighborhood Ministry initiative.
I trust you all recall receiving a letter of explanation at home about this and that you’ve heard some buzz about it since. In the letter, we stated our belief that knowing, supporting and encouraging one another in the faith as an intergenerational church family is critical to the identity and vitality of FPC. We then presented a new model for mutual ministry that located each FPC member and family in one of five geographical neighborhoods. We also identified an Elder-Deacon dynamic duo given shepherding responsibility, along with myself, for each of those neighborhoods. The general idea is that your church leadership can help facilitate ways for FPC family to gather together and bond in new, congregational building ways. There isn’t a program manual for this new initiative and it is still very much in development. If there were a manual, I do believe page one would exclaim, “Let the Spirit lead you!”
I call attention to this today in order to affirm that this fresh approach intends to spark and spread faith-forming fire. It intends to gather us around spiritual camp fires when we cannot gather together by the heart hearth of our Sunday worship and fellowship. And it intends to assist the constantly rushing, reforming holy wind by increasing and strengthening inter-church, intergenerational communication and interaction. I pray you are feeling the sacred wind and flame all over this, all over our leadership, all over you, and all over FPC’s present and future!
Overall, Pentecost reminds us that Jesus is not someplace up and beyond us, but always in our midst. He is the fiery sunrise light burning in the heart of our lives and our faithful community. His Spirit illuminates, interprets, dances and decrees.
Yet we can easily slip into thinking and acting as if Jesus is only a person of the past. Murdoch University Professor Emeritus Bill Loader holds the church accountable for this by asking, “If we celebrate the presence of God in the person of Jesus who lived compassion in flesh and blood, does his death leave us without hope and only with memory?”
Empowered by Pentecost revelation, this faithful professor replies, “God, God’s Spirit, the Spirit which drove Jesus, is accessible to all! Believe it! Believe that God said yes to Jesus by raising him from the dead. God said: this is who I am and how I am! We are not left with a good and inspiring memory, but a promised presence. That presence promises we stay in touch with the divine word, we learn to communicate in love, and we celebrate being a community in true continuity with God’s people of all ages.”[iii]
Amen for such words! So, fanned by the Spirit and freshly fired up, let’s faithfully move FPC ahead to the glory of God in Jesus Christ! It really does take all of our sparks to get and to keep Christian community going! Amen.
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