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"Fresh Air" by Rev. Charles Hoffman

May 19, 2002 Pentecost Sunday
Acts 2:1-8, 12-21 John 20:19-23

Spring is a favorite season of the year, especially for those who live in parts of the country where winter is bleak and cold. I remember how it was when finally after a long winter we could open windows and doors to feel the refreshing breath of spring.

The return of spring drops colors over a dusky landscape, fleeces white clouds against a brilliant blue sky, opens its arms to nature's prodigious birthing, bends its ear to songs returning from their winter home in the south. Spring is the season of second chances, of renewed hopes and fresh beginnings. Every individual, every community, every institution needs a periodic infusion of spring.

There have been times in my life when I longed for spring. I grew up in the Northwest and went to college in the Midwest. And during those endless winters on the Great Plains my soul thirsted for the rains of home. I remember on those cold nights how I would imagine the music of rain dancing on the windowpanes. I longed to be standing by the ocean listening to the surf. Just the thought of water that wasn't frozen into ice and snow made me homesick.

Now all of this points beyond itself to something that we share as human beings. I'm not sure what to call it, but it is a thirst for something more. It is a yearning that comes from deep within us; an unfulfilled need to feel that the world is a friendly home and that it does not view us with indifference. It suggests our desire to be where we ought to be. We know that somehow we aren't there yet.

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann tells preachers that when they speak on a Sunday morning they are preaching to people in exile (Exilic Preaching, ed. Erskine Clarke, Trinity Press International, Harrisburg, PA, 1998, pp. 9-28).

I don't know if you would agree with the way he describes you. He says that you people who come to church carry "a deep sense of displacement." A deep sense of displacement: nothing is the way it used to be, and it will never again be the way it used to be. A culture that has always been your home now makes you feel like an outsider. It's as though you are in exile.

Add to this a sense of moral confusion, moral incongruity. Too often the good guys lose and the bad guys win. Of course, this problem has been around forever but it's still a problem. You think you want a quid pro quo sort of deal with God. You want moral symmetry where rewards and punishments result from some strict account of the moral books. But it doesn't work that way. It's as though someone has changed all the moral price tags. Nothing makes sense. Exile.

Brueggemann says that "failed hopes, wistful sadness, and helplessness permeate our sense of self, sense of community, and sense of future." I tell you, if he's right then I'm preaching to a lot of needy folks when I get up here every Sunday.

But we're all in this together. It's a world of uncertainties and fears and insecurities. And for me, preaching in such a world is a constant struggle. Because, you see, my job is to keep the vocabulary of faith alive. It's to keep words of faith afloat on a secular sea. I'm supposed to ensure that words such as hope and meaning and faith can still hover over scenes of social injustice and personal tragedy.

I'm not complaining but let me be honest. There are those times when a bad week is punctuated by haunting doubts about my call and my worth. I mean, was it really a calling from God that I heard or was it just the result of acid indigestion or of an overactive conscience? Of course, it's a little late for me to ask a question like that. But I do ask it from time to time.

And then there are those times when the endless parade of church meetings wears through my hide and when I'm swamped by the constant litany of injustices that I foolishly think I'm supposed to fix. I read one writer who wrote about the church. He said:

"Maybe the best thing that could happen would be for all [the Church's] buildings and real estate to be sold and the money given to the poor and the clergy to be gathered together and sent to colonize the moon, and all the committees to be disbanded, and all the computers and fax machines to be recycled, so that we will have nothing left except God and each other, which was where it all started in the first place" (Frederick Buechner, "The Holy Spirit: the Power of God" in The Living Pulpit).

So there you have it. According to what I read there are none of us that are in very good shape. The situation is a little like the man who said to the preacher, "If you knew who I really am you wouldn't be preaching to me." Whereupon the preacher replied, "If you knew who I really am you wouldn't be listening!"

Now it's right at this point in time that Pentecost happens. Those charter members of the first church were worn out and worn down too. They'd been on a three-year roller coaster ride with Jesus. At one moment he was popular with the people; at the next it seemed prudent to keep your distance from him if you valued your life. He was dangerous to be around.

Sometimes his teachings were clear as a bell; at others they were baffling or made no sense at all. First he would tell you that the way was easy and then he would say that it was all about pain and suffering. First they said that he was going to set up the kingdom. Then they said he was dead. Then they said he was alive again. Then he took off and left them wistfully gazing into heaven. But before he left he told them to sit tight until the next installment in the story. If they were that confused when he was physically present with them then what would it be like with him gone?

After what must have seemed like a very long winter of discontent (Shakespeare) they were more than ready for spring.

And what they got was what we call the day of Pentecost.

Now Pentecost is the day the Holy Spirit gets center stage. Most of the Christian scriptures have to do with God the Creator and with Jesus the Christ. Pentecost rounds out the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as the hymn says, "God in three persons, blessed Trinity." Each year we read about it from the second chapter of Acts. The descriptive phrases have become familiar:

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. . . a sound from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind. . . tongues as of fire. . . they. . . began to speak in other tongues. . .

Everything has significance. The fact that the people were together suggests that the Spirit comes to the community. This is not one person's private experience. The Spirit belongs to the whole church and not just to some elite super spiritual membership.

The sound like a gust of wind is a little play on words because the ancient word for wind is the same as the word for breath or spirit. So the sound of the wind is a reference to the creative spirit of God. It was there in the creation story of Genesis and it is here in the creation of the church. At Pentecost the Spirit breathes life into the nascent church.

It's interesting. Notice, it doesn't say that there actually was wind but only that it sounded like the rush of wind. In the same way it doesn't say that there was fire. It says that it appeared that way. It looked like flames resting on the individuals who made up that community of 120 or so people.

They tell us that when we read about the fire of Pentecost we ought to remember the pillar of fire in the Old Testament. That's what lighted the way for Moses and the others when they traveled at night on their way home from Egypt. By day it was a pillar of cloud and by night a pillar of fire. And it says that the cloudy pillar and the fiery pillar were always there (Exodus 13:21f.).

It was a visible sign of God's presence. In a few weeks I'm going with a small group of church members on a long hike in the Yosemite. Now we might still be on the trail when the sun sets. And even though this is a church outing I'm reasonably sure that we shouldn't count on a pillar of fire to light our way. That's why I'm insisting that everyone bring a flashlight.

Maybe I don't have enough faith. Never mind. The fire of the Exodus and the fire of Pentecost are symbols of divine presence. And that's a powerful truth not only for the Christians of the first century but also for the twenty-first century.

I don't know if they made much of this idea of presence when I was first trying to understand the faith. I think they dwelt more on the idea of the fire of Pentecost as a purifying force. I do know that they were always trying to turn us into saints. Or if not saints then at least someone as good as John Wesley.

They taught us to seek, strive and plead for a personal Pentecost when the Holy Spirit would fill our hearts and somehow give us power to withstand all temptations (especially those running amok in young men) as well as power to tell anyone and everyone about Jesus (as Peter and the others did after Pentecost). This personal Pentecost, they said, would give you the power needed to keep yourself pure/saintly. And it would also give you the power you needed for courageous propagation of the faith.

Of course, it was bad theology, mostly based on anecdotal evidence with various scriptures bent to conform. It was one- size-fits-all theology, so a lot of us went around wearing a spirituality that didn't fit.

By the way, I didn't tell you that we actually read two descriptions of Pentecost this morning. For those who may be frightened by all the fireworks of Acts chapter two, there is the Gospel of John's much more gentle account. It's Sunday evening and the church is huddled behind a locked door. John sums up their mood in one word: fear. They were frightened. Of course, he might have included us in that room that evening. And he might have been a little more explicit in his description with adjectives like displaced or confused or insecure or sad. Anyway, Jesus comes into the room, greets them, and commissions them. Now listen: When he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.'"

It's a beautiful account of Pentecost. There's no wind, no fire, no dramatics of any kind. John merely says that Jesus came and stood among them. So there is this same profound sense of presence. And that's the point. In a sense, that's all we need! Presence is both the answer and the challenge.

Years ago I heard a story about some Asian Christians who were visiting the churches of America. At some point they were asked for their impressions of the American church. The comment of one was particularly interesting. She said, "I am amazed at what the American Christians can do without the help of the Holy Spirit." It's a biting commentary because I believe that in most settings we have no idea what it means to say that God is present to the church through the Holy Spirit.

One of the fastest growing and most vibrant churches in the world is the South Korean church. Christians from America who visit the church in Korea come home exhausted. Why? Not because they worked so hard while they were there but because they had to get out of bed so early for the prayer meetings.

The growth of the churches in Korea is related to what these Christians believe. You may remember what the Statement of Faith of the Korean Methodist Church says: We believe in the Holy Spirit, God present with us for guidance, for comfort, and for strength. The Korean church takes that statement at face value and therefore the emphasis on prayers in which it tries to discern where the Spirit is active and to become involved in that divine presence.

I'm thankful for Pentecost. It's a gracious reminder that no matter how strenuous the call of God upon our lives, we are not alone. We respond out of the community of the Holy Spirit. As our creed reminds us, Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is the one true Church. . .

I'm thankful for Pentecost. In fact, it's not even a matter of asking God to be with us in what we have planned and in what we are doing. That's the wrong approach. Try something else. It's a matter of our looking to see where the Spirit is at work and then going there. We see that first. Then we say, "This is a good thing. Something significant is happening here. I want to be part of it."

You see, in spite of what we think, the Spirit gets there before we do. It's not so much a matter of enticing the Spirit to help us in our good ideas as it is a matter of discerning the presence that is already at work. It's a matter of accepting the fact that we can participate in the Spirit's work, but we can't control the beginning or the end or even the course it will take (this idea from Dana English in The Living Pulpit, J/M 96, p. 15).

It's a matter of believing in the Holy Spirit, "the Lord, the giver of life" (Nicene Creed). It's Pentecost!

Amen.