Sermon for May 11, 2008. Pentecost A.

Acts 2:1-21; John 20: 19-23

The Power of PP's!

Happy Birthday, Church! And Happy Birthday, PP's! What is a PP, you might ask? A Pentecostal Person! But more about that later.

Birthdays are occasions for celebration and reflection when we look back at what we've accomplished and look forward to what the future will bring. Birthdays are also times of gift-giving. A gift is something that is freely given as a token of love. If there are strings attached, then the gift is not a gift, but a bribe.

Have you ever really thought about the fact that each of us is a gift God gave Jesus? In the last chapters of John's Gospel, Jesus prays with his closest friends right before his death, asking that God will protect those he leaves behind, his friends who have "been given" to him by the Father. In our baptism, we, too, are given to Jesus. We are Jesus' gifts. He delights in each one of us, personally. What an amazing truth!

And in return, Jesus gives us a gift, the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is given freely, a token of love, never forced, and never a bribe. No strings are attached to the Holy Spirit. All we have to do is receive it. The question is: Do you want it? Because if you accept the Holy Spirit, you may become a Pentecostal Person, someone on fire.

Several years ago, our son, like most teenage boys, went through a stage of pyromania. He was fascinated with things that involved fuel. Once he tired of bottle rockets, he found fascination with the potato cannon, a device made from a length of PVC into which he inserted a potato and then shot it with the help of hair spray and a gas igniter. As concerned parents, we were very strict about where and how such a device could be used, but one weekend while we were out of town, our son loaded that cannon on the front lawn and set the grass on fire, a mistake he found difficult to hide.

Fortunately, it was a small patch of lawn and though we thought the front yard was forever scarred, the next year that grass came up thicker and greener than any other place. And it stayed that way. Every time I mowed the yard, I had to shove the lawn mower over that patch because it was so lush, and it always reminded me of Joseph. Fire is a great aid for burning off the old and preparing the way for new growth. The question is, do you want this gift of fire, because if you receive it you may become a Pentecostal Person (even a Pentecostal Presbyterian!), alive in Christ.

The first Christians accepted it, building a church not of stone or marble, but of fire. Consider our passage from Acts. After Jesus' ascension into the heavens, his followers gathered together in one place. There, they waited and prayed for the promise of the Holy Spirit and, guess what, it arrived! It did not arrive decently and in order, as we Presbyterians prefer, but with violent wind and flames of fire, filling "all of them"--men, women, children, slave, free man, Greek, Jew, Egyptian--with the Holy Spirit.

Look what the fire did! First, it burned the denial out of Peter. The same apostle who had denied he even knew Christ in order to protect his own skin, stood up before thousands of people, risking his life, and promised them the same gift he had received: the grace of Jesus Christ and the courage of the Spirit. God, he said, will pour out his Spirit on all people, on their sons and daughters, their women, and their men. And the people will be changed.

The fire burned the fear and timidity out of the other ten apostles gathered there. They joined Peter in doing something they never dreamed they could do--speaking in foreign languages and proclaiming the wonders of God so that all could understand, all could have a chance to receive the fire. It burned away class status so that the women joined the men, working, teaching, and preaching right alongside them.

The fire burned up the old religion. It burned up the 613 Jewish laws that made it impossible to live a righteous life. It burned up fear of the wrath of God and the Day of Judgment. It burned up hypocrisy and prejudice. It burned up social discrimination. It burned up artificial boundaries. And it burned up apathy. No one, I'm sure, was apathetic on that Pentecost long ago or looking at his sundial to see how long Peter had preached.

The gift of the Spirit burns away disinterest, lukewarm commitment, fear, self-interest, and apathy, so you have to be careful about whether you want to receive it. It won't be forced. What if Peter had accepted the gift and then stood before the crowd and said, "Well, here I am. I don't want to share this news with you, but I'm the moderator of this group and no one else will do it. Plus, I have to get in a grant report. So let's hurry this up." The gift wouldn't be much of a token of love.

Or what if Peter and the others had accepted the gift but never ventured out of that closed room? What if they hoarded it so that the thousands of people outside never even knew about mercy, forgiveness, and unconditional love?

Or what if those to whom the gift was being given chose to sleep through Peter's message, or to ridicule or ignore him, or accuse him of being pushy? What if three thousand people that day hadn't been baptized, but had yawned at the good news, or made mental grocery lists, or stayed home? What if the sons and daughters and friends hadn't been present because no one invited them, no one encouraged them to be there, to receive the gift? Perhaps, if that had been the case, we ourselves wouldn't be here today, invited to receive the gift of Christ's Spirit.

The gift is offered to us. We have to decide whether we will accept it. To be filled with the Spirit is first to say yes to the gift of fire, to let the old habits that dampen our enthusiasm be burned off so that a new energy can be created. But watch out! You may find yourself teaching Sunday School when you didn't think you could. You may find yourself bagging groceries at the Care Center when you thought the poor made you uncomfortable. You may find yourself giving up a Saturday morning to make our grounds more hospitable, or you may discover that it really isn't that difficult to ask a friend to come meet your church family. You may find yourself saying "How does God want us to do this?" instead of "It can't be done," or serving on a ministry team. If you say yes, you may notice a desire to learn how to pray or an eagerness to study the Word. You may even discover that worship is where you want to be, a gift returned to God not out of obligation, but out of joy, with no strings attached!

To say yes to the Holy Spirit is to allow ourselves to be changed from comfortable Christians to committed Christians. Otherwise, our work will become drudgery. Our commitments will become obligations. Our fire will burn out.

"Those who accepted Peter's message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day." The Holy Spirit is here, now. Do you want the gift?