Sermon Tone Analysis

Scripture Readings

John

Romans 8:

The past seven weeks had been a roller coaster for this group of friends.

Their beloved teacher, leader, friend had been sentenced to death on trumped up charges that didn’t make any sense.

His execution was public, slow, painful, gruesome.

His burial was rushed because of the Sabbath mandate to cease all work from sundown to sundown.

When two of the women in the group had gone the day after the Sabbath to complete the burial rites, his body was gone!

Not just gone, though, like someone had taken it: Jesus was risen from the dead just like he had said he would be!

He was indeed the Messiah they’d been waiting for!

In the weeks since the resurrection, the disciples had been able to walk and talk and eat once again with Jesus the Messiah!

This was the hinge in the center of all of history and they were here to watch it!

40 days after he’d risen just like he’d said he would, he was taken up into heaven after promising them that his Spirit would come down soon to carry them out into the world with the message of Good News!

Hold on, it’s about to get bumpy!

There were 11 of us walking together through Galilee last week over my last 4 days in Israel and Palestine.

As we hiked through the land, I often wondered about the number of us.

11- just like there were after Jesus’ death until a replacement was found for Judas.

11 of us - 10 Presbyterians who stuck around after the conference and 1 Jewish trail guide.

11 of us - trying to unravel and sort out everything we’d just been through together.

Our poor guide who bore the brunt of our thousands of questions and wondering as we all tried to process together.

He was quite a good sport!

Our first two weeks there were intense.

We met with people of all three faiths that call Jerusalem and the surrounding lands Holy.

Jewish people consider it Holy because it is the place to which their ancestors in faith escaped from Egypt - the Promised Land.

Christians call it Holy because it’s the place Jesus entered into our time and space as a human.

Muslims call it holy because it is said to be where their great prophet ascended to heaven.

We met with Israelis and Palestinians, with people whose families had lived there for centuries and with those who only recently moved there and started families.

I’m still processing much of what happened there and I’m sure you’ll hear more about it in the weeks to come.

Hopefully I’ll have a video or series of videos to share in the not too distant future.

But for today, I’ll leave it at this: it was a difficult and exhausting two weeks.

I needed 50 miles of hiking to decompress.

For all of time, it seems, the political situation in that part of the world has been what can be best described as “a hot mess”.

And the disciples had just experienced that times a million compared to what my compatriots and I had.

I wondered, as I walked that land with 10 companions, what those weeks between Jesus’ arrest and the descent of the Holy Spirit must have felt like for the disciples.

The past seven weeks had been a roller coaster for this group of friends.

Their beloved teacher, leader, friend had been sentenced to death on trumped up charges that didn’t make any sense.

His execution was public, slow, painful, gruesome.

His burial was rushed because of the Sabbath mandate to cease all work from sundown to sundown.

When two of the women in the group had gone the day after the Sabbath to complete the burial rites, his body was gone!

Not just gone, though, like someone had taken it: Jesus was risen from the dead just like he had said he would be!

He was indeed the Messiah they’d been waiting for!

In the weeks since the resurrection, the disciples had been able to walk and talk and eat once again with Jesus the Messiah!

This was the hinge in the center of all of history and they were here to watch it!

40 days after he’d risen just like he’d said he would, he was taken up into heaven after promising them that his Spirit would come down soon to carry them out into the world with the message of Good News!

For all of time, it seems, the political situation in that part of the world has been what can be best described as “a hot mess”.

And the disciples had just experienced that times a million compared to what my compatriots and I had.

10

As they gathered for prayer that day, while the rest of the city celebrated the Pentecost holiday, you could almost feel the anticipation in the air.

They didn’t know what to expect or when to expect it, but every time they gathered, their excitement and hope increased.

“Perhaps it’s today!”

God, you are my people.

In Jesus I have set you free from the constraints o

At first, as they began to pray, it was just like any other prayer.

But then, the walls began to rattle and their hair started to move as though they were outside on a breezy day.

At first, it was just a whistle through the cracks and corners of the building, but soon the room filled with a VIOLENT RUSHING WIND!

This was NOT what they had expected Jesus meant when he said he’d send his spirit down!

And like ribbons, fire began to descend from above and rest on each of them.

Overwhelmed by the power of this frightening, wild, amazing Spirit of God, the disciples couldn’t help but begin to tell the Good News! 

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Each of them began to speak the Gospel in another language and soon a crowd gathered at the commotion.

Many in the crowd were amazed, while many in the crowd said, “Somebody’s been hitting the bottle a little early today. .

.”

The disciples weren’t deterred by the ones who made fun of them, though.

The Holy Spirit could not be quenched by the unbelievers.

I wonder if we believe that.

Not just the story, but do we truly believe that the Holy Spirit can’t be quenched by the unbelievers?

Sometimes I wonder if we believe that the Holy Spirit is even there.

Or if we do, we act like the Holy Spirit is just sometimes there when it’s convenient, makes a few people put their hands up in the air during worship, then leaves for a while.

law

–

I ADORE Pentecost.

It’s the one holiday in the year when we get to wear red and decorate the sanctuary red and really celebrate the fact the God sent the Holy spirit to help us figure out what God is up to in the world!

Year after year, I am frustrated trying to find hymns about the Holy Spirit that aren’t boring.

I own a lot of hymnals, for the record.

It’s not just the hymnal we have here.

Most hymnals have a pretty sad selection of music for Pentecost.

This one is better than most.

I couldn’t seem to find one piece of music that communicated the full power of this violent rushing wind. . .

this fire from heaven. . .

this something so powerful that the people of God were accused of being drunk, they were acting so strangely!!!!

As a kid in Kansas, I once stood on the porch with my dad watching a tornado about a quarter mile away from our house.

I know what a violent rushing wind sounds, looks, and feels like, and most of our Holy Spirit music and liturgy and even many Pentecost services are more like a 20 year old box fan set to low than a violent rushing wind.

It’s like a bic lighter, not tongues of flame from heaven!

released you into the arms of grace.

And now you are a new sort of

people.

Go and take that news to the world around you!”

Why don’t we trust anymore that God is going to move powerfully?

How is it that this violent rushing wind has been tamed so much in our liturgy and in our theology?

W

Is it because when we walk around outside these walls, we don’t see much changing?

Perhaps it’s because we’re waiting for the world to change and come to us - we’re defining renewal in the church by our numbers of new converts who wander in from outside, but if that’s the case, we have Pentecost all backwards.

We say Happy Birthday to the church in 26 different languages

We see in our passage today that the Holy Spirit reached outside of the church.

The disciples speaking in many different languages would have been pointless if it were not so that they could preach to people of all different languages and backgrounds.

But the Holy Spirit came first into the house where the disciples were gathered.

What we see in Pentecost is not the Holy Spirit reforming the outside and bringing it in to renew the church, but the Holy Spirit reforming the church first to then bring renewal to those outside its walls.

because this is the day that the Holy Spirit came down.

The da

y that the

Our Christian celebration of Pentecost is a celebration of renewal of the people of God, but Pentecost is not a solely Christian holiday.

While it means something wildly different for Christians, it was first a Jewish celebration.

For those of you who are really interested in the history of Pentecost, I’ve attached a couple pages at the end of this week’s sermon manuscript that give some more historical information about it.