Spirit Poured Out

Spirit Poured Out Acts 2:1-8 (CEB) What are you looking for during today's worship service, or any worship service for that matter? Is it just another Sunday of hymns, prayers, and people in pews? Is it your hour per week to try and boost someone's spirits or put a smile on someone's face until you see them next week? After all, this church building is a nice place to spend some time. It's a good place to be. And if someone misses a Sunday, it's no big deal; they'll just make it up later. It's like a soap opera; you stop watching for a while, then decide to come back only to find the characters in about the same place they were when you decided to leave. No much has happened. Same service, same issues. It seems that in most churches, expectations are understandably low because people never see much happen during weekly worship. People have learned to come with everything on their minds except the possibility of encountering God. People come to fix a problem, adjust a lifestyle, or get a push on the back to stay moving on the right track. Those things just might happen and are good outcomes, but it's so much less than what it ought to be. Today is Pentecost Sunday, and it's a day to revitalize a dry worship service by adding the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Like cold, refreshing water being poured on you from a garden hose on a blistering hot summer day, Pentecost Sunday is meant to refresh and revitalize. To catch God's breath, transform, make new, and unite. So, how do we capture and keep that doused-with-a-garden hose moment of being refreshed, causing you to catch your breath as the rejuvenating water cools you down? That's what Pentecost Sunday is for - a shock, a blast of the Holy Spirit that strengthens your bones and loosens your tongue. Pentecost is an invitation to take flight, to cast off the bonds of earth, and to soar on "wings of eagles" (Isaiah 40:31) while gliding on the winds of hope and promise. It's about bringing together a broken world and connecting with others who seek to soar into living for God's kingdom. Instead of a dull, dry, dusty, boring, or routine way of life and worship, Pentecost worship is a joyous reminder that the Holy Spirit has been poured out on you. But remember, "you" is plural, so let the Spirit be poured out on y'all. Even when we can't all be together physically, the Spirit can still operate and unites us through the common bond and position as God's children. No matter where you are, where you call home, or where you worship, being united as God's children in Christ is the power and praise behind Pentecost Sunday. But notice how Luke, who wrote the Book of Acts, struggles to describe this marvelous event. He uses words, but words still fall short. Luke writes, "A sound from heaven like," and "what seemed to be." It was sort of like "howling wind," but not quite; it was kind of like fire, but that wasn't it either. It was a unifying event beyond description and almost beyond experience. It was once said that Mark Twain experimented by putting a cat and a dog in a cage together to see if they could get along. They did, so he decided to add a pig and a goat. After a while, they all got along fine. Then he put in a Baptist, a Presbyterian, and a Methodist, and soon there wasn't a living thing left. When left to our own human resources and understanding, being united will never result in true unity. There will always be differences of opinion. There will always be a wolf among the sheep (Matthew 10:16). There will always be someone hurling accusations instead of affirmations. There will always be a stumbling block in the way. In the church, there is the bond of family, yet still room for variety. Satan tries to break up this family, to disrupt the unity. And there can be union without unity. Tie two squirrels together by their tails and watch them go nuts. They may be united, but they don't have unity. But when God enters the picture, the Holy Spirit un-ties us from the sin that separates and unites us by yoking us together in Christ (Matthew 11:28-30). And when this happens, when the Holy Spirit is poured out uniting us, it cannot be contained and should spill forth from beyond these four walls! Everyone passing by should hear the sound of the Gospel in your life! Voices, words, an experience almost beyond description but alive and welling up into eternal life in each and every one of you! Your actions, your words, like the disciples in today's Scripture, should make others stop in their tracks. Now, I can imagine in the hustle and bustle of daily life in Jerusalem, it would have been difficult to keep all the loud city noise down. Overhearing would be a common experience. But this experience was different. The people stopped and were drawn together by the familiar language that they heard. It made their hearts skip a beat as they turned their ears more carefully to hear the disciple's words being spoken. There is a story of an American who was visiting Germany. The American didn't know how to speak German and ended up getting lost. He found himself in a small village where nobody understood him. He was just about to panic when he was caught in a sneezing fit. A passerby smiled, nodded at him, and said, "Gesundheit!" The American rushed after that man and declared, "O good. You speak English!" We all long for a familiar sound, for the language of home. We long for connection, for true unity. That's what was heard and experienced on that Pentecost morning. That was what the languages offered all those passing by, so they stopped and listened. Does your life in Christ make others stop and listen? Some probably wondered but never believed. Some, I'm sure, had hope, but never anything more. Some ridiculed and laughed at the disciples. If you read ahead in today's Scripture, you'll see that some even shouted, "They must be drunk!" But if there is an alcoholic drink that allows you to speak in foreign languages, I'd sure like to try it! The tongues that were not quite like fire and not really like tongues either, but some visible manifestation of an invisible presence, was making connections. It was one, yet divided and settling on each person. It was one presence, one sound, and it was heard by each person, who then echoed the sound so others could hear. Pentecost wasn't an experience to keep to oneself. It was meant to be shared. It was meant to build a community, to bring together, to unite. Pentecost is about making connections; with God, each other, and our neighbors. It's about building up the Body of Christ as the family of Christ. Pentecost is about the church being the church. Make Pentecost personal and communal in your life and the lives of others. Share your faith and preach the Gospel to everyone passing by. Gather together for worship in which you don't just flap your tongue and give lip service to God, but worship from a renewed spirit in which you expect to experience God. Pentecost is practical and powerful when you make worship your way of life instead of something you do. John Wesley said, "I want the whole Christ for my Savior, the whole Bible for my book, the whole Church for my fellowship, and the whole world for my mission field." Pentecost reminds us that God doesn't just show up inside the church or inside four walls or inside whatever we try to put God in. God's presence and activity extend to "the ends of the earth" (Zechariah 9:10), so ministry and mission are possible everywhere. Church buildings help us do ministry, but ministry is not confined to buildings. Christians are to pour themselves out to others by sharing the Good News of God's love and doing good in all places all the time. Pentecost reminds us that this is a small world, and wherever we go, we'll find members of our family gathered around the living Word and the winds of the Spirit; a Spirit Poured Out. And this family is as diverse as the crowd that gathered around the sound that poured down from the room where the disciples were gathered. The words were heard by people from the Middle East, from Africa, and from the edges of the known world. This is family; this is the body upon which the Spirit is poured out - not just those who look like us, not just those who speak our language, but a multicolored, multilingual worldwide Body of Christ ready to hear, receive, and give. If your life has lost its worship, Pentecost challenges you to hear, receive, and give. To regenerate your life by being reminded of all the ways God has come to you. At Bethlehem, God came to be with us. At Calvary, God was for us. And at Pentecost, God is in us. Without Pentecost, the Christ-event - the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus - remains imprisoned in history as something to remember, think about, and reflect upon. The Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us, so that we can be alive with Christ here and now! Every follower of Christ has the Spirit Poured Out into their innermost being. God, the Creator of everything, lives inside every believer, and worship breathes life into the community of Christ's followers. It forms identity, provides a place for common learning about faith and for listening to God. If worship has become dry, routine, boring, or predictable, keeping the form while lacking the Spirit, be reminded that the Spirit is Poured Out. Confess any sin. Confess your need to God. Ask God to purify your heart and renew your relationship through the Spirit Poured Out into a fruitful life of worship. God's Spirit Poured Out provides the passion, the desire to change people's hearts. It's knowing that you are accepted, forgiven, made new, heard, empowered, united, and loved. As one pastor said, "There's something powerful about worship where all pretense is peeled away, and people speak and pray and sing who aren't concerned about what others think about them. Everything is from the heart." It's not where a Christian community meets that makes them a church; it's what's in the hearts of those who gather. Revitalizing worship, getting a passion for the presence of God in your life and in the church, begins with your heart, where the Spirit is Poured Out in authentic worship. Charles Spurgeon once said, "Without the Spirit of God, we can do nothing. We are as ships without the wind, branches without sap, and like coals without fire, we are useless." We don't participate in worship to squeeze God into our lives; we seek to meld our lives into God's! Today's Scripture shows us that once the Spirit is Poured Out on you, you can't be quiet. You can't be still. You have to praise God. You've got to know how to love, so you know how to worship. You've got to move and share and make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. No matter your race, color, nationality, or language, God speaks to you. Are you listening, and have you believed and accepted the Spirit Poured Out? AMEN 2