Firebrand

FOCUS STATEMENT

Too often Christians act as if Pentecost is a season of the past,

a period we look back on and reminisce about the time when Christians experienced the power of the Holy Spirit.

But friends, the Spirit is ever present with us and the Spirit's power never went away.

POINT OF RELATION

As a young child, I believed in God Almighty.

I believed in a God through whom miracles worked.

In fact, God had worked a miracle through me.

When I was 3 and 4, I was in and out of the hospital.

At one point, I was in the hospital with pneumonia and a viral infection in my blood stream.

I was unconscious and the doctor told my parents that there was nothing else that could be done

except wait and pray.

My mom, of course, grandmother (and others) the news, who then went to my pastor at the time and asked him for prayer.

That Sunday, my who church gathered in a circle around the sanctuary and prayed for me.

That very same hour that church was taking place, I sat up and proclaimed, “Jesus healed me!”

There are other examples where I experienced the power of the Holy Spirit!

But as I got older I noticed that most adults didn’t really seem to believe the Holy Spirit was with them

or, if they did, they had a funny way of showing it.

The truth be told, the deemphasis of the Holy Spirit I saw in adult behavior to led me to deemphasize it too.

My mom and dad, thankfully, were two adults who consistently sought out the Holy Spirit, and their example eventually stuck with me and called me back to the faith.

Still, when I left Christianity and practiced Wicca,

I was searching for a religion where such presence and power were real.

Of course that presence and power of the Holy Spirit is alive in Christianity;

however, that was a reality that I needed to slowly come to on my own.

THINGS TO CONSIDER

We all struggle with REALLY believing that the Holy Spirit can use us to work miracles in the lives of those in need.

We know that the earliest Christians were filled with the presence and power of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost,

we know that they healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, healed the crippled and restored favor to the cursed;

however, we do not believe that we are capable of doing the same ministry that the disciples did.

Pentecost was not a ONE DAY event;

rather, it was the beginning of the end of the separation between God and humankind.

Christ’s death on the cross broke that barrier

and the Holy Spirit was actively working in Christ’s followers for the glory of God and God’s coming Kingdom.

WHAT SCRIPTURE SAYS

According to Scripture, all people start off unsure of the reality of God’s presence and power.

Sure, the Bible says that God did this or that to someone, but that was then and this is now.

The disciples, no doubt, felt that way.

How do we know this?

Well, let’s look at where they were.

They were not out in the streets preaching about the Resurrection of Jesus.

They were not out healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, casting out demons and baptizing new believers

Instead, these disciples were in the same place they had been since the Resurrection.

Jesus had told them that he would meet them in Galilee,

yet, there they were still hiding in the upper room.

They were still hiding from Caiaphas and the Jewish authorities,

fearing that they would be arrested and crucified as followers the one who dared call himself king.

The disciples, walled in up in their upper room, had witnessed many miracles and signs.

They had seen Jesus crucified and they were at the empty tomb and saw there was no body.

What’s more, they had seen Jesus appear to them twice in the very upper room they were still hiding in,

yet THERE THEY WERE: STILL HIDING!

This time; however, they were receptive to God’s presence,

they were receptive to the Holy Spirit, who rushed into them like wind into empty vessels.

The holy howling of voices filled the room with the languages of the world

and each person present could understand what the disciples were saying in their own language.

What sort of miracle was this, I can only imagine the disciples asked as they were amazed by this new power that surged through them.

On top of their heads the light of God could be seen dancing as if they were flames.

These disciples went from those who were afraid of the fire

to brands plucked from the refining fire of God, ready for ministry in this world.

That day, less than two-thousand years ago, 3,000 people were brought to know Christ Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU

Have you experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life?

Have you felt the Spirit within you, guiding you?

What were those moments, if you have had them, like?

Did you feel close to God in those moments?

If you haven’t had such an experience, why do you think that is?

Did you know you could have the Holy Spirit within you?

Have you been open to God’s will for your life?

There are many reasons why one might not feel the Holy Spirit,

but that does not mean the Holy Spirit is not there.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR US

How have we, as a Church community, opened ourselves to the movement of the Holy Spirit?

Have we prayed for the Holy Spirit to ignite a fire within us…

to purify us from the trappings of this world…

to pluck us as brands from the fire that are used for refining this world into the Kingdom of God.

When John Wesley was a child,

he was trapped inside the parsonage while it was on fire one night.

People did what they could to get up to the bedroom window and, when John was finally snatched out, his mother Susannah said that he was like a brand plucked by the hand of God from the fire.

Well, Wesley grew up to be a firebrand indeed

and, because of his willingness to be open to the movement of the Holy Spirit,

we have Methodism as a result!

Are you willing to be open like Wesley was?

Are you ready to be a firebrand, spreading the Gospel to a needy and broken world?

Let us be challenged to open ourselves up to the Holy Spirit. Amen? Amen.