The Movement of the Spirit of God
A Message in light of The Day of Pentecost for Sunday, May 21, 2023 and for our Music, Word, Hope and Prayer Podcast
John Hilley
Texts: Ephesians 1: 16-23; Acts 2:1-21
Note: Pastor John Hilley frequently takes his sermon from the previous week and alters the format for his weekly podcast done with Nate Strasser. Here are his transcript notes that we are making available. It is a longer than usual podcast message because he brought into discussion several sources a blog on a post done by the fantastic Prof. Esau McCaulley. He also reflects on the witness of Tim Keller, who died this week and who John lifts up as a witness to the work of the Spirit of God.
Introduction:
John: Welcome to this episode of Music, Word, Hope and Prayer. This week has as its focus the story of Pentecost – a powerful story about how the gospel of Jesus Christ draws us together to hear the mighty works of God. Pentecost: the miraculous birth of the church in the flames of Pentecost when the Spirit of God descended as “tongues as of fire” upon those gathered and the gospel was heard - and understood - in the varied languages of the world known at that time.
It’s got me thinking about what I think are some of the key takeaways of the story and also about the theme of hope, even as I wonder why it doesn’t feel like we are able to come together as we did that first Pentecost. Has the Spirit lost its power to do so among us? No, the Spirit of God hasn’t lost its power but it can feel like it sometimes. What would it mean for others to see in our lives a witness that was together spiritually and practically? Three things come to mind that I will speak about.
In preparing this talk the weirdest illustration came to mind to describe Pentecost and I couldn’t shake it so it is in this week’s episode. The illustration is of a recent active shooter training we had at our church and school- yep feels a little dystopian. At the heart of the illustration is the reality of fear and empowerment two things that were present the day of our training and also on that first day of Pentecost. Like I said, weird, but hopefully you can see the connection..
John: What did you think of the training?
Nate: (Nate talks about how it got him thinking, but with the exercises he definitely kept a distance as he didn’t want to get his “piano hands” in jeopardy.
John: Yep, I wanted to protect your hands, too. Speaking of which, what do we have for music?
Nate: I’ll bring in “Holy Spirit, Rain Down”, a lesser-known Pentecost spiritual, but one of my favorites. I think you’ll all enjoy it.
John: for the prayer part of “Music, Word, Hope and Prayer” I am using a prayer by the Benedictine Sister Joan Chittester:
Here is the prayer:
May the Gifts of the Holy Spirit bring fire to the earth so that the presence of God may be seen in a new light, in new places, in new ways.
May our own hearts burst into flame so that no obstacle, no matter how great, ever obstructs the message of the God within each of us.
May we come to trust the Word of God in our heart, to speak it with courage, to follow it faithfully and to fan it to flame in others.
Give me, Great God, a sense of the Breath of Spirit within me as I . . .
(State the intention in your own life at this time for which you are praying.)
Amen.
— a prayer from Sister Joan Chittister
Nate’s music: “Holy Spirit, Rain Down”
Pentecost: when the Spirit of God descended as “tongues as of fire” upon those gathered and the gospel was heard - and understood - in the varied languages of the world known at that time.
Here’s the story in Acts 2: 1-21
Acts 2:1-21
2When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
5Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one of them heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9Parthians (Parthiuns), Medes (Meads), Elamites (Eelmites), and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea (Judeeuh) and Cappadocia (Capuhdoshia), Pontus (Pontus) and Asia, 10Phrygia (Frijia) and Pamphylia (Pamfilia), Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11Cretans and Arabs —in our own languages we all hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”
12All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
14But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea (Judeeah) and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.
16No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 17‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy (profes-eye), and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. 18Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. 19And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 20The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. 21Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
Pentecost is the miracle that follows on from the miracle that occurs in the aftermath of a wonder. Jesus - of the lineage of Israel’s king David, Jesus, the Messiah - was crucified and raised from the dead. He then ascended into heaven, the significance of which is recorded in Ephesians, a text that is read on the Day of Ascension, which is often celebrated today in churches. Hear these words of the writer of Ephesians:
I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Ephesians 1:16-23
We need to be reminded of what this Gospel is and of him who “fills all in all” “in this age and the age to come.”
In light of our reading in the Book of Acts, I want to share these three things with you -and really they were shared by Esau McCaulley, professor at Wheaton College and national columnist in a blog about Pentecost he wrote back during the turmoil of 2020. (Dr. Esau McCaulley, “The Flames of Pentecost, a World on Fire, and the Hope of the Kingdom”, May 31, 2020)
The three things are:
The gospel brings us together.
The Spirit moves us toward people very different from ourselves.
Our hope is the gospel of the Kingdom
The Gospel brings us together.
Acts 2:1–21 opens with the followers of Jesus gathered in one place. It is amazing to think that at one point in history all the Christians in the world could fit into this one room. Christianity began humbly with a rag tag group of folks who had encountered the living God.
If you have watched the series The Chosen; it really brings home just how rag tag, small, and varied it was. There was a time before the massive span of the Catholic church. There was a time before megacrosses and megachurches.
Among the small, varied group were women like Mary who came from rural peasant stock and people like Matthew, the former tax collector. The two of them could not be more different. Matthew collaborated with the oppressors of Israel and extorted money from the people to line his pockets. Folks like Mary were the victims of such atrocities. What kind of church has room for both the oppressed and former oppressors? There were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, whose focus was fishing for a living and Simon the Zealot who had been a freedom fighter before following Jesus? McCaulley asks the question “What united them?” and then answers his own question by saying:
What united them was their shared convictions about Jesus. They were together and that is what the gospel does. It unites us around the lordship of Christ” (McCaulley’s blog).
The Acts passage describes that they were all gathered in a room. About that room a long time ago, Esau McCaulley writes:
“The same Spirit falls upon all in the room. There is not one holy Spirit enabling women to declare the word of God and another for men. There is not one Spirit that gives words to the rich and another for the poor.”
From this, he widens the aperture of his focus from just then to now and adds:
“There is not one Holy Spirit that enables us to speak to African peoples and another that allows us to speak to Asians or Europeans. The one Spirit sends the one Gospel to varied peoples of the earth. The same Spirit is able to minister to all people because it reaches our common humanity. The Holy Spirit didn’t have to work extra hard to convince African peoples of the gospel because there is some flaw in us that makes us hard to reach. The singularity of the gospel’s work through the Spirit arising from our common status as image bearers speaks to our common humanity. We are all fallen and in need of God’s grace...any ideology that functionally or verbally denies that common status is a heresy.” (Dr. Esau McCaulley, “The Flames of Pentecost, a World on Fire, and the Hope of the Kingdom”, May 31, 2020)
One of the most united and spirited experiences I have been too recently (other than a recent Nashville MLS soccer match; no I didn’t make it to Taylor Swift’s Era concert; and yes truth is I don’t get out much these days) was an active shooter training we held last week at our church. Sad to say that this is the most exciting thing I have experienced; sad to say the absurdity that we are having to do this here in a church and a preschool and to spend the money and time and focus given the failure of politicians to act towards sensible gun laws for our public health.
The church staff and preschool teachers, a few from our church and our partners had a training of what to do when there is an unwanted, violent intruder. Sadly, many of our children are well practiced when it comes to active shooter drills at their schools and adds another patina of anxiety to their lives. Meanwhile many adults have not. It was time for us to undergo training led by a wonderful guy named Moose Moore. There was a classroom component where we learned about what to do. Nothing like the loud noise of an air horn to trigger your fear. We learned fear is good, but we have to not be gripped by fear. Of the most important things to take from the training. Everything you do is with a purpose and that is to live. If you run and scatter, you do so with purpose. If you hide, it is with purpose; if you fight it is with purpose. The takeaways seemed relevant for a message related to the work of the church inspired by Pentecost. We are stronger and more empowered when we work together. Scattering makes you an easy target to the forces of darkness.
I saw the most empowering thing as the exercise unleashed the Mama Bear ferocity in our preschool teachers. Moose brought out the fake guns. The teachers were given balls to throw at the assailant helping illustrate the power of numbers and to underscore that you aren’t helpless and that you can work together to overpower. They threw the balls with gusto at the guy carrying the fake assault rifle, charging Moose’s helper. Then Moose brought out Bob, the grimace face, bad-dude dummy. Preschool teachers practiced going up to Bob with a “no” and a palm to the nose and even adding a boxing of the ears to burst the ear drums while the teachers wildly cheered each other on! An empowering, spirited 2 hours punctuated with the lesson of working together and coming together.
Yes, I know it is an analogy that doesn’t sit easily with us and it breaks down except for the element of fear and of people coming together as one and I mention it because it is the most energy I have experienced in a Presbyterian sanctuary.
On that first Pentecost, the people - the nations - were being drawn together under the lordship of Christ - and as you read the story, it results in two responses. One response refuses to acknowledge the facts of what is going on and draws upon their known experience to dismiss the work of God. They are just drunk: - it’s just alcohol. The story in Acts 2:1-21 also acknowledges a deeper question that was being asked: what is God up to in their midst?
That brings me to the second point.
The Gospel Moves us Out
The gospel drew them outside their own culture to speak and eventually do life together with people very different from themselves. The Spirit moves us toward people very different from ourselves. Think of it as scattering with purpose.
At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit breathed new life into despairing disciples which propelled them outward toward the world with a revolutionary message of God’s transforming love. The Holy Spirit took disparate people, strangers, people alien to one another, separated by language and cultural differences, and spoke to them of a story that had the power to galvanize diverse groups of people together into one people, into Christ’s new people, a new community of people, people called out from the crowd, into a church—an ekklesia, called out from the crowd to be Christ’s witness in the world, called out and caught up in the dreams, visions, and new horizons offered by the Holy Spirit.
I love how contemporary Willie James Jennings, who teaches at Yale Divinity School, and who I have been referencing recently for his work on belonging, reflects on this text in his commentary on The Book of Acts:
“The same Spirit that was there from the beginning, hovering, brooding in the joy of creation of the universe and of each one of us, who knows us together and separately in our most intimate places, has announced the divine intention through the Son to reach into our lives and make each life a site of speaking glory. But this will require bodies that reach across massive and real boundaries, cultural, religious, and ethnic. It will require a commitment born of Israel’s faith, but reaching to depths of relating beyond what any devotion to Israel’s God had heretofore been recognized as requiring: devotion to peoples unknown and undesired.
What God had always spoken to Israel now God speaks even more loudly in the voices of the many to the many: join them! Now the love of neighbor will take on pneumatological [, that is, Spirit-dimensions]. It will be love that builds directly out of the resurrected body of Jesus. This is the love that cannot be tamed, controlled, or planned, and once unleashed it will drive the disciples forward into the world and drive a question into their lives [—and ours—] Where is the Holy Spirit taking us, and into whose lives?” (Willie James Jennings, Acts (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017), 32)
What started with a particular people, God’s Spirit alive in Israel is now being unleashed and poured out upon everyone. All flesh. It’s multicultural. Multilingual. The Spirit pours over the multitudes; the Spirit moves under and around and through all that separates us from God, breaking down barriers and removing obstacles that hinder communicating and hearing the voice of God.
Where is the Holy Spirit taking you and into whose lives?
How is the Spirit of God uniting us and how is the Spirit of God moving you and us out toward new ways of knowing and being.
The Pentecost Story is a powerful story about how the gospel of Jesus Christ draws us together to hear the mighty works of God and to move us out. It challenges us to ask ourselves: has it lost its power to do so among us?
Especially after I look around and see:
…In the news has been the split up of the United Methodists as hundreds of churches are disaffiliating over the issue of gays and lesbians in church leadership; it draws a parallel to the issue of slavery and where the churches like Methodists and Presbyterians stood in the 1840s. I was having dinner this past week with someone who has returned to the little Mississippi town she grew up in. Her Methodist church just voted to split from the larger denomination and in the wake of this church has divided families (hers included) and crushed the 28 year old pastor who had only been at the church a couple of months. It was her first call to a church (any wonder that our young pastors are leaving the church). So many Methodists have come to believe they are supposed to be the moral police and this action signals even greater polarization lies ahead. But if I am honest, it is not just those on the right that make it hard for us to come together. Molly Worthen: “Now that Christians on the right and the left both feel remorselessly persecuted, many believe they have no choice but to purify their own ranks and defeat the forces of evil at the ballot box.”
…I also was seeing the new Gallup poll that came out showing that Americans’ membership in communities of worship has declined sharply, with less than 50% of the country belonging to a church, synagogue or mosque (down from 50% in 2018 and 70% back in in 1999. According to Axios why it matters is that it represents a fundamental change in our national character for politics and even social cohesion. (Axios: America’s Belief in God Hits New Low https://www.axios.com/2022/06/17/belief-god-low-gallup-poll)
What would it mean for others to see in our lives a witness that was together spiritually and practically? This week a giant died. Tim Keller, founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian died at the age of 72. I never followed his work much but so many did: presidents, journalists, young and old urbanites. He was of the more conservative brand of Presbyterian who had narrow views on gender and sexuality. In 2017, Princeton Theological Seminary and my alma mater rescinded a prestigious lecture invitation it had extended to Keller after many in the seminary community objected to his views on gender and sexuality.
I went back and looked at some of his work and Keller’s approach—to spurn tribalism, avoid picking unnecessary fights, and preach to our shared existential angst about our God-sized hole in each of us. Looking afresh at his life, I have come to see in his life a witness that seemed to be together spiritually and practically. He spoke about how the Gospel brings us together. And that the Gospel moves us out. He immersed himself in the different voices and I realize I can too easily stay with the voices within my tribe and people. (See https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/05/tim-keller-pastor-obituary/674124/)
And that he looked beyond his own capabilities and reason. When he found out at 69 that he had cancer and that his prodigious work was coming to an end he wrote:
“It is endlessly comforting to have a God who is both infinitely more wise and more loving than I am. He has plenty of good reasons for everything he does and allows that I cannot know, and therein is my hope and strength.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/nyregion/the-rev-tim-keller-dead.html)
That leads me to the last thing I want to say in this Pentecost inspired message::
Our hope is in the gospel of the Kingdom of God
To paraphrase Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics vol. 1 part 2: If we begin with what is possible, that is, if we reduce reality to the limits of modern reason, then we’re going to be very limited. But if we begin with the reality of faith and the freedom of God, then the possible gets opened up. We begin with the gospel realities of creation and resurrection, and then the possible isn’t just what we can do, but it is what God might do.
That has a ring of truth to our situation. We limit what we think God can do, reducing it down to what we think we are capable of doing through reason and effort. About the need for Pentecost for this time we need a Spirit filled Christianity big enough to draw the varied peoples together. And Esau McCaulley believes this involves two things. “The first is to recognize that the problem is not just out there. It’s in our hearts.” The problem isn’t just that there are bad guys in the world. The problem isn’t just with the liberals or the conservatives. The list can go on. “The problem is that we all in various ways live in rebellion against God and his will for us. The gospel demands a decision from each of us about our own sins. If Jesus had a theme for his ministry it is repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent personally for your sins. Why? Because (secondly) the Kingdom is coming. This kingdom is depicted in Jesus’ first sermon in Nazareth where he proclaimed good news to the poor and liberty to the captives. It is the kingdom articulated in the Psalter rooted in justice and righteousness. Jesus came to save sinners, but those saved sinners now bear witness in their lives to God’s kingdom vision. We know that this kingdom is coming because Christ is risen.” (McCaulley in his blog on Pentecost)
Pentecost reminds of what the Gospel is and of him who “fills all in all” “in this age and the age to come.” So, in conclusion:
The Gospel brings us together.
The Spirit of God moves us toward people very different from ourselves. We are heirs of this work. This is what the Church becomes through the power and presence of the Spirit, who joins us together, who brings new people into the community, young and old alike, wildly diverse, brought together to be the body of Christ, embodying a love that cannot be tamed, controlled, or planned. Where is the Holy Spirit taking You and into whose lives? This is the question before you.
Our hope is the gospel of the Kingdom.
Again, as the writer of Ephesians says:
… what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Ephesians 1:16-23
Come, Holy Spirit. Come.