Latest / Belin Memorial UMC / Rev. Will Malambri - "Uncontrollable"
Transcript
- Belin Memorial UMC: Here now the Pentecost story is recorded in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, chapter two. When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues as of fire appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished they ask, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each of us in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt, and parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, in our own languages we hear them speaking. About God's deeds of power. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. And here again we have an occasion where I have to admit, God, I would not have done it that way. The scene overwhelms me. I can't even handle when two people talk to me at the same time. My aunt and uncle are trying to train me into that. They both like to talk on top of each other. I try to be respectful, listen to both, but only catch parts of each. I turn toward one and then to the other. I would say, like at a tennis match, but at a tennis match there's only one ball. It's more like standing in the middle of a snowball fight. I wait for one to pause so I can say, please, just one at a time. I want to listen to each of you, but separately. They never give me the chance. So I just receive it all, all those conversations until it ends, and I go ball up in a corner somewhere. And that's just two people in English. God set this thing up. So 120 Jesus followers, Galileans, with no linguistic skill to speak of, spoke like 13 different languages and dialects at the same time, drawing those immigrants to the gospel, which was miraculous. It was a miracle that they were speaking languages they did not know, that people from other parts of the world were hearing about and being persuaded by God's deeds of power. That God used that moment to convince 3,000 people to believe that Jesus is the Messiah and Lord, to repent of their ways and to give themselves over to his ways. Those are miraculous results. Made to my mind all the miraculous, all the more miraculous by the chaos in which they ensued. I would not have done it that way. I would have asked, which disciple is suddenly speaking the language of Phrygia? Okay, Bartholomew, you take all the Phrygian speakers and you go to your house and you tell them the gospel there. All those who speak the language of Egypt, you go with Andrew. All those who speak Greek, you stay here with Peter. Let's get orderly people. And twenty-nine hundred of them would wander back to their places where they were staying, unmoved and unchanged. But the one hundred of them who think like me would have been glad that somebody took control of the situation. We would have celebrated together that we had launched the first Lutheran Presbyterian Methodist churches in the world. It's ironic, really. The churches with founding theology, like Martin Luther's, the Holy Spirit writes in fiery flame, an active fiery tongue, an active hand. And the Presbyterians' emphasis on God's sovereign right to do whatever God wants to. And Methodists who have brandished the Pentecostal flames on the United Methodist logo would go about as if getting things under control were our highest virtue. Our tongues, yes, we are to tame them. Self-control, yes, that is one of the fruit of the Spirit. So don't take this sermon as permission to pursue whatever whim and desire you have. That can be harmful and contrary to the ways of the Holy Spirit. Even God, we see regularly in the Bible, controls God's anger and responds with more mercy than we deserve. But to think that God is under the control of humanity is the hubris of humanity. I know we don't say that God is under our control. That would be silly. We say God will do what God will do. And then hand God a clipboard with a flowchart of how God should do what God will do. Forgetting that the Holy Spirit decided we don't have time for the first one hundred and twenty to learn thirteen different languages in a variety of cultures before translating the Gospel of John into each of those languages. We'll get to that. But today I'm just going to send my spirit upon them like wind and fire, and they're going to give this thing a jump start. Fire, wind. Good analogies for the work of the Holy Spirit. God, you'll recall, appeared to Moses in a fiery bush. God in a pillar of fire led the Israelites out of Egypt and through the wilderness at night. God descended upon Mount Sinai in fire. The idea that God would appear in fire was nothing new to the Jewish people. Nor was the power of wind. They knew only God can control it. Wind could come upon them without warning, turning dry land into dust storms. It could blow across seas in such ways that they would become deadly. They understood God would direct the wind, and they would not. As Jesus told Nicodemus, the wind blows where it chooses. Fire and wind are ultimately uncontrollable. Not that we haven't tried and to a degree succeeded. We use fire as a tool, a way to heat our spaces and our food. We we use fire to burn away what needs to be cleared. Still, we're cautioned to burn under the best conditions, because even under those, controlled burns can get out of control. On the wind side, we celebrate when a calm Cool breeze comes upon us, but get concerned when those winds are strong enough to be measured in categories, because we realize that we are at the wind's mercy. If we understand that fire and wind are something that we can harness the energy of, that we can appreciate the benefits of, but cannot fully control and are at their mercy, then we have found ourselves in a good description of God. It is God's Spirit who inspires, challenges, and energizes us, empowering us to do that which we could not do without the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who comforts us, reminding us of the things that Jesus taught, even teaching us new things, connecting us with God the Father and God the Son and with each other. It is the Holy Spirit who convicts us of our sin and offers release of forgiveness, who loves us and draws love out of us. We benefit from the Holy Spirit, but are not in control of the Holy Spirit, which is what makes us anxious about the Holy Spirit. We're people who are marketed dayminders. That's how we've become to think of calendars. Calendars are more rightly thought of as anticipators. What we anticipate might happen in the days ahead. But someone named them day minders, and I don't know which they meant to emphasize. Are we supposed to mind our days, or are our days supposed to mind us? Either way, it's not quite right. A calendar is just a prediction. A best guess at what's to come, because how often do our days go exactly as we had planned them? The wind blows where it chooses. Particularly when the Holy Spirit gets involved. Am I saying that the Holy Spirit will blow up your days? Not all of them. Holy Spirit may be new to some of us, but we are not new to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's been working with day-minding people like us for a long time. I'm not saying the Holy Spirit will blow up all your days. I'm saying don't fall asleep on the Holy Spirit. One guy did. Story's found in Acts chapter 20. Paul preached too long, the man fell asleep, then fell out of the third story window, landed on the ground below, and died. That's why sanctuaries are built on the first floor now. We've seen too many of you nod off. The man was dead when Paul graciously interrupted his own sermon, went down to resuscitate the man, grabbed a bite to eat, and came up and preached until dawn. And no one fell asleep in the second part. Don't fall asleep on the Holy Spirit. John Wesley could tell you that. He was doing ministerial work at a high level. He was a priest in the Church of England. He was a campus minister at Oxford, a missionary to the Americas in Georgia. He was giving all he had, but he missed one key element. He knew that God so loved the world, he just hadn't quite come to grasp that God so loved John. With the Holy Spirit awakened John to that, 288 years ago today, things changed. The Spirit's leading groups began to form, giving the Spirit more opportunities to warm hearts and activate bodies for the sake of Jesus Christ. The Spirit pushed John Wesley to be so vile, his words, as to leave the pulpit and preach in factories and fields and mines, places where those who could not or would not make it to the sanctuary that were so respectable were still able to come to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, where they could have a greater chance of being overcome by the Spirit, that fiery, windy movement of God. Established leaders said this was too unusual. Could get out of control, needed to stop before the uncontrollable spirit pushed John to do even more, to send priests to the colonies to go and minister on God's behalf. And here we are, with flames on our logo. Remembering the uncontrollable spirit is still at work. Spirit is still driving us. To do what our out of the authorities control Lord did when he honored women, children, the impoverished, Samaritans, other easily dismissible people of his time. When he prioritized loving God and neighbor on the Sabbath over slavish obedience to every man-made restriction about the Sabbath. When Jesus made self-sacrifice, humility, forgiveness, and peace hallmarks of what it means to follow Him, when He modeled and commanded wisdom and obedience. Pointing out the call be innocent like doves. And if by now you're saying I can't do all that on my own. And the Holy Spirit is saying, Thank God. Now you're getting it. And the Spirit who blows where he will is making ready to warm your heart, set your soul ablaze, work on you like a refining fire, move in you in ways that only God can, giving you the fiery tongue and active hand. I mean for Jesus' sake, that uncontrollable spirit might even dare adjust your dayminder. I wouldn't do it that way. But I sure wouldn't put it past the Holy Spirit. Amen.