A Bittersweet Birthday (sermon for Pentecost, 5/31/09)

A Bittersweet Birthday
Acts 2:1-21

On my friend Ben’s fifth birthday, his two older sisters played a nasty trick on him. Birthdays were a big deal in Ben’s house and he had been looking forward to this day for a while. He was excited about dinner with family and the birthday cake his mother was baking and he had been eyeing the stack of gifts in the living room for days. But the morning of the big day, his sister Ashley stopped him as he was headed to the kitchen for breakfast and said, “What are you so excited about?”

“It’s my birthday,” Ben said.

“No, it’s not,” Ashley replied.

“It’s not?” Ben asked.

“Nope. See, this year we decided to switch your birthday with Rachel’s. Isn’t that right, Rachel?”
Rachel, whose birthday was exactly one month after Ben’s, joined right in, “Yep, that’s right. Today’s my big day. Yours will be here in another month, Ben, don’t worry.”

“But what about all those presents?” Ben asked. “Aren’t they for me?”

“Nope,” Ashley said, “didn’t Mom tell you? Those are for Rachel. I thought for sure Mom had told you.”

Ben shook his head, but didn’t argue. Instead, he got very quiet. Then, he turned and walked away. His sisters figured he was going to talk to their mom, and they left the house to escape the wrath that was sure to come when Mom discovered how they had teased her sweet boy on his special day.

But Ben didn’t go to tell his mom. He went up to his room, heartbroken, not because he was devastated that he wouldn’t get to open all those presents after all, but because he didn’t have a present for his big sister. After all, he didn’t think her birthday was coming for another month. So Ben went up to his room and started searching for something to give her. Finally, he saw the present he received from his preschool teacher at the end of the year: a ceramic heart hanging from a ribbon. Ben wrapped up that heart and made a card for his sister. Imagine how she felt when she got that present. [1]

Today is Pentecost, when we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit to the first followers of Jesus. It is a festival often referred to as the birthday of the church. Like Ben, the disciples had been waiting for their special day, the day when they would receive the Holy Spirit like Jesus had promised them. But they didn’t really know what to expect from this day. Jesus had told them a little about this Holy Spirit, which he referred to it as the Spirit of Truth who comes from God. He said things about this Spirit that the disciples probably couldn’t make heads or tails of, like: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.” I imagine their response to that was something along the lines of, “uh, okay, Jesus, whatever you say.” But really they didn’t have any idea what he was talking about.

Jesus also told them, right before he ascended into the sky in front of their very eyes, that the Holy Spirit would baptize them and give them the power to witness to him from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. That may have made a little more sense, but still, how could they possibly understand what was coming? They simply had no idea what to expect.

And so the disciples did what we usually do when we are feeling uncertain about the future. They got organized. Last week we heard a portion of the first chapter of Acts, when the disciples set about finding a disciple to take the place of Judas. Peter lays out very clear qualifications for this replacement, they spend some time talking about it and finally identify two good candidates, and then they draw lots to decide which of these two will get the position. It seems they did all this very decently and in order, in good Presbyterian fashion. I like to imagine Peter, at the end of that meeting, breathing a sigh of relief that everything went so smoothly -- no one spoke out of order and the meeting even ended at the time designated on the agenda! Then he retired to his room for a well-deserved nap.

Surely God knows how good it feels to check off that last item on the to-do list, to experience the satisfaction of a job well-done, of an empty desk and an orderly inbox. After all, just think back to the creation story. Each day had its one or two big accomplishments, at the end of which God called it good and took a break until the next day dawned. There is a wonderful children’s book called “Big Momma Makes the World,” that retells the biblical story of creation. “When Big Momma made the world,” it starts, “she didn’t mess around.” Big Momma, of course, represents God, and she goes about the business of creating the world while balancing a chubby baby on her hip. By day five or so, Big Momma needed to speed up this whole task of creation because her laundry was piling up and the dishes needed doing, so she finishes things off with a big bang. I love this book because it offers children a whole new way to imagine God, but for grown ups, it’s such an appealing story because it suggests that God knows what it is like for us to have too much to do and too little time to do it. God knows how much we’d like to be able to complete our responsibilities with one big bang and then, as we imagined Peter doing, get some much-deserved rest.

But given what happens to the disciples after they take care of business, we have to assume that although God may understand our desire for order, God isn’t all that interested in helping us achieve it.

What happens to the disciples next is that the Holy Spirit finally arrives, and not in some neat, orderly package by the front door, either. If you think about, the only real parallel we have to Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit finally arrived, is Christmas, when Christ, God incarnate was born. [2] Well, you could hardly find two events of more opposite nature. This was no quiet entry into the world in the dead of night, a baby born like any other.

Nope, when the Spirit finally came it sounded like a hurricane or a tornado was about to tear through that house and reduce it to rubble. The sound filled up the whole house where the disciples were staying. They braced themselves for the impact of a violent wind, but instead of wind, they got fire. And this was no ordinary fire. This was a fire that divided into individual tongues of flame that appeared to rest on each of their heads, without burning them. Can you imagine what a strange sight that must have been? Then, before they could even begin to do what sensible people would do in such a moment and run for a bucket of water, each person was filled with an overwhelming desire to speak.

Of course, if they’d just all started talking at once in their native language, we’d simply say that’s what should happen if tongues of fire filled up a room. Hopefully they would have all been talking about what to do next -- stop, drop, roll! Someone call 911! -- that sort of thing. But it seems that in this story they only thing we should expect to happen are things we would never expect, because when all those people started talking, they were talking in different languages, languages they’d never spoken before. They were talking in the languages the Spirit wanted them to talk in, and they were all talking about the same thing: God. And that’s when they must have realized: the Holy Spirit had arrived. And unlike the birth of Jesus, they weren’t just the recipients of that gift. When it came to the Holy Spirit, they were the vessels through which God would present Christ to the world.

After the disciples received the Holy Spirit and then immediately started giving it away again, things went from “decent and in order” to totally chaotic. In the past seven weeks of the season of Easter, we heard four stories from the Book of Acts. One was last week’s story, the only story that took place before Pentecost. The other three stories happened after Pentecost. First there was a story of Peter and John healing a crippled man outside the temple. After he was healed that man, formerly relegated to the life of a beggar at the gates of the temple, ran into the temple laughing and dancing with joy at being included in God’s love and grace. Then there was the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch -- who was an outsider in almost every way. Finally, we had the story of the first group of Gentiles being baptized and thus included in the gospel story. When we compare the story before Pentecost to the stories after Pentecost we can see that the impact of the Holy Spirit on the early church was something like to a big bang. Before, there was order; afterward, the gospel was spread in unpredictable and unexpected ways. That’s what it meant for the church to be born: something brand new was happening in this story about God and God’s people.

My cousin turned 31 last week. When I asked her how her birthday was, she said, “you know, if was kind of like any other day. I got up, went to work, came home, had dinner. I guess this is what it’s like to have birthdays as an adult.” It’s true, isn’t it? Especially as we get older, birthdays become less an opportunity to have a big party with cake -- although for the record, I think that there should always be cake! -- and more of a chance to reflect. On our birthdays we find ourselves asking: what have I accomplished in the last year? How have I changed, physically, mentally, spiritually? Are there still things I’d like to achieve that I haven’t gotten around to yet? Birthdays can be kind of bittersweet that way.

It turns out the birthday of the church isn’t really any different. Yes, this is a day to celebrate. Yes, this is a wonderful day to welcome new members into our church family and to gather around the communion table to break bread together and proclaim our firm belief that one day we will eat together with Jesus in heaven. But it is also a day when we are called to reflect, to ask questions.

If today is a birthday that is less about what God has given us and more about what we give to others, then how have we responded to that call? Will we be like Ben, who searched for something to give his sister even though he had been expected to be the recipient of all the gifts that day? Or will we horde what we have been given, and do what we can to maintain the sense of order that makes us feel comfortable? This year, may the Spirit lead us to abandon our attempts always do things “decently and in order” and instead to proclaim God’s deeds of love and power in unexpected places and to unexpected people.

At this table we receive a gift from God not unlike that gift Ben gave to his scheming sister. No matter how well or poorly we have used the gift of the Holy Spirit -- the gift of God’s very self -- God invited us here, gladly, eagerly, eternally hopeful that we will share in this feast. This meal gives us strength for the challenging task at hand: the task of proclaiming the gospel to a hurting, needy world. Yes, this is a day when we remember that we have a responsibility to give to others the gift of God’s love for the world through Jesus Christ. We have a responsibility to let the Spirit speak through us to others in ways that feel totally foreign to us. But we also remember that with this responsibility comes great comfort, for the Spirit is the very presence of God with us, our loving Parent -- our Big Momma and our Holy Father wrapped up in one -- and God with us in Jesus Christ, who has lived this human life and known all the challenges of it. And that Spirit comforts us, guides us, advocates for us, counsels us, loves us, and finally, at the end of each day, regardless of what we have accomplished, leads us to a place of true peace. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. Thanks to my colleague and friend Rachel for allowing me to use this story. The original can be found here, at her blog.
2. Scott Hoezee, This Week in Preaching