Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
May 30, 2004
Acts 2: 1-21; Genesis 2: 1-7
One of my favorite preachers, Fred Craddock, shares this story from early in his ministry: “My wife, Nettie, and I ministered for three years in Custer City, a little community in southwest Oklahoma. The population was about 450 on a good day. There were four churches and each had its share of the population. The attendance rose and fell according to the weather and whether or not it was time to harvest the wheat.
“The best and most consistent attendance in town, however, was at the little café where all the pickup trucks were parked and all the men were inside discussing the weather and the cattle and the wheat bugs and the hail and the wind and whether we were going to have a crop, while their wives and sons and daughters were in one of those four churches. The churches had good attendance and poor attendance, but that café had consistently good attendance. Better attendance that some of the churches! The men were always there. Once in a while they would lose a member there at the café because his wife finally got to him, or maybe his kids did. So you would see him go off sheepishly to one of the churches. But the men at the café still felt that they were the biggest and strongest group in town. They were not bad men. Indeed, they were good men, family men, hard-working men. The leader of the group at the café was Frank. Frank was seventy-seven years old when I met him. He was a good man, a strong man, a pioneer, a rancher, a farmer, and a cattleman. He had his credentials and all the men there at the café considered him their patron saint. ‘Old Frank will never go to church,’ they said.
“One day I met Frank on the street. He knew I was a preacher. It has never been my custom to accost people in the name of Jesus, so I just shook hands and visited with him. Then he took the offensive. He said, ‘I work hard and I take care of my family and I mind my own business.’ I knew he was telling me, ‘Leave me alone. I am not a prospect.’
“So I did not bother Frank. That is why I was surprised, indeed the church was surprised, the whole town was surprised and the men at the café were absolutely bumfuzzled, when old Frank, seventy-seven years old, presented himself before me one Sunday morning for baptism. Some in the community said that Frank must be sick, had heart trouble, said he must be scared to meet his maker. They said, ‘Going up to be baptized. I never thought old Frank would do that, but I guess when you get scared…’ There were all kinds of stories. But this is the way Frank told it to me. We were talking one day after his baptism and I said, ‘Frank, do you remember that little saying you used to give me so much? ‘I work hard, I take care of my family, and I mind my own business?’
“He said, ‘Yeah, I remember. I said that a lot.’
“’Do you still say that?’ I asked.
“’Yes, I do’ he said.
“’Then what’s the difference now?’
“He said, ‘Back then I didn’t know what my true business was.’
Concludes Craddock, “Frank discovered what his business was. It was to serve human need. So he came to the church and I baptized him.’” What do you suppose happened to old Frank, after all those years, to lead him to move his life in such a radically new direction? What happened to him? What happened in him?
In the life of the church, today is Pentecost Sunday. Pentecost – the birthday of the church. Pentecost – when the promise of God is fulfilled and the Holy Spirit comes anew into the disciples, filling them and turning this frightened, leaderless group into a church. The story is so familiar. A thunderous sound like a rushing wind fills the house where they are gathered, and flames of fire appear on their heads. And if that isn’t wondrous enough, men and women of a variety of tongues hear the apostles speaking in their own language. Clearly the meaning of this is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is now meant for all people everywhere. In fact, by the end of the day, this church of 120 had grown into a church of over 3000! And that was without any radio or TV advertising whatsoever! Pretty powerful stuff, this Pentecost, this birth of the church, this gift of the Spirit. Plus I get to wear my new red stole today!
But today I want to look behind the drama, the wind and fire, to what I am calling the softer side of Pentecost, to something quieter but equally dramatic. For there is another Pentecost in the biblical word. We find it in a couple of places. In the Gospel of John, we find it in the story of Thomas and the other disciples hiding behind closed doors after Jesus’ crucifixion, wondering what will become of them. Do you remember what happens? Suddenly Jesus is with them. He speaks to them, “Peace be with you.” And then a strange thing happens. He breathes on them. Not a violent wind with tongues of fire, but a breath and a word, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
This too is Pentecost, and we encounter it for the first time in the Bible, well, in the beginning, in Genesis 2: “Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life….” A marvelous, marvelous image – human beings, you and me, receiving the Spirit. God imparting God’s own spirit, God’s own breath, God’s own life, into this being. You and me, nothing but a lump of clay, without the animating, life-giving spirit of God. Again, this, too, is Pentecost – the breath of God breathed on God’s own people; men and women taking in God’s breath and being transformed by it, indeed, being given life.
But still it’s hard to describe, this Holy Spirit; it’s difficult to explain. I remember once I was delivering a paper, much as Elena Larssen did here last week, and after my paper I was asked to explain my concept of the Holy Spirit. I talked for ten minutes and when I was done, my questioner said he still wanted me to explain my concept of the Holy Spirit. It is difficult. Fred Craddock says it like this: “I cannot describe the Holy Spirit. I cannot explain precisely the Spirit of God. Jesus himself said it is like a mystery, like the wind. You do not see the wind, and yet you know when it comes and when it goes. One day I saw a tree standing tall and proud and straight; it did not need anybody or anything. I passed it another day and it was bent over and the top of it was almost touching the ground. I said, ‘What caused that tree to bend so?’ and someone said, ‘The wind.’ I saw a man proud and arrogant, joking about church and saying he didn’t need anybody, bragging that he was self-sufficient, thank you just the same. And then one day… What got into him? What is that? It is the Spirit? I saw a ship in the harbor, out maybe a mile away. The sails were hanging limp and the ship was going nowhere. Then suddenly the sails were filled and the ship began to move toward the port. What did that? Somebody said, ‘Oh, it’s the wind.’ I didn’t see any wind. Another time I saw a young man, doing nothing, going nowhere, just hanging around. And then he began to be filled with purpose and meaning. What caused that? Someone said, ‘The Spirit. The breath of God The wind of God filled him.’ Do you believe that?”
That is a good question. Do we still believe in a God who acts like that? In words of one preacher, “Do we still believe in a God who blows through closed doors and sets our hearts on fire? Do we still believe in a God with the power to transform us, both as individuals and as a people? Or have we come to some kind of unspoken agreement that our God is pretty old and tired by now, someone to whom we may address our prayer requests but not anyone we really expect to change our lives?”
I think back to old Frank in Custer City, Oklahoma, the man everyone knew would never go church, showing up one day to receive the sacrament of baptism. What do you suppose happened? Could it have had something to do with that softer side of Pentecost? Could it have been the Holy Spirit blowing through his life, rearranging things, opening new things up, finally breaking through the locked doors protecting his heart and maybe even setting it on fire?
Yes, it is hard to explain…this Holy Spirit. The great theologian, Paul Tillich, said it like this: “The Spirit can work in you with a soft but insistent voice, telling you that your life is empty and meaningless, but that there are chances of a new life waiting before the door of your inner self to fill its void and to conquer its dullness. The Spirit can work in you, awaking in you the desire to strive towards the sublime against the profanity of the average day. The Spirit can give you the courage to say ‘yes’ to life in spite of the destructiveness you have experienced around you and within you…The Spirit can awaken you to sudden insight into the way you must take your world, and it can open your eyes to a view of it that makes everything new…The Spirit can throw you into a hell of despair about yourself and then give you the certainty that life has accepted you just when you felt totally rejected and when you rejected yourself.”
Maybe this Holy Spirit is about coming alive – an awareness of new strength and power that makes us ready to take on the obstacles that seem to be in our way and to move forward as if they were not there. But do you believe it? Do you believe God works that way, even in your own life? Maybe not with fire and wind, but perhaps with just a breath? Maybe in those moments in your life when two plus two does not equal four, maybe in those moments when you find yourself speaking with eloquence or wisdom you know you do not have, or offering forgiveness you had not meant to offer; or when you find yourself taking risks in the name of love or compassion you thought you did not have the courage to take, or when you find yourself reaching out to someone you had really intended to walk away from…maybe those are the moments, those are the moments when the wind is blowing, when you are taking part in it, breathing in and breathing out, taking God into you and giving God back to the world again, only this time with just a little part of you attached.
Do you believe in a God who acts like that? Do you still experience a God who acts like that? I hope so. For again, that, too, is Pentecost. And in the words of an old saying, “The Wind of God is always blowing, but you must hoist your sail.” So let’s get out there in faith and not be afraid to hoist our sails.