Happy Natal Day, church!
As a kid did you ever terrorize a sibling by scuffing your feet on the carpet and walking towards your “prey” with an index finger pointing at them? The threat, of course, was “static electricity.” If you touched you brother or sister, it meant a small but smarting little zap. A small shock — big fun!
A local grocery store (actually, the local Orcas Island Supermarket where we live) recently bit the bullet and spent big money on some major renovations. Among the improvements was all new flooring, a snazzy laminate that looked like real hardwood. The store also bought new shopping carts. These were sleeker and more “user friendly” than the previous model. An upgraded misting system in the produce section required new de-humidifying equipment for the rest of the store.
But all these various upgrades resulted in a “perfect storm” for this grocery store. The contact between the new floor and the new shopping cart’s wheels coupled with the dry, de-humidified air resulted in perfect conditions to create tremendous static electricity. Suddenly every shopper with a grocery cart was getting electrified by the lemons, zapped by the chocolate chips, zinged by a loaf of bread. The pain for those local shoppers was no longer confined to the check-out counter. Now every item the shopper selected brought a painful static electric wake-up shock.
Our ancestors took one giant technological step after a thunderstorm. Lightning ignited a fire — a fire that offered both light and warmth to the cold darkness of night. It gave our ancestors an idea. Figuring out how to keep a fire going, without the thunder and lightning, was the beginning of human civilization. Taming “fire” was the first great human achievement.
In 1957 a young musician named Jerry Lee Lewis, one of the first to be called a member of a new genre called “rock and roll,” recorded a huge hit. Primarily a piano player, Jerry Lee pounded out at hit called “Great Balls of Fire.” The title came straight out of Lewis’ traditional Christian upbringing — recalling a familiar Southern expression describing the miraculous events of Pentecost. The “great balls of fire” the song spoke of was a folk description of the gift of the Holy Spirit, the sudden, super-charged fire-ball experience of the Holy Spirit’s presence among Jesus’ fearful and fox-holed disciples. The Holy Spirit was a static-electric shock that jump-started Jesus’ frightened followers, and enabled them to become the first, the formative, the foundational generation of the Christian church.
In this week’s gospel text John continues a story that started with the words “In the beginning,” that continued “in the garden,” then culminated in the Olive Garden of Gethsemane and Golgatha then a story with a surprise ending in a garden with his first appearing to someone who thought he was a gardener. Pentecost is the capstone of the surprise ending.
Usually for the observance of Pentecost, we focus on the dramatic moment described in Acts 2:1-12, where there is big time wind and fire and stuff that makes movie directors drool. The drama of the birth of the church is usually found in Luke’s description of how the Holy Spirit came to dwell within Jesus’ remaining disciples.
But in the gospel of John the gift of the Holy Spirit is more tightly woven into the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection, his mission and witness. In John’s gospel the continuation of Jesus’s mission, of the calling of the post-resurrection Christ, is found within the commission of his followers.
In John’s gospel Jesus’ spirit is “given up” on the cross in 19:30 — poured out of his side in blood and water into the lives and futures of all his followers, even as some huddled fearfully at the foot of the cross. In today’s text, John 20:19-23, we hear how those still frightened disciples were hunkered down in the “upper room,” where they had celebrated Passover with their Master.
Suddenly — in a room with locked doors — Jesus stood in their midst.
John makes it clear in his gospel that Jesus had fulfilled all of what God had empowered him to do. Jesus had proclaimed the good news of the gospel. Jesus had extended God’s offering of forgiveness, and love, and had sacrificed himself to make that offering a living reality.
But there still remained those doubtful disciples – those duh!-ciples. John’s gospel could not end without dealing with the disciples. The living legacy of God’s love and Jesus’ sacrifice are inseparable from John’s gospel. So as the shut-in remnant of Jesus’ follower’s cowered in their rented Jerusalem rooms, the resurrected Jesus enters into their midst. He shows them his wounds, proving his identity and shocking them into recognition.
Then the risen Christ the one who had completed his mission, who had done all that God had directed offers the final piece and peace to this mission. The Last Adam “breathes on them,” just as God had breathed on The First Adam, and declares “Receive the Holy Spirit” This Holy Spirit is the confirmation of Christ’s power on earth. The Holy Spirit is what transforms upper-room cowards into out-front evangelists. John’s gospel completes Jesus’ mission by affirming that the presence of Jesus has never left this world. The incarnation is ongoing.
The Holy Spirit is what brings Christ to life in each one of us. That is the function of the Spirit: to breathe the resurrection presence of power into each of our lives. Since the resurrection, the presence of Jesus has never left this world. Since the resurrection, the presence of the risen Christ has been witnessed and worshiped in this world through his Spirit-empowered disciples. From the first century to the twenty-first century, Jesus’ Spirit-empowered disciples have continued to gift creation with the living presence of the resurrected Jesus, the One sent by God to save the world and bring us back into a garden relationship with God.
“Goodness, gracious, Great Balls of Fire!”
What an incredible story.
“Goodness, gracious, Great Balls of Fire!”
That is what Pentecost Sunday is all about.
“Goodness, gracious, Great Balls of Fire!”
We are all called to be in the line of fire and the lineage of “on fire” disciples. The church is supposed to be a burning body. On fire, set afire, ablaze by the Holy Spirit. At our baptism the Holy Spirit planted an eternal “hot spot” in our souls. This means that we are now and forever among those who are responsible for keeping the fire going, the embers burning. The Holy Spirit in and through us fires up Christ’s presence to be a living, life-changing, soul-stirring presence in this world.
Accepting the Holy Spirit is not like getting a premium credit card. You don’t get extra points for doing this or that. You don’t rack up extra mileage or charge bonus meals. Accepting the living Holy Spirit into your life makes changes in all we say and in all we actually do.
Pentecost is when Christians celebrate their incendiary nature. We are who we are because we are “on fire” with the Spirit. We are who we are because we are “on fire.” And we who have been set on fire by the altars of the Almighty ought to be fired up.
When fires start to die down — when they get tame and “controllable,” they do not produce much in the way of flames. But a waning fire produces a lot of something smoke. Those dim and dying fires produce more smoke than flames. Smoke blocks clear vision and clogs airways. No one can see or breathe clearly in a smoky environment. Many of our churches are so smoky and murky, so confused and hazy, because we’ve let the fire die down.
The celebration of Pentecost every year is a big fat bellows, a blast of refreshing breath and restoring oxygen, to those of us who have become smoky and sedentary in our faith over the past year. Pentecost is a divine puff of Spirit infused fresh air that inflames our discipleship and transforms our Christian fellowship into an on-fire active followership committed to doing something, not just being a believer.
Pentecost is a celebration of “great balls of fire.” It is the time when we should all merely “flick our Bic.”
But Pentecost is not about just some huge fireworks display that is over in fifteen minutes either. For Jesus’ disciples, from the first century to the twenty first century, Pentecost is a heavenly light show directed to the places where we live. The light that we hold in our hearts and souls and the light that we have been called to shine upon our neighbors, is the light of Christ’s continued presence in this world.
That is how the gift of the Holy Spirit keeps Jesus’ ministry and mission, all of God’s promises and possibilities, alive in this world today and every day.
If you have time, here are some further thoughts for an alternative ending:
To keep our electronic lives safe, and protect our personal information and financial data from infiltration, our computer systems have built-in or higher-end “firewalls” — system checks that deter hackers and other information thieves. But firewalls can pertain to our souls as much as our cyberlife. We construct “firewalls” around our personal lives — “safety nets” designed to keep us from catching fire too brightly, dampening down the flames of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Here are a few firewalls you might develop in your sermon. They are meant to be suggestive and pump-priming.
1) Control Firewalls: Our need for control is so severe many of us are control junkies. We protect ourselves from the unpredictability of fire. If we are truly “on fire” with the Holy Spirit, our lives are unpredictable, always open to change and periodic “flare ups.” When Jesus talks about “you can’t tell from whence it comes and where it goes,” he is not talking about the wind. He is talking about those “born of the wind.”
2) Laodicea Firewalls: How many Christians laodicea everything — instead of being hot or cold we settle for tepid, a temperature that causes God to declare in Revelation 3:16, “Because you are medium/mediocre/tepid/lukewarm, I will vomit you out of my mouth.” In other words, “hot or hurl.” Disciples who live with a tepid, fetid faith are never “on fire” about anything. They merely smolder and throw off smoke that chokes and clears the throat of all those who come close to them.
3) Safety-first Firewalls: How many of us live our lives of faith “playing it safe.” We make the church, and our faith, an insulated, fire-retardant space. We wrongly identify the sanctuary of the church as a place where we are sheltered from risk. But that is not what the Holy Spirit breathed out by Jesus upon his upper room-hugging shuttered disciples. The “sanctuary” of the church is not a place that is a safe-haven free from risk. The “sanctuary” on fire for God is a place and a life free to TAKE risks. Instead of being “safe-minded” we are called by the Spirit to be “salvation-minded,” to be “mission-minded.”
4) Friendly-fire Firewalls: We forget that being a disciple, being “out front” for Jesus in this world, means we should expect to be prime targets for “friendly fire.” Evidence of the backlash of this world will be found on the backs of those who trust the Spirit, who keep the incarnation a resurrection reality.