You may have wondered why it was
that we began the liturgy today with the Easter salutation:
Alleluia! Christ is Risen. The Lord is Risen indeed. Alleluia!
And here it is Pentecost.
Do you realize that Pentecost is another Resurrection appearance?
Pentecost is the 50th day of Easter,
and the Risen Christ present in a new and powerful way,
Pentecost as an ultimate Resurrection event,
where resurrection becomes very personal.
Pentecost, as told in the story from Acts, chapter 2,
is at the center of the very meaning and existence of the Church.
Pentecost is the Risen Christ, invading and penetrating us
to the core of our being as Holy Spirit, as the Divine Presence.
Pentecost is the forcing of our eyes open to seeing
that God really does dwell in us.
And maybe we then might be able to see that we dwell in God.
This Pentecost event happened quite possibly in same room as the Last Supper
and where the disciples were gathered in fear after the crucifixion
when Jesus suddenly appeared with them behind locked doors.
Now 50 days later
and it’s 120 gathered instead of 12
and Jesus suddenly appears,
but in a new form:
Flames – on each, bright radiant energy.
The room was ablaze with the light of these flames
burning on the disciples
burning without the disciples being reduced to ashes.
Now, does this sound familiar?
Where have we heard about something like this before?
How about Exodus 3,
the story of the bush that was burning, but was not burned up.
As you may recall,
this extraordinary occurrence got the attention of Moses,
he went to investigate,
and ended up with his shoes off on holy ground,
encountering the Living God.
In the written language of Hebrew
the difference between the word for fire and the word for a man
is one tiny dot,
the difference between vƈa and v´a,
a human being on fire, but not burnt up…
…and Moses would return to this place of the brilliant light
in the bush that was not burned up,
bringing with him the Hebrew People
freed from slavery in Egypt
bringing them to that very spot where Moses had encountered God.
Where else would he bring them?
And on this mountain Moses would receive from the hand of God
the Law of the Covenant,
and when Moses came down from the Mountain
from time spent in face to face encounter with the revelation of God,
his face shone,
his face was aflame with brilliant light.
He was transfigured,
a human being on fire, but not burnt up.
Human beings on fire, but not burnt up
Pentecost – people on fire
The tongues of flame radiantly burning on each of them,
yet not burning them up,
become transfigured into tongues of languages.
And now, for that diverse crowd gathered in Jerusalem for the festival
the sound that is heard, that draws them,
is each one hearing in their own tongues, their own languages
words, not just sound.
The sound that attracts the crowd is the sound of intelligible words.
The fire of the Spirit, of the very Breath of God
is translated through the human person
as utterance, words, communication.
The languages expand the message, the revelation of God,
beyond ethnicity, way beyond any arbitrary human divisions.
The breath that the Resurrection Jesus breathed
on those huddled disciples on Easter Day
now comes with great force and transfigures them
in flaming tongues of light and language,
uncontainable by the room they were in.
In the story of the Day of Pentecost, after the people on the street exclaim,
“How is it that we each hear in our own languages?”
next we read that “they all were amazed and perplexed,
saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’”
And, of course, there are those who jump to conclusions and make assumptions.
So the theory is put forward that they are drunk,
filled with new wine, raw wine, not aged,
still bubbling away in the wineskins in the process of fermentation,
and that has made them raving mad!
So Peter and the other Apostles stand up and address the huge crowd:
“These people aren’t drunk, as you suppose,
since, after all, it’s just 9 in the morning, too early to get a toot on.
But this is exactly what you have heard read from the scriptures,
from the Prophets, from the Prophet Joel,
what it would be like
when God poured out the Holy Spirit freely on the people.
And all of what the Prophet Joel was saying
applies to what we have seen in Jesus of Nazareth,
all the signs and wonders and mighty works
that God did through him right here in your midst,
as you are well aware of.
Not only that, but when he was crucified and killed,
God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death,
because it was not possible for him to be held by it.
…this Jesus God raised up,
and of that we all are witnesses,
and so this is the Holy Spirit he promised to send us from the Father,
which has now been poured out upon us, as you can see and hear.”
So that 120 upon whom fell the fire of the Holy Spirit
were not drunk;
at least, they were not drunk with NEW wine.
Instead they WERE drunk, drunk with the new wine of the Holy Spirit,
drunk with that wedding wine Jesus had made in Cana,
the Holy Spirit bubbling away inside their skins
in the fermentation of transformation into the image of God.
Be drunk.
Be drunk with the new wine of the Spirit.
Be intoxicated with the love of Jesus,
our love for him responding to his love for us.
Let his love flow over you until you are swimming in it.
And drink from the ocean you are swimming in
and become drunk with it.
The Spirit, like wind and fire, is not tame,
but sweeps through whatever is in its path.
To enter the whirlwind
is to become drunk with the walls reeling about you.
Then in the madness of Spirit-drunkenness
the Love of God rearranges the mind and we are changed.
Our vision is changed.
We rub our eyes and look again.
Everything looks different.
What was dingy and grey and old and worn out looking
now radiates color, dances with energy in the field of vision.
Pentecost, it would seem, is very much a resurrection appearance,
a Resurrection appearance of a whole new sort.
The anointing of the disciples with the Holy Spirit,
is expressive of the Resurrection,
creating in these Spirit-infused people a new race of resurrection beings
reproducing in them, and us, if we’ll let it happen,
Jesus himself.
We can’t begin to know the full range of human capacity
available to us.
How can we become the immediate revelation
of the presence and self-expression of God?
It is through the Spirit of the Risen Lord, the Spirit of Resurrection Jesus.
And what the world needs is this fire burning in the People of God
for the sake of the world.
The fire that we know is the fire that consumes.
But the fire that does not consume
is something new to our experience,
something which is the product of the Resurrection,
something provided for us, not of our own efforts.
It comes from the Light of the world,
from the Source of all creation,
from the Word who was in the beginning with God.
The new articulation of the Word in languages of every race and nation
flows from the Resurrection Jesus into each open heart,
placing a flame on each individual for the sake of the world.
Now, what if your hair was literally on fire!
There would be a lot of hopping about and shrieking, I would expect.
That would attract a lot of attention.
And here we are walking around calmly conversing with one another
while our hair is on fire.
Did it ever occur to you what that might be like
to be aware of having the Holy Spirit in such fiery presence
what potential there would be,
how that might change your life, expand it, enlarge it?
Can we get close enough in our openness to the Holy Spirit
that we actually catch fire?
As Peter told the crowd on that Day of Pentecost
for all that turned to Jesus,
“you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
For the promise is to you and to your children and to all that are far off,
everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.”
That is what you are charged to consider for yourself on this Day of Pentecost.
Can you see?
You are loved to such a degree
that God knew that the only way to help you
the only way to work reconciliation in you
the only way to restore Life
is to live in you.
And God with us, the Spirit as close and as intimate as our own breath,
comes right on in and will identify for us our deepest suffering
if we would allow it
and then works in us the healing process
bringing us always toward greater fullness of Life
bringing us even deeper into the Heart of God
that throbs with such love for us.
Let’s stop messing around and ask for power from the Source.
Now may God give us eyes to see
that we too may become,
are in the process of becoming
burning bushes ourselves,
burning bushes for others to catch notice of,
and turn aside in wonder to see,
and to catch fire themselves also. Amen.
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