Pentecost May 15, 2016 Pentecost is about the Holy Spirit. The very first mention of the Holy Spirit is found in Genesis: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. . And the earth was without form and void; and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light; and there was light. What is the Holy Spirit, and what does he do? Of course the Spirit transcends male and female so it is unsatisfying to use either he or she or it. In the lesson from Acts, we read that the Holy Spirit speaks all the different languages on earth. Communication and understanding are gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit gives us the power to understand who Jesus is and what he has done for us. The spirit is personal. The Spirit makes the Lord a livi 1g presence with his people wherever they are. It is the Spirit who draws us together on Sunday morning for Worship. It is the Spirit who teaches us how to love each other as Jesus had loved us. It is the Spirit who makes Jesus present with us as we come to receive the bread and wine. In the Eucharistic service, there is a prayer to the Holy Spirit, because the mysterious transaction that occurs whenever the people of God gather for the sacraments cannot happen without the Spirit. The twelve apostles were the most ordinary people in the world until the Holy Spirit got hold of them. They had never done anything distinctive or significant in their lives. Two things happened to transform them from disciples into world-changing apostles and evangelists. ‘Those two things were the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The Holy Spirit is the power of the Resurrection at work in human beings. ‘These men went out from Galilee and from Jerusalem into the far reaches of the Roman Empire and gave their lives so that you and | would confess the name of Jesus Christ today in Eureka, California. This happened, not because they were remarkable people, but because they were seized by an irresistible power greater than anything in cyberspace. If it were not for the anointing of those disciples by the Spirit, the message of Jesus Christ would have disappeared from the face of the earth.The conversion of the apostles was not for them. It was for you. Here is what Paul said to one of his congregations: “There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit.” This means that you and your gifts, whatever they are, are part of the indispensable whole that the Spirit is bringing into being. “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” Maybe you never thought about yourself that way before. Paul doesn’t say “to some.” He says, “to each.” That means that every one of us has a gift from the Spirit to offer to all the others “for the common good.” If you don’t know what your gifts are yet, you may confidently expect, to find out, because the Spirit which is from God teaches us to understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. One way to find out is to ask a few people in the church who know you. They know what your gifts are. One time in a confirmation class we had an exercise like that, in which people took turns telling the others what gifts they saw in them. Some were amazed at what people said about their gifts. It was all very true. You too receive power from God today, power for life, power for service, power for ministry, power for love. Power to witness. Power to share the message of the Christian faith. Maybe you tell yourself, who needs power to witness? If you want to tell it, tell it. You don’t need any power from heaven, any Holy Spirit to do that, do you? Well, it isn’t that simple. There is a kind of power that is necessary. It is necessary it you are to overcome a sense of self- disqualification. That's what hinders so many of us. Who am | that | should be talking to other people about the faith when God knows | have so many problems of my own? Once we get everything straightened out about ourselves, then we will be qualified to speak to others. Now suppose that the first Christians had been of this mind. Suppose they had said, when we clean up all of our problems, then we'll be able to speak to others. How long would it, have taken? In the membership of that first church was Simon Peter, who cursed and swore that he never knew Jesus, denying him three times. Can a church headed up by Simon Peter really witness? Or, for that matter, look at the Twelve or at the Eleven depending on whether we count Judas. Mark says that they all forsook Jesus and fled in the hour of crisis. Are they now going to witness? Then there’s the leading missionary among them, Paul, his hands dipped to the elbows in the blood of the church. It was he who tried to stab that church in its cradle and kill all the Cl ians. And he is a witness?Yes, because witnessing is not talking about one’s self. “You shall receive power to witness.” Of course we need it. We need power if we are going to overcome our hesitation to speak at all. Of course we need power to witness because witnessing means we have to overcome prejudice against a large number of people to whom we do not speak at all, much less about the Christian faith. Jesus gave the disciples the assignment to witness in Jerusalem, in Judea. In Samaria. And to the ends of the earth. At every step of the way, the prejudices were strong, the tensions were deep, the arguments were heated. Kind of like our political disagreements today. But you shall receive power. And when the book of Acts ends, the church has moved all the way from Jerusalem to Rome. All the barriers that were there are still there. But the promise is still there too. You shall receive power. That promise lies here, often unclaimed, but still available for those who would use it. Are you interested? Amen.