THE CHURCH IN THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT
Text: Acts 2:14-18 (NRSV)

Let’s talk about Pentecost. It’s a little scary for white-bread rational Christians: The Holy Spirit taking control, people speaking in ecstatic tongues. What is the day of Pentecost about?

It is about the church in the power of the Spirit. And what is the church in the power of the Spirit about?! Let’s see.

In Acts 1 the Risen Christ says: “But you shall be receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth.” Even to Charlotte, N.C. two thousand years later.

I
 

So the first mark of the church in the power of the Spirit is to be a witness, a witness to Jesus and the kingdom of God he preached and embodied.

Jesus lived in the power of the Spirit. And he commissioned us to do the same. In John, Pentecost happened on Easter evening: The disciples huddled in fear behind locked doors, the risen Christ appearing, saying “As the Father has sent me so send I you.” “Yes, you. Then he blew his breath upon them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

New Testament scholar, James D.G. Dunn, asks, “Was Jesus a charismatic?” That is, one possessed of the power of God’s Spirit. And he answers yes. Jesus, in Dunn’s words, had a “consciousness of power and authority his own and yet not his own.” He adds, “Jesus’ consciousness of the Spirit of God empowering him, inspiring him was basic to his mission.”1
And now, Jesus said, this same Spirit will be upon you! The power to heal, to speak the truth of God, to show the love of God, to cast out evil spirits, the power to forgive. This and more will be yours. You shall be charismatic as Jesus was a charismatic.

Is anyone ready to leave to sanctuary yet?

The first mark of the church in the power of the Spirit? To carry on the ministry of Jesus in the power of his own Spirit breathed into us.

And the church is the place we receive, to use Ann Tyler’s phrase, “breathing lessons.”

II

Now let’s turn to the miracle at Pentecost in the book of Acts. Pentecost was the Jewish festival where they celebrated the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. You may remember: There was wind and fire at Sinai when Moses received the commandments.

The disciples were gathered in a house, maybe in the Temple. There were about 120 of them. Suddenly the Spirit descended upon them. Something was heard, something like the sound of a wild wind. Something was seen, something like divided tongues of fire that rested upon them. Bishops wear hats formed in the stylized shape of these divided tongues. But you don’t need to have a hat to receive the Spirit! Nor have male chromosomes. That’s part of the exhilarating message of this day. Something was experienced, something that involved speech and hearing. It was a kind of ecstatic speech, and as the disciples went into the streets people could understand their speech as witness and praise of God even though these were people there from all over the world and with many different languages.

Scholars have debated for two thousand years exactly what this experience was - - and most people’s interpretation fits their spiritual comfort zone. The best New Testament scholar on these matters is James D. G. Dunn whom I just quoted earlier. It was an ecstatic kind of speech, he says, and one the crowd recognized as praise, no matter the language they spoke.

Here are his words:

...Pentecost was for the disciples an experience of such inspiration and worship, of such liberation and power, of such givenness and numinous quality, that from the first they were sure that this was the Spirit of God.2

I remember one night in Ft. Worth at our Agape meal and worship for the homeless of the city. A Hispanic man came to the microphone during prayer time and begin to croon his love song to God in Spanish. The only word I could translate was Senor, or Lord, but I knew immediately what he was singing: His love and praise to Christ.

This experience at Pentecost convinced them that the Spirit Jesus had promised them was indeed with them. This kind of experience is not the only way the Spirit works in us, but it was a pivotal, galvanizing experience of those disciples. We call it the birthday of the church!

So a second mark of the church in the power of the Spirit is: Spirit-filled worship of God, worship that goes deeper than the rational and the verbal. It is the heart united with God in wonder, love and praise.

III

A third mark of the church in the power of the Spirit: The Spirit is poured out on all flesh, not a few, not a male elite, all flesh. As Brueggemann says, “The Spirit is wind not wall.” And in Christ the walls of division are coming down.

Some of the people in the streets understood what was going on: Worship and praise of God. Others mocked them and said they were drunk.

Peter rose and said they were not drunk; it was only nine in the morning. Which is a pretty funny answer. Does that mean the disciples usually waited until six p.m. to get plastered?

Peter went on and did a bold thing: He made a connection. He connected what was going on that day with what God had done and said in the past.

“This is that!” he said. This is that of which the prophet Joel spoke:

In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour our my spirit on
all flesh
and your sons and your daughters
shall prophesy
and your young men shall see visions
and your old men shall dream dreams
Even upon my slaves, both men and women
...I will pour out my spirit
and they shall prophesy!

This is that! In the power of the Spirit we take the risk of bringing what God has done and said in the past and say: This is happening now! In our church covenant we say: We will sustain a critical examination of scripture, belief and ritual as interpreters of God’s active presence in the world.

This means we, attentive to the Spirit, are bold at times to say, This is that. Here is how we see God speaking and acting today.

This Spring is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Pentecostal movement in America. It began April 9, 1906 in the house of a janitor named Edward Lee. A black Pentecostal preacher named William Seymour anointed him with oil and the Spirit came upon him. Lee broke forth in ecstatic speech and said, quoting Peter at Pentecost: “This is that!”

That night Seymour began preaching a revival now called the Azuza Street Revival. Within days huge crowds began to come. They moved to a bigger space. They met three times a day: 800 inside, hundreds outside peering in. The revival lasted three years! People came from all races and classes, nationalities and social groups. One journalist wrote: The color line was washed away in the blood.

And the class line and gender line too! Men and women were equally called to preach and minister.3

It is instructive that still today the Pentecostal Church is the most racially and class inclusive church in America. And it is the fastest growing branch of Christianity throughout the world.
Could it be because they recognize that the Spirit falls on anybody? Everybody?

IV

A fourth mark of the church in the power of the Spirit: They listen to one another and understand each other even though they speak different languages. We are such a divided nation. Women speak Venus and men speak Mars. Red states speak elephant and blue states speak donkey. French President Chirac walked out of a summit meeting this spring because his French diplomats were speaking in English, in his words “speaking the language of Shakespeare rather than the language of Rousseau.” We are divided by our little languages.

There’s a wonderful rabbi's story about when God gave the Torah to Moses on Sinai: When Moses spoke God’s word no one heard God’s word fully, completely. Everyone heard just a part. So we need everyone to hear God’s word fully. It takes a village to hear God’s word. We listen to one another, to people around the world, to people across the years and ages.

The church in the power of the Spirit says, Let us listen together, for no one alone can fully hear the word of God.

V

The fifth mark of the church in the power of the Spirit: We are to become prophets to the world! Not just priests, prophets. Male and female, young and old, prophets all.

In the Bible the prophet is not a fore-teller but a forth-teller, a person who speaks forth what God has revealed to them. A prophet dares to say, this is that! This is how I hear and see God at work.
There’s a risk involved because we may be wrong. We may be a false prophet, but you can’t be a true prophet without the risk of being a false prophet.

Myers Park Baptist Church has been called a flagship church. I looked up “flagship.” It refers to a ship in a fleet which is: 1) The largest and finest, or 2) The one bearing the insignia and officers of a fleet. A flagship church worth its salt is a leadership church. A true flagship church risks being a prophet. That means speaking the best truth it knows which may be quite different from the settled truth and conventional wisdom of the day.

We tend to pillory prophets when they speak the truth which is ahead of us; then later we make statues of them and name holidays for them.

William Sloane Coffin, God rest his courageous soul, when senior minister at Riverside Church, said that it was up to flagship churches to “cast a mantle of respectability over controversial issues.”4 When we do we give courage to others. We’ve written our willingness to do so into our church covenant: We will accept controversy as a reality of life together and an opportunity for growth toward maturity.

We do so for the sake of the world which always needs the truth of God before it is ready for it.
When I was in Ft. Worth one of my closest friends, Michael Bell, a black pastor, began with a few other African Americans picketing the most prestigious public elementary school. It was like Selwyn Elementary in Charlotte. He was protesting the inequity in the school system, a system within a system, one for the privileged and the other for the less privileged. The protest had been going on for months. Parents were upset, nerves were frayed, violence was threatened. He got bad reviews in the press, and he was not popular in my congregation...even though we had worshiped together and held revivals together.

One night I had a dream. In it I asked Michael and another black pastor friend what I could do to be of help to them. They did not respond. Then I heard a voice say “Go join Michael.”

I will not say it was God’s voice, but I didn’t want to ignore the voice. (It could have been the food I ate or white guilt talking.) So waking from that unusually vivid dream I put on my suit and tie and went to join Michael and the others on the picket line.

When I got there Michael looked with justified suspicion: “Why are you here?” he asked. “Because of a dream,” I said. “Let’s talk later,” he said, and handed me a sign.

Before the afternoon was over, I got a call from the Asst. Superintendent of Schools, a church member and friend. He said, “I just got a call from the police who tracked down your license plate. Why were you marching with Michael Bell today?” “Because of a dream,” I said, “and because with violence threatened I thought a white face might help.”

That night Cherrie asked how my day had gone. “I joined Michael’s protest today,” I said. “Why?” she asked. I replied timidly, “A dream.”

My participation let to a front page article in the Star-Telegram and there were not a few people unhappy with me.

Four years later the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram wrote a lead editorial lauding Michael Bell for his leadership and influence in making the school system more equitable. He was bold to speak a truth before the city was ready for it. Once widely ridiculed, now a hero. And for one day this timid soul joined him.

I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, says the Lord. And they shall prophesy!

What about you?


1 Jesus and the Spirit (Bloomsbury Street, London: SCM Press, 1975), p. 88.
2 Ibid., p. 152.
3 This taken from Richard J. Foster, Streams of Living Water (New York: Harper San Francisco, 1998), pp. 115-118.
4 From Warren Goldstein, William Sloane Coffin, Jr.: A Holy Impatience