"Show us the Father!" Pentecost- May 23, 2010 - John 14: 8-17, 25-27

Pastor Deborah Birkeland

A Lutheran pastor known for his gift of spontaneity, came up with a game plan for his children's sermons. Each week he invited a child to bring up a box with something inside that the pastor had not yet seen, and promised he would come up with a message on the spot. One Sunday morning, little Patrick presented the pastor with the box with a cell phone inside. Opening the phone, the pastor said, “We have six members in the hospital right now. I think I will call God and ask Him to help them get better. Now what do you suppose God's number is?” The kids all shrugged their shoulders, so the pastor said, “I'll try 437-2156.” He dialed the number and waited, then said, “No, that's not it. What shall I dial next?” “Try 911!” shouted Patrick.

Philip said to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”

Philip's request is a modern day request. People everywhere today are asking for proof of God's existence and power to impact life. As world politics, environmental disasters, ethnic tensions and religious fundamentalism threaten the security of human life all over our planet, more and more people are turning to a spiritual reality outside of themselves and asking with some level of desperation, “Show us the Father!” Show us that someone is in control. Show us that there is a power of goodness and mercy and grace that won't let us down. While oil continues to gush into the ocean for more than a month and human structures seem powerless to stop it, our collective angst seems to be growing. It seems to me that people everywhere are crying, “dial 911 to God and see if He answers!”

Perhaps it is time for a Pentecost. Are we ready for one? Can we handle it?

You might ask, what is a “Pentecost?” Historically, Pentecost was an undeniable, God-given event that happened 50 days after Jesus' resurrection and 10 days after his ascension. Jerusalem was crowded with foreign-born Jews who were in town for the Jewish harvest festival. Jesus' followers had been told to stay in Jerusalem and wait for the advocate promised by the Father. There they sat until that fiftieth day when - Woosh! The Holy Spirit came upon those followers and, spilling into the streets, they began to tell about Jesus. But rather than speak their own language, they were given the power to speak in the native languages of those foreigners in the city that day.

It was a dramatic experience according to the writer of Acts. Amid a rushing wind, tongues of fire leaped from person to person. Language barriers vanished and they praised God with confidence and joy. It was the start of a compelling mission to spread the world about Jesus, thus, Pentecost is also considered the birth of the Christian Church.

Webster's dictionary defines Pentecost as “the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles.” In his Not So Stuffy Dictionary of Biblical terms, Professor Rolf Jacobson defines Pentecost as a period of Apostolic Mission. The miracle of Pentecost is that it ignited a mission to get the word out about Jesus. Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit preached the first Christian sermon, and it must have been an amazing message for about three thousand believers were added to the church that very day. Pentecost ushered in an era in which the Gospel was translated into other tongues, other cultures and other world-views. The Apostle Paul, because of his own encounter with the Spirit of Christ, became a moving force to apostolic mission through-out a world defined by growing intellectual philosophies; pagan religions and political empires. How could a story of a lowly Galilean carpenter that died on a Roman cross possibly compel people to embrace a God of love and peace even in the face of persecution? It seems impossible, doesn't it? And yet, since those first apostles began to witness by the power of the Holy Spirit, about two billion people around the world have come to name Jesus as Lord. Mission, empowered by the Holy Spirit is clearly unstoppable!

So why are so many of us today afraid that our world is going to hell in a hand basket? Why do we doubt the power of the Holy Spirit and fear what it might look like if we too received a fresh infilling of the confidence and joy that comes when Jesus is truly Lord of our lives?

Each of you has probably been in a restaurant where the waitress has asked, “Can I warm up your coffee for you?” You cup may be half full or even cold after sitting on the table for awhile. But as she pours the new coffee in, our cup now holds the heat and energy we crave. Couldn't it be the same for our spirit? Maybe you experience growing spiritually cold, or even empty and you wonder, will I stay this way forever? And then something happens. When we quit trying to live in our own power and strength and turn back to God, His Holy Spirit begins to fill us with a new kind of confidence, a new kind of peace, and an uncontainable joy that must go forth and share the good news with others.

Derek Prince writes: “If you have the Word without the Spirit, you dry up. If you have the Spirit without the Word, you blow up. If you have both the Word and the Spirit, you'll grow up!”

In the 22nd chapter of Revelations, we read this invitation: “If you are thirsty, come! If you want life-giving water, come and take it. It's free!” (Rev. 22: 17)

And Paul writes the early church in Corinth to teach them about what it means to live in the body of the church. He writes, “Each of us is now a part of His resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain - His Spirit - where we come to drink.” (1 Cor. 12: 13)

In other words, we come to the Word and open our hearts to the Holy Spirit when we are thirsty! Perhaps Patrick is right…we need to reach God by dialing our own personal 911! So who and what is the Holy Spirit, you might ask, and how would we know it when we are being filled with power and grace?

Richard Jensen, in his book, Touched by the Spirit, writes this: “The Holy Spirit is not an invisible mystery... [nor] by nature, within us. The Spirit comes to us from without, from the outside. That's always how God comes whenever the Word is read or heard. The Spirit is present and working in baptism. He is present and working in the Lord's Supper. If we want to be touched by the work of the Holy Spirit we…read our Bibles, we listen to the word proclaimed, we get together with God's people to worship, and we EXPECT God's Spirit to work on us, transforming our lives through Word and Sacrament.”

The Bible understands the Spirit of God to be much like the wind: “The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whiter it goes…”(John 3:8) Yet the Spirit has effects and you can see the things that He does. The Holy Spirit defied human understand or control, yet, by faith and with confidence, we KNOW that the power of God is at work in the world! Thus…we can live peacefully, love faithfully and do mission joyfully!

Now these are big words! How can we put them into a context that we can get our minds and hearts to grasp? For this I turn to a storyteller.

In His book, When God Whispers Your Name, Max Lucado tells a story about a day when he and his family visited an antique shop. While he sat bored waiting for his wife and daughters to look around, he heard piano music and went to investigate. Much to his surprise, his little girl, Andrea, was sitting at a piano playing. Several people had gathered around Andrea to watch her perform, which was curious, because Max knew that the only piano piece Andrea had mastered was chopsticks! Here is how he describes it: “Our seven year old was at the piano, her hands racing up and down the keyboard. I was stunned. What gift of heaven is this that she can play in such a way? As I drew closer, I saw the real reason. Andrea was playing a player piano. She wasn't making the music; she was following it. She wasn't commanding the keyboard; she was trying to keep up with it….When a key would dip, her hands would dash to keep up with the song. Oh, but if you could have seen her little face. She was delighted with laughter, her eyes dancing. I could see why she was so happy. She had sat down to attempt chop sticks but instead the piano played “The Sound of Music.” She couldn't fail to produce those joyous sounds, for something greater than she was dictating the sound, and all she had to do was follow!

[When God Whispers Your Name, “The Song of the Minstrel,” Max Lucado, pp.8-9.]

“Hasn't God promised the same to us?” Max theorizes. We sit at the keyboard of life willing to play the only song we know, and by the power of God's gracious Spirit, we discover that our lives can become the means of a sublime song. Nobody is more surprised than we are that our meager efforts are converted into a spirit led melody that touches others. We all have a song, Max says, Christ's church has a magnificent song! The question is, will we play it? Will His church let their hearts and hands and gifts flow up and down the keyboard of this time in its history, inviting the Spirit to bring forth it's fullest potential?

Max also noticed a couple of other things. The piano got all the credit, he said. The gathered crowd appreciated Andrea's efforts, but they knew the real source of the music. When God's Spirit works, the same thing is true. We may applaud the disciple, but no one knows better than the disciple who deserves the praise. Even though we don't always know how God works, we know that He does, and so we sit at the piano and play because we know, with God's help, we cannot fail. That is the gift of the Spirit that we celebrate today with Pentecost. Go into mission, my friends with bold confidence and joy, for you have the good news they need to hear…you HAVE seen the Father! Amen.

GUIDED BY THE GOSPEL: GATHERING • GROWING • GIVING