I want to set the scene a little before reading today’s scripture. Last week was ascension Sunday, when we celebrate Jesus ascending into heaven. The disciples joined Jesus at Bethany, just outside of Jerusalem. Jesus told them to go back to the city and wait. In Luke 24:49 Jesus says, “And see, I am sending upon you what my father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” So about 120 of Jesus followers, including the 11 remaining Apostles, wait. Now 50 days after Passover, 50 days after the resurrection we have today’s scripture.
Our setting is Jerusalem 50 days after Passover. Which happens to be when the Jewish festival of Sha-vu-ot takes place. Shavuot is one of 3 pilgrimage festivals along with Passover and the Festival of Booths. All Jews in Israel were required to go to Jerusalem where they would participate in the festivities and worship at the Temple. Jews came not just from Israel, but from throughout the Roman Empire. From all nations, I think our passage says. In other words, there were a lot of people in Jerusalem. Probably just as many as were in Jerusalem during the previous Passover when Jesus was crucified.
Shavuot is also known as the Festival of Weeks or the Festival of Oaths. This was a festival that, among other things, celebrated the past oaths, or covenants, made between God and the people of Israel. God’s promise to Noah. What was that? His covenant with Abraham. It was? The major celebration, though and the reason for the date of the festival was God’s giving the Torah, or the books of law, to Moses at Mt. Sinai. It was also called Pentecost since it began on the fiftieth day after Passover.
So, at a festival celebrating God’s promises, he fulfills another promise. In Peter’s speech he quotes the prophet Joel where God promises, “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.”
Here’s what I find interesting about this story. In this huge crowd with these unforgettable events, many of them miss God. In a city filled with tens of thousands of Jewish worshipers. There is a sound like the rush of a violent wind…hard to miss. Followed by 120 voices preaching loudly. The sound is so great that a crowd begins to gather. I don’t know if it was the sound of the wind or the sound of the preaching, but regardless, it was loud and hard to ignore. But through all of this… the rushing wind and Galileans, who were not known for their intellect, preaching in every known language…some of the witnesses miss God. They just assume these guys started hitting the wine a little early. “They must be drunk!”
God passes right through their city. The Holy Spirit performs this miracle that allows everyone to hear the word of God in their own language and they miss it. Amazing! Or is it?
Don’t we do the same thing? Don’t we miss God? God is working in and around us always. And we miss it constantly. We don’t recognize God.
You may have heard the saying that we all have a God shaped hole. St. Augustine first wrote of the God shaped void in each of us. It is an empty spot in our soul that only God can fill. We have this longing for something more. An incurable desire for…something. Even though many have no idea what that something is.
GK Chesterson said that, “Every man who goes into a brothel is looking for God.” In other words, they are trying to fill that void. The same could probably be said for drug addicts. Even successful business men. Many of the richest people are the unhappiest. They are looking for that something in the next deal.
We all have this innate longing for God…we may not realize it is God we are longing for, but it’s there. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, which eventually led to the United Methodist Church, would call that prevenient grace or preceding grace. God’s grace that precedes any conscious decision we make to follow God. The UM Book of Discipline defines it as “the divine love that surrounds all humanity and precedes any and all of our conscious impulses. This grace prompts our first wish to please God…” Many, though, don’t recognize that void, that feeling that something is not right, as God’s grace. God is working in them, pursuing them, but they miss it.
But it’s not just those that don’t know or follow God who miss it. We miss God working in our midst. And I think there are a lot of reasons we miss God’s work, and not all of them are our fault. Not ALL of them.
I think the time it’s easiest to miss God is during a time of suffering. Whether it’s an illness or the death of a loved one or something worse, it’s very easy to not only miss God, but to feel abandoned and alone.
Elie Wiesel was a 15 year-old boy when Nazi Germany took over Hungary. Wiesel was Jewish, and he and his family were loaded on a train into a cattle car and shipped to Poland to Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp. Wiesel wrote about the horrors he saw and experienced in his book, Night. Before being taken Wiesel was a student of the Bible. Through the course of the book, he begins to question God’s existence, as did many of his fellow inmates.
The question, “Where is God?” echoes throughout that book.
What about a family who can only sit idly by while they watch a loved one die?
Can they see God at work?
I would venture to guess that all of this have felt that way at one time or another.
This feeling of abandonment is nothing new. Throughout the book of Psalms you find what are called Psalms of lament. These chapters are filled with cries of pain and rejection. Here are just a few examples: Psalm 10 starts this way, “Why, O Lord, do you stand so far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?”
Psalm 13: “How long O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?”
And probably the most familiar, is the Psalm Jesus quoted as he was dying on the cross. Psalm 22. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” It goes on, “Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.”
Here’s what I want to say about that. Feeling abandoned by God, wondering if God even cares is nothing new. And it’s nothing God can’t handle. But I hope you remember that God does not abandon us. When we suffer, God suffers with us. When we hurt, God hurts.
It’s not just the things that are out of our control that distract us from God. We get distracted by life, by TV, I’m guilty of that one. We let our selfishness distract us from God. Hurt feelings.
Not only do these distractions keep us from seeing God’s work in our lives and the lives of others, they keep us from allowing God to work through us.
So what does that mean for us? What can we take away from the story of Pentecost?
I think first, and foremost, the answer is, pay attention! God is there. God is present in your life. At Pentecost God poured out his Holy Spirit for us. To act as our comforter, our guide. God’s presence in our lives.
Second, remember that God works through us. We are called just as the disciples were to go and make disciples. There are a lot of people out there who don’t recognize that void as a need for God’s love. They don’t recognize that tug as God’s grace ready to act and forgive. We are called to be God’s voice & God’s heart. To share God’s love. To tell the world.
Maybe you can be the reminder of God’s presence in the life of someone distracted by their pain. With a kind word, a prayer, a note.
Shannon Johnson Kershner is a pastor in Black Mountain, NC. “A Pentecost church manages to hold enough trust in God's wild Spirit to believe that God is at work in the unfamiliar, in the chaos, outside the boundaries we impose, bringing new life and new hope to a world that sorely needs it. A Pentecost church believes God knows how to be God and rejoices that we get to be God's partner in spreading the word of grace and embrace and reconciliation that we know in Jesus Christ into all the world.”
So I guess the question then becomes what can Mt. Moriah United Methodist Church do to be a Pentecost church?
Good stuff.
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