Sermon for Pentecost : May 31st 2009 Acts 2:1-21
As a mother of four I know that birth is not a process renounced for its inherent dignity! Whether you’re in hospital, at home, or in a field with the daisies, (and that last one is not a venue I’ve experienced!) it is basically a messy and undignified event, it’s an unsettling event too, it marks change, it’s threaded with a little, or a lot, of fear and apprehension, but above all it is a joyful and life affirming moment. Birthday parties each year are a chance to reflect on that enormity of change, beginning and potential – like today!…for…

The coming of the Holy Spirit, which Luke describes for us in Acts 2 is the birth of the Church; like human birth there wasn’t a lot of pomp and ceremony & very little dignity, it sounds, when we read the account like absolute pandemonium, rushing wind, fire, noise, confusion… there were even accusations of drunkenness, and it was barely breakfast time!

It’s not how we might envisage such an important event were we to be planning it, but then no human being was, and the disciples who had been with Jesus for 3 years were beginning to expect the unexpected where God was concerned, the last 6 weeks or so had certainly been a crash course in the confounding of expectations!

God was working here once more in a way that didn’t fit the mould and swept away pre-conceived notions of religion & faith. Up until now the Holy Spirit had come to individuals for a time and for a particular purpose; but now as Joel had prophesied and Jesus had promised, the Spirit was poured out on all people.
The transforming nature of this is illustrated most of all in Peter.
Peter, who just a few weeks ago was a frightened man, questioning, scared trying to understand. Now he stands up before this crowd to speak to them, to explain what is happening.
Peter the unacademic fisherman quotes the Old Testament prophet Joel, and goes on to powerfully preach the message of Jesus the Messiah as promised through the Hebrew Scriptures.
Peter’s transformation must have astounded those who knew him; no one had him down as leader material! In a first century version of The Apprentice, he would almost certainly have been called in to hear the words “ you’re fired”
But here in front of them was an illustration of what the Spirit had come to do, to empower and inspire so that the Church might grow and flourish.
Peter was an ordinary person, from our perspective in history , knowing what we know, it is easy to forget that.
When we feel that we are not particularly gifted, or educated, when we feel we have questions that no one seems to be able to answer, and when we just don’t get it, then we need to remember Peter’s experience at Pentecost.
When we feel we’ve failed God, or let him down, and he can’t possibly use us, we need to recall Peter’s denial of Jesus before his crucifixion, and then again remember Peter’s experience at Pentecost. God is in the business of renewal and restoration even if the world would have us on the scrap heap.

In 1 Corinthians chap 1
Paul writes: For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.

This reinforces the sense of the upside down-ness of God’s purposes, and the call for us to be counter cultural, we do not need to conform to the way the world works, to its ideas of power and wisdom, but instead to be transformed by the Spirit ( Romans 12:2)
God’s way of working is not one that plays to cultural expectations – Paul is writing here to a Greek world where philosophy is revered, where rhetoric, argument, and logic trump experience and faith, and also to a Jewish world, where law and honour matter greatly.
The incarnation, God humbling himself as a man, makes no logical sense in a world when power and status matter above all,
The Crucifixion, with its inherent shame and disgrace makes no sense to a culture like that of the Jewish people where honour is important.
The Resurrection of the body, makes no sense in a culture dominated by Greek dualism of body and spirit.
But God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

Pentecost, the coming of the promised Spirit, is how God empowers his Church, his chosen ones, not in our own strength, not in the wisdom of the intellect or philosophy, but by the Holy Spirit in each of us, renewing and restoring each one of us to speak of *his* wisdom in a world which needs it so much.
We are the church, today is our birthday, we are the Sons and the Daughters, the Old and the Young on whom God pours out His Spirit. We are the weak and the foolish, whom God has chosen to be His church and to build his Kingdom.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!