This weekend at St. Peter, we celebrated both the festival of Pentecost and our high school seniors here graduating from the North Butler School District.
The texts we read for this Pentecost Sunday in lectionary year B are Romans 8:22-27, Psalm 104:25-32 (Saturday only), Acts 2:1-21, and John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15. Saturday’s version of this sermon lacked the paragraphs addressed to the graduates, so I’m posting the Sunday version of the sermon here.
A few ideas in this sermon came from Pastor David Lose’s post at In the Meantime and Dr. Greg Carey’s commentary at Working Preacher on the Pentecost story in Acts.
Grace and peace to you from God our Father, the Holy Spirit our Comforter, and our risen Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen
It’s graduation weekend, so I think it’s appropriate to start with a little math quiz. How many sides does a square have? (4) How many sides in a triangle? (3) How about a dodecagon? (12 – I had to look that one up). How many sides in a pentagon? (5)
In addition to being graduation weekend, this weekend is also Pentecost, meaning the 50th day. Penta – 5 – 50. Pentecost is 50 days after the Jewish festival of Passover. It’s 49 days after Easter Sunday, so you can also think about it as a week of weeks. 7 weeks of 7 days each. So here we are. Happy Pentecost!
The church festival of Pentecost is all about the coming of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, and church math is strange, so 1+1+1=1. God the Father is God. Jesus the Son is God. And the Holy Spirit is God. Three persons: One God.
There’s some mystery here, and that’s ok. The Holy Spirit can be a little hard to nail down, but basically, the Spirit is the one taking a group of disciples, and forming them into the Church. The Holy Spirit makes us into the Body of Christ here on earth.
For those of you who were here on Saturday night [remember, last Sunday was cross+gen worship], we talked last week about the beauty of Jesus praying for his disciples. This week in Romans, Paul tells us the Holy Spirit is also praying for us! The Holy Spirit is interceding on our behalf.
Intercede is a good vocabulary word too – it means, to go between. It’s kind of like a lawyer and a client, where the lawyer is the go-between on behalf of the client. The Holy Spirit is advocating for us, helping us out.
Paul writes, “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”
I absolutely love this image, because as a pastor, sometimes my job is to be a “professional pray-er.” On the one hand, that’s ridiculous. There is nothing unique about a pastor’s prayers. Anyone can pray, and God hears your prayers just as much as mine. There’s something very wrong if we think the pastor always has to be the one praying before the meal or at the end of the meeting.
On the other hand, part of the point of having a pastor is to designate someone to take leadership and make sure the praying happens. And I do have some training in this and I’m fine with praying out loud.
But if you listen to me lead prayers, you might notice I usually pray for the same sort of things. I’m not that original of a pray-er. I’m not good at coming up with really profound things to say. That’s probably true for my preaching too.
That’s why this verse is so important. When we don’t know what to say, the Spirit helps us out. God understands. When we hear of tragedies like yet another school shooting this week, or protestors shot by soldiers, or homes destroyed by a volcano, we trust through the Holy Spirit, God is present with those who are suffering. And, the Holy Spirit calls us to care and to act in response.
When we’re so overwhelmed by tragedy that all we can do is groan, the Holy Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. When our words aren’t sufficient, the Spirit fills in the gaps. When we can’t find the words to express our love, or our gratitude, or even our fears or dreams, the Holy Spirit takes what we can say and what we can’t say, and intercedes for us.
On this graduation day, I suspect there are many things you’re not sure how to say. Parents and grandparents and friends have advice you want to give, hopes you want to share, fears and warnings you want to cram in.
Graduates, you have things you want to say too that maybe you’re not sure of, to your parents who have supported you, and to your classmates who have been on this journey with you.
This is a major turning point in your lives, and your relationships will change. Maybe that’s exciting; maybe it’s a little scary. When you have all those things you don’t know quite how to say, the Holy Spirit is there to help.
When you don’t know what to do, or how to move forward, trust the Holy Spirit really is guiding you, encouraging you, even when you don’t see it.
Of course, part of the Pentecost message is that the Spirit is not just waiting in the wings for us to get stuck. Instead, the Holy Spirit is God moving in the world, coming pretty dramatically upon the disciples and sending them out.
It’s a sort of graduation for them. The disciples have been with Jesus, they’ve learned from him, they’ve gone through the events of Good Friday and the crucifixion, and they’ve even gotten to experience the joy of the resurrection. They’ve gone through a lot.
They might have liked the opportunity to slow down, to reflect on what they’ve learned. They’ve experienced enough for a lifetime. They might like to be done for a while.
They get 10 days. Just 10 days after Jesus ascends into heaven, the Holy Spirit comes upon them and sends them out into the crowd to preach. It’s not just a feeling; it’s tongues of fire, and a loud rushing wind, and speaking strange languages they don’t even know to people from all over the world. When Jesus promised to send them an advocate to guide them, I doubt this is quite what they pictured.
God’s mission for us rarely goes how we expect. Sometimes, the Holy Spirit coming looks a bit like people acting so exuberant, so excited, that even though it’s only 9 in the morning, the people around them think they’re drunk. God moves in strange ways.
This comforter does not make everything all better for the disciples, or for us. Instead, the Spirit sends us out into this chaotic, broken world. The Spirit doesn’t take away our fear; the Spirit gives us courage to move forward.
Graduates, you might think you have plans now, but you don’t know where the Spirit is going to take you. Sometimes you’ll be able to tell where God is leading. Sometimes you’ll get a clear sign for the next steps in life. More often, I suspect, you won’t know where exactly you’re going or what to expect when you get there, and that’s ok.
The promise of Pentecost is that God is at work in our world and God is at work in you. Keep looking for God around you and in your life, and trusting that God is with you.
I read a commentary this week that describes the Pentecost miracle as “every preacher’s fantasy — and what every preacher already fears.” The fear is because the Spirit’s work doesn’t follow our rules, or respect the boundaries we think we need.
God pours out the Spirit on all flesh, and old people and young people, men and women, even the slaves and servants, everyone gets to be part of what God is doing. They’re sent out to proclaim the good news and to serve in ways they can’t even imagine.
We don’t usually get to see the Holy Spirit in as dramatic a way as these disciples did. That’s mostly a good thing. If I see tongues of fire on someone’s head, I’d ask the ushers to get the fire extinguisher to put it out. But sometimes we forget about the Holy Spirit. We like to think about God when we come to church, and then we go out into our normal lives.
We like to know where to find God, to have God available and to be able to pray when we need God, but too often, we think we can handle life pretty well on our own.
But that’s not how the Holy Spirit works. The message of Pentecost is that the Holy Spirit is interrupting life, gathering people together and sending them out. The Holy Spirit doesn’t let us just say, “Oh, God is on the move. That’s nice. We’ll just sit here and watch.”
No, the Holy Spirit is the one calling us (and sometimes shoving us) beyond just thoughts and prayers into action. The Holy Spirit is the one inspiring you to go out and serve your neighbors.
The Holy Spirit stirs up passion, lights a fire. The Holy Spirit is the one nudging you to care about friends in need, to reach out to enemies, to change the world and build God’s kingdom.
Wherever you go in life, the Holy Spirit is leading you, guiding you, accompanying you on the journey. And only God knows where the road leads.
God is on the move. Welcome to Pentecost.
Amen