The Balloon-Powered Church

The Day of Pentecost

Acts 2:1-21                                                          Rev. Todd B. Freeman
Bethany Presbyterian Church, Dallas                                 June 8, 2003

        The author of the Gospel of Luke also wrote the Book of Acts. The Gospel tells the story of Jesus’ life; Acts tells the story of the early church – its formation and its early years. Today, on the Day of Pentecost, the Christian Church celebrates what the ancient story in Acts 2 describes as the coming of the Holy Spirit to Jesus’ followers, therefore marking the birth of the church itself.

        Luke uses wonderfully expressive and vivid images to describe this momentous occasion. It reads like a Spielberg movie, complete with fantastic special effects. This story is intended to be mysterious and even bizarre, and we must accept it on its own terms in order to get to the truth that it is trying to convey; not a truth of historical fact, but a truth of theological meaning.

        The scene opens with the disciples gathered in an upper room. The coming of the promised Holy Spirit is first heard, like a roaring wind. Then it is seen, tongues like fire, which then divides to that a tongue comes to rest on each disciple. The Spirit miraculously enables the disciples to speak, to speak in different languages.

        The scene then quickly shifts from inside the upper room to the street outside, where the gospel is already drawing a crowd. The first response is understandably one of bewilderment. Some claim the disciples are drunk. That power the church proclaims as a gift of God the world explains as inebriation. The new experience of the inbreaking of the Spirit is profoundly unsettling and deeply threatening to the crowd in the street, and so it must devise some explanation, some rationalization for such irrationality. (Sounds quite Presbyterian to me, being an issue of doing things decently and in order. We tend not to trust things that seem out-of-control.)

        Yet the crowd’s questions become a cue for one of the disciples, Peter, to stand up and speak. What this part of the story reveals is that just as God breathed life into humankind at the beginning of creation, the Spirit breathes life into a once cowardly disciple (the one who had denied even knowing Jesus just a few weeks before) and creates a new person who now has the gift of bold and prophetic speech.

        The miracle here is one of proclamation. Those who had no “tongue” to speak of the “mighty works of God” now speak and preach with courage and conviction. The Holy Spirit is the power which enables the church to “go public” with its good news, to attract a crowd and to have something to say worth hearing.

        Pentecost, therefore, is a phenomenon of mainly evangelistic significance – sharing the good news of the realm of God with those who need to hear it. This story strongly encourages us, as heirs of that original family of faith, to express, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the wonders of God in intelligible and intelligent tongues and actions, and to do so right here in our own neighborhood and communities.

        There’s something else that intrigued me about this story. Did you find it a bit strange that Luke went on and on and on with that long list of persons from different countries? Why use so much written space telling us about Parthians and Medes, Elamites, Cappadocians, Mesopotamians, Phyrgians, Pamphylians, Lybians, Egyptians, Cretans, and at least another half-dozen nationalities?

        I think the point Luke wishes to make is this: this very first experience of the church, it’s organizing moment; all begins as an experience of diversity! True, they were all Jews at this point in the story in Acts, but they were representative of every conceivable ethnic and geographic and national origin imaginable in the ancient world.

        It is well that we take note of this diversity matter, for we are inclined to think of diversity as a modern problem and concern. In reality, it is an issue the church has wrestled with – and not always successfully – throughout its 2000 year history. It became the first divisive issue in the life of the church when the first Christians had to face the question of whether to admit non-Jews to membership.

        Ever since that time, the faithful have usually wanted to draw the line tightly – to restrict and exclude from the fold, while the Biblical imperative has called the church to remember that in every nation and culture there are those who are to be accepted and embraced in the community.

        This matter we label diversity, therefore, has stood since the earliest days of the church as a kind of litmus test of Christian seriousness about the Christian message. It is almost as if down through the ages the key question with which the church has been confronted is not the correctness of its stances on the doctrines of atonement or the Trinity, or redemption or salvation, but rather the simple, difficult, exasperating, but absolutely fundamental issue of whether the church will be strong enough and faithful enough to transcend the artificial boundaries that we humans create and erect in every other realm of our existence – boundaries of nation, and language, and race, and ethnicity, and gender, and geography, and history, and socio-economic class, and level of education, and sexual orientation – whether the church can rise above these social barriers and become God’s children living lives of love and service in God’s family as one, joyous people.

That’s what the Holy Spirit does: creates unity amidst our diversity.

        That’s why we proudly display not only on our worship bulletins, newsletters and brochures but also on our new yard sign that we are “An Inclusive Congregation.” And the Holy Spirit continues to push us into ever-expanding realms of inclusiveness.

        Through the power of the Holy Spirit the church, including this congregation, is to be the model, the earthly reflection of the inclusive kingdom of God. When we are able to expand our own boundaries in order to include others, especially those whom the majority excludes, we are living examples of the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Like that first Pentecost morning, we are empowered in new and dynamic ways to accept and even understand one another.

        And I can think of no better expression of that than this congregation’s mix of Anglo and Hispanic members and friends, those with high incomes and those with low incomes, those with little formal education and those with advanced degrees, those who are young and those who are old, those who are straight and those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.

        But this story of Pentecost goes further and tells us that we are to do something with our inclusiveness. We are to boldly proclaim this message. Being silent about who and what we are is not God’s purpose for us.

        To make this point, I want to make use of a simple an object lesson. [Pass out a balloon to every person in the congregation.] Perhaps you were wondering about the title of this sermon – well, this is where I get to the balloon part.

        Your balloon, at this point, is not full of air; it is a dead, lifeless balloon. It continues to lie wherever you put it. It doesn’t move. It has no power. It isn’t doing what it was created to do. But take that balloon now and do what the Holy Spirit did to those disciples at Pentecost – fill it with power. (That means blow up your balloon.)

        What happens? It’s now full of air; but it is still lifeless, going nowhere until that power is released. God did not fill those first disciples with the power of the Holy Spirit so that they could just stay behind locked doors in fear. They, and the church today, are given God’s power to move people out into the world and make a difference.

        I want everyone, on the count of three, to release your balloon – 1, 2, 3. Under the air’s power, the balloon can move. It goes out. When the wind power within the balloon is released, however, we don’t know where the balloon is going to go; but we know it’s going somewhere. When we release the power of the Spirit in our lives and in this congregation we don’t always know where we’re going to go either. We just need to trust that it’s wherever the Spirit wants us to go.

        What has happened to our balloons, now, however? They are depleted of their air, their wind power. They are again lifeless until they are filled anew with air and released.  Just as a balloon needs to go back to its source of energy and power to recharge, so do we – and that’s back to God.

        Even though the Spirit of God is always with us and always within us (that’s the promise of our Baptism), do we not need to experience a sense of being re-filled/re-energized by God’s Spirit from time to time?

        Hopefully that is what happens every time we worship and share communion and study and fellowship together.

        There’s one final analogy I’d like to make. What happens to a filled balloon after several days of just sitting there? Over time, the air slowly leaks out – the power leaves. The balloon, without doing anything, will go flat. The same is true with muscles. Muscles that aren’t used, become useless through atrophy.

        Can the same happen with faith – or the gift of the Holy Spirit?

        The power that God gives us, through our time, talents and resources, is expected to be used – and used for the common good of all. God calls us to be good stewards.

        It is my hope and prayer that you and I, and this congregation, will be filled and re-filled (like a balloon) with the empowering presence of God through the Holy Spirit, and that we will be released/sent-out to expend that power and energy to go where the Spirit directs us, and do as Christ guides us – and always as an inclusive family of faith.

Happy Pentecost!

Amen.