“The Unforgettable Fire”

The following is the text of a sermon by Associate Pastor Dennis Sanders preached on May 23, 2010- Pentecost Sunday. It is based on Acts 2:1-21.

It was back in the winter of 1999 that I took a trip to China.  I went along with several other students from Luther Seminary here in town.  It was something I had to do fulfill a cross-cultural requirement, and if I had to visit another culture, why not China?  We spent two weeks in Hong Kong, which was fascinating just two years after the handover of the former colony from Britian to China.  But the most fascinating part was the chance to fly out to Western China, near Burma.  We spent that week in Yunan Province, in and around the city of Kunming.  The purpose here was to visit the church in mainland China which meant visiting small villages in the mountains.  We weren’t expecting any fanfare from visiting these towns.

Boy, were we wrong.

In every town we stopped at, we were greeted warmly.  Actually that’s too tame a description: we were treated like rock stars.  They would treat us to a fancy meal and made us sit at the front of the church like kings and queens.

I am reminded of one particular story.  We had visited two villages already that day and we were driving back down the mountain to head to our hotel in Kunming.  As some point our bus came to stop.  In front of us was a group of people from another town.  They had heard about our visit in another town earlier in the day and wanted to catch us on the way back down.  Now it was already 10 at night.  We were tired.  We wanted to get back to our hotel rooms and catch some sleep.  But, these villagers wanted to meet their fellow Christian sisters and brothers who came across the world to visit with them.  So, in the darkness, we went up to their village at night and took part in an impromptu worship service.

Look back, I tend to think this was a Pentecost moment: a time where we able to see God at work.

On this day of Pentecost, this day that we consider the birthday of the church, we can end up looking at this day as nothing more than nostalgia.  We come and try to recreate the event of the disciples speaking in different languages and maybe even wonder why we can’t bring 3000 members to our church today.

Pentecost has become a kind of dusty celebration, a remembrance of things past.   There is nothing wrong in honoring the past.   It’s important to know where we come from and where we are going.   The problem is that too often, the church has the knack of seeing Pentecost as something that happened in the past.  It’s a past-tense event.  But the thing is, it is not simply something that happened in the past.   Pentecost the coming of God’s Spirit, is something that happens again and again.  Pentecost is also a present-tense event.  The Spirit is what powers the church, what sustains us in the good and bad times.

What we see happen in Acts 2 is God breaking into people’s lives.  Peter is able to explain to those gathered what has just happened and his talk is to simply say: the Spirit is here.  God is here…now.

Acts 2 is not just something that happened in the past; but also about us now, about what the church is supposed to be all about.  As the gathered community called the church, we are called to share what God is doing in the world.

But of course, that means that we are able to see that God is at work in the world.  Do we see God at work?

I think it can be easy to become busy in the everyday to not see where God is working.  I know that I see it every Sunday morning when I pass by the children’s Sunday School class every Sunday morning.  We just saw it when we saw the kids running wild around the church with kites.  We are called by God to testify to that Spirit that is alive and running wild and free in the world.

I want to close with a story about a dreamer.  His name was George.  George was a man well into his 80s and went a church a lot like this one.  Times were tight at the church, but one morning, George got up and told the congregation that they needed to raise $11,000 for a capital campaign to build a new church building.  “We must look to the future,” George said that morning.  The church decided to heed his words and began raising the money needed for the new building. Years later, the church expanded their new building, again heeding the words George spoke so many years before.

For the astute among you, the George I am talking about is Dr. George Haggard and the church I am talking about is this one.  It was Dr. Haggard, who was 87 when he made that statement about looking towards the future, that was instrumental in raising the funds needed to build the church building we are in now.

I think that Dr. Haggard had a “Pentecost moment” on that Sunday morning in 1944.  He had faith that God was going to do something and planted a vision.  Talk about your old men having visions.

It was two years ago, that we sold this building to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and we are now deciding what to do next.  I know it will be hard to move out of this space that has been home to this congregation for 55 years.  It might even feel that this is the end of a dream.

But I think Dr. Haggard’s words still ring true today.  We have to look towards the future and see where God is at work and join God there.  We have to be open to the Spirit, to have a vision of what God would have us do and then, empowered by the Spirit, get to work.

Pentecost is about a fire that has spread around the world and it’s still spreading all these years later.  Can we see where Pentecost is happening?  Are we willing to share it?

May God grant us the eyes to see Pentecost moments and tell others to join in God’s parade.  Thanks be to God, Amen.

Category: sermons