Preacher – Jeff Davidson

Scripture Readings – Acts 2:1-21

How many people watched the royal wedding yesterday? I was asleep so I missed the whole thing, but I heard about it from Julia and read about it on social media and looked up some of it on various websites. One of the things that a lot of people mentioned was the homily by the Very Reverend Michael Curry. I heard so much about it that I looked it up and read the text and watched the video. I don’t do that for a lot of sermons that aren’t preached here.
It was a good sermon. For those of you who didn’t see it or haven’t read it I recommend it to you. One of the images that Curry used was that of “contained fire.” He talked about how people who drove to the service were able to drive because of the power of contained fire, and that people like him who flew there flew because of the gift of contained fire. Fire contained, fire harnessed so that it is not roaring out of control and destroying all in its path, but fire harnessed so that its energy is directed for good. Energy used to create, and not to destroy. Energy used to build up and not to burn down. Energy used for good, whether to cook food or to power machines or to allow for the existence of the internet.

That’s an interesting image when we consider the scene in Acts chapter 2. Last week Jenn contrasted the Ascension with Easter and Pentecost, describing the latter two as “earth-shattering, tomb-busting, tongues-of-fire-dancing days for the church.” That’s a pretty good description. Not only are there tongues of fire coming down from heaven, but people are speaking all kinds of different languages, pretty much all of the languages of the known world. The fire is probably frightening, so people who see it are screaming, and then those touched by the fire start speaking in foreign languages and presumably speaking loudly enough for others to hear them. It was such a spectacle that onlookers thought they were drunk.
That isn’t always how the Spirit has worked, though. The tongues of fire that danced down on the heads of the believers on that first Pentecost, the many languages heard by folks near and far, those great and showy events are the exception and not the norm. The Spirit’s presence doesn’t usually show up in quite that noticeable a manner.
I did a funeral last Tuesday for a work colleague’s mother. She had five surviving children, and each child was going to offer a remembrance about their mom, starting from the oldest to the youngest. The second child had expressed concern to my friend about whether or not he could do this. That’s not surprising. It’s an emotional and difficult time, and add to that the fact that a lot of people are not comfortable at all with speaking in public. My friend asked me about it and I told her to let him know that if he wanted to prepare something but wasn’t able to say it that I or someone else could share it for him.

Instead, what happened was that when the oldest child got up to speak, the second child stood with him and put his arm around him and held him as he spoke and softly encouraged him when he was having trouble. The second child did the same thing for the other children who spoke. He was just there with them, holding them, as they shared their memories and their feelings, and he went back to their seat with them and gave them a hug when they were done. And then he repeated the whole thing with the next child.
I loved that. That presence, that action, told me more about that son and more about his feelings for his family and his mom than any amount of words could have done. The Sprit’s presence was very real in that moment and in that place. The Spirit had not given that son the gift of public speaking, but had given him the gift of support and love to share with his siblings. That’s a wonderful gift to have.
I may have told this story once before, but that’s okay. When I was a pastor in Dayton, OH it was time for me to preach the community Thanksgiving service for our area minister’s association. The service was going to be at the Residence Park United Methodist Church, an African-American congregation a couple of miles away.
I didn’t do anything particularly fancy to prepare. Frankly, I pulled out an old Thanksgiving sermon that I’d preached someplace else, and edited it and reworked parts of it and hopefully improved it. Come the night of the community service, I was preaching my sermon and I made some kind of a point, and someone in the back said “Amen!” Not just a quiet “amen” but out loud and enthusiastic. I made another point, and someone else did the same thing. Without my planning and without my knowledge, this old sermon that I had punched up a bit had turned into a call-and-response sermon that had the congregation interacting with me.

I loved that feeling. I talked a while back about how the interaction that comes with a live audience helps a performance – that was in the context of NBC’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” program. That interaction definitely helped my preaching that night. It was exciting to me – I loved it!

A couple of years later it was my turn to preach again at Residence Park. I thought back to that first sermon and remembered how much I’d enjoyed the experience, and I set out to write a call-and-response sermon for that setting. I worked hard on it and I was proud of it and I was looking forward to sharing a sermon at Residence Park once again and feeding on the energy from the interaction with the congregation once again.

Guess what – silence. No one said “amen.” No one said anything. It could have been worse – they could have said “help him, Jesus” – but I dodged that one. It just didn’t happen. That particular gift for that style of preaching was not one the Spirit had chosen to give me at that time.

The Spirit does whatever the Spirit is going to do. The fire of the Spirit can’t be directed or controlled in the same way that the fire is that the Rev. Curry talked about at the wedding. But it is sometimes a controlled fire or a harnessed fire, like at that memorial service I talked about. The Spirit was there and the Spirit was real in the actions of the second child, offering his gifts of love and support silently to his brother and sisters. The Spirit was there and the Spirit was real even if it wasn’t a showy, explosive, tongues of fire moment.

Likewise, although I tried to control and channel the Spirit at my second Residence Park sermon, it didn’t work. You can’t just tell the Spirit what to do. That was my mistake. The first time, the Spirit spoke to me and through me. The Spirit was in control. The second time, I tried to control the Spirit and it wasn’t happening.

Friday was National Ride Your Bike to Work day. We declared today Ride Your Bike to Church day today, and some of us rode bikes in. When I was in HS I might have given it a shot. I used to ride a lot back then and would ride pretty long distances. Now, not so much and especially not trying to come in to DC from Manassas on crowded roads.

Was riding a bike to worship today an expression of the Spirit’s presence? I think so. Sometimes riding a bike is easier that driving or walking, but not necessarily on a hot day like this. We didn’t encourage people to bike to church today because it was easier or more convenient or cheaper, even though it might be some or all of those.
We encouraged it because it’s a symbol of God’s care for creation. It’s an example of what good stewardship looks like. It’s a small statement on how we are to treat the world and of God’s vision for the world. In other words, it’s an expression of the Holy Spirit.

Not a big expression. Not a flashy one. Not a noisy one, unless your bike really has some problems with its chain and its gears. But it’s an expression nevertheless of what God calls us to as Christians. It’s the Spirit speaking through us.

One of the points of the Rev. Curry’s wedding homily yesterday is that the power of love can transform the world. He asked people to imagine what the world would look like when love is the way and he said, “No child would go to bed hungry in such a world as that. When love is the way, we will let justice roll down like a mighty stream and righteousness like an ever-flowing brook. When love is the way, poverty will become history. When love is the way, the earth will be a sanctuary. When love is the way, we will lay down our swords and shields down by the riverside to study war no more.”
Those things are all true. If we can live out of the love that God has shown for us, live out of the love that led Jesus to the cross to die for our sins, live out of the love that the risen Jesus has given us in the gift of the Spirit, if we can live out of the love that became visible on Pentecost, we can make that world real. I should say, God can make that world real through us.
The Spirit is a tongue of fire that comes down from heaven and gives us words to speak. The Spirit is real in the babble of voices in every language heard that first Pentecost. The Spirit is real in a man with tears in his eyes standing next to his siblings at his mother’s funeral. The Spirit is real in the riding of a bicycle on a wet morning to come to church, even when something else might be more comfortable. The Spirit is real in preaching and prayer and praise and worship here in this place and at the royal wedding yesterday and at places of every size and location in between the two. The Spirit is real in each of us, and in all of us.

Let us listen to the Spirit in our lives. Let us know the gifts that the Spirit has chosen to give us. And let us live out of those gifts. Amen.