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The Wind of the Spirit Moves the Church of Christ

             I wonder what it sounded like.  The wind, I mean.  Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house.  I’ve never heard the sound that comes with a tornado.  People say it sounds like a train bearing down on you or a jet taking off.  Some people say the roar is enough to make your ears bleed.

             So I wonder what the wind sounded like in that house on Pentecost.  And I wonder why God sent that sound in the first place.  But I wonder about more than that.  What is there about wind with God?  Why does God describe himself as wind and breath?  Why does he call himself ruach in the Old Testament andpneuma in the New Testament?  We translate both words as Spirit, but both words mean wind or breath.  What is there about the moving of air that is like the working of God?  I wonder.

             Well, here’s something I don’t wonder about.  I don’t wonder why Pentecost is an after thought for Lutherans. Pentecost doesn’t have an Advent like Christmas does or a Lent like Easter does to ratchet up our adrenalin.  We’re still thinking Easter and boom--somebody changes the chancel hangings to red.  By the time Pentecost comes, church is almost in summer mode and Lutherans start thinking about Germanfest.  But there’s more, I think.  We Lutherans don’t get into Pentecostal power all that much.  Pentecostal power smells kind of charismatic, kind of Baptist.  We Lutherans like talking about incarnation and resurrection and justification, but wind and breath and breezes--that’s not our thing.

             But there is something about the wind in the Pentecost event that needs to catch our attention.  The wind on Pentecost was both a symbol and an action.  The wind portrayed power, but it also performed miracles.  We need to assess what happened on Pentecost after the sound of the wind filled the house.  And we need to remember that the wind is still blowing in the house that has Christ as its cornerstone.  We may not see it, but we sense a sound like the blowing of a violent wind and we experience its wake because The Wind of the Spirit Moves the Church of Christ.

To proclamation

             They were all so dense: Peter, Thomas, Philip, Cleopas, Mary’s sister Martha, Mary from Magdala.  They seemed to get what Jesus was telling them, but then they didn’t get it at all.  They knew they were supposed to be the Master’s witnesses to the ends of the earth, but they weren’t sure where the ends of the earth were or what to say if they got there.  Jesus promised to send them a counselor whom he called it the Spirit of truth, but who knows if they understood that.

             Whatever they understood, they couldn’t have expected what happened on Pentecost.  The noise began while they were sitting, maybe on the floor, maybe in the middle of a sermon.  It’s not hard to imagine what happened: heads jerking from side to side, eyes wide as saucers, people covering their ears.  Then fire or what looked like fire and then all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.  Did it happen all at once?  Did they say a word in Latin or Greek or Farsi and then did more words came tumbling out?  Was this like high school Spanish class?  I don’t think so.  The crowds that came running were utterly amazed that these Galileans were speaking their languages.  Somebody accused them of being drunk, but nobody accused them of bad grammar.  And nobody hesitated; nobody asked, “What do we do next?”  You got yourself a language and you started talking.

              At a certain point in time the sound of the wind must have stopped.  But the wind of the Spirit kept blowing.  The Jews went on the attack, but they were no match for this gale.  The holy wind moved the disciples forward to speak the Word of God boldly.  Fact was, the wind was so strong they couldn’t help but speak about what they had seen and heard.  And the wind pointed them in the direction it wanted them to go.  The Spirit pushed Philip to run alongside the Ethiopian eunuch’s chariot, the Spirit coaxed Peter down the stairs to meet Cornelius, the Spirit sent Paul packing to Macedonia.  In the book of Acts the Spirit is a category five hurricane propelling the Church to action. 

             The wind blows wherever it pleases, Jesus said, and it sometimes seems not to blow here.  Pastors preach and committees make decisions and people tell their friends about Jesus but the only noise we hear is white noise and the only wind we feel is the stuff that blows off the lake.  We talk about parish program and long-range planning and it all becomes matter-of-fact and efficient.  And sometimes we forget that the Spirit must breathe in us or we will die and the Spirit must blow in us or we will be silent and the Spirit must direct us or we won’t find success.  The wind of the Spirit is still moving the Church of Christ.  We hear it in every word that proclaims Jesus as Savior, whether from the pulpit or in a personal encounter. We hear it in church council meetings and in synod conventions.  The Spirit wind is here today with no less intensity than it was there in Jerusalem on Pentecost.  It moves this one, holy, Christian, and apostolic Church in the same way it moved that one, holy, Christian, and apostolic Church because this church and that church are the same Church.  Just as there is only one body, so there is only one Spirit, and he is moving us to proclamation, to tell the good news about Jesus in the world.

To revelation

             Everyone wasamazed and perplexed;everyone was asking“What does this mean?”  Peter knew what it meant: the wind and the fire signaled a new episode in God’s story.  New people were going to proclaim a new message in new places.  Peter was the first to speak in the new age.  And how did he start?  He started with the old book; he quoted the Prophet Joel.  The prophet Joel had been sleeping in his grave for at least 500 years. What in the world moved Peter to begin the new age with the old book? 

             The Spirit did it.  Long before Pentecost, the Spirit had convinced Peter that the old book was God’s book.  Peter knew that what God had revealed to his people in the old book was not different from what God was revealing to his people on Pentecost.  Christ was the center of Old Testament revelation just as he would be the center of New Testament proclamation.  So Peter went to the revelation.  Dr. Luther said: “This man is crammed with Scripture.”  Peter didn’t stop with Joel.  He quoted David in the Psalms.  A few days later it was Moses, and then it was Abraham and all the prophets since Samuel.  The Spirit blew, and the pages of the God’s book turned one after another to testify about Christ. 

             Do you ever wonder why we Grace Lutherans aren’t more like the other churches in our town--you know, those churches that look at God’s Word and decide which words are God’s words and which words are someone else’s?  Why do we believe Jesus’ death paid the whole price for our sins and that he arose from the grave with his own body?  We do we baptize our babies when so many churches don’t?  Why do we believe that we receive our Savior’s true body and true blood in the Sacrament when many churches are content with Wonder Bread and Welch’s?  Is it because we’ve made God’s Word our great heritage and it shall be ours forever?  Is it because we’ve insulated ourselves in our cozy confines with our Lutheran schools?  Sometimes we take ourselves way too seriously.  We look down on those who deny the scriptures and sometimes we forget that there, but for the grace of God, go we.  The grace of God, of course, and the power of Spirit. 

              Who do you think it is that puts the steel in our spines to defend the authority of the Word of God?  Well, you know.   Without the Spirit wind you and I would be blown around by other winds, and those winds would destroy us on the rocks.  The same Spirit that breathed into the writers so that they wrote God’s truth breathes into us so that we believe God’s truth and rely on God’s truth.  It is the Spirit who takes you into his book and enables you to find answers and insight.  He is the one who enables you to believe the impossible and then empowers you to share the impossible with your children and your neighbors.  Brothers and sisters, the wind of the Spirit still moves the Church, and where it moves the Church is to what God has revealed in the scriptures.  And he is leading us to the same place. 

 To absolution

             This must have been a tough sermon for Peter to preach.  There must have been a little voice in Peter that wanted to tell all these Jews to go straight to hell and say Amen.  But Peter didn’t say Amen. He said more.  Repent, he said.  Change the way you think about this Jesus who died for you and now lives for you.  Be baptized, he said.  Come clean of your sins and then be cleansed of your sins.  The promise is for you and your children, he said, the promise that God has forgiven all your sins in the blood of his perfect sacrifice.  With many other words he warned and pleaded with them.  And when 3,000 confessed their sins, Peter absolved them all in the waters of baptism.

             Absolving and forgiving sinners doesn’t come naturally to us.  There is a little voice in every one of us that would rather punish sinners than pardon them.  We would rather make rules than offer them grace because rules are clean and grace is messy.  The trouble is, absolving sinners is what the Church does: Jesus breathed on his disciples and said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven.  And so we offer forgiveness.  When our spouse or our child or our parent or neighbor feels the guilt that comes with sin, we offer the Savior’s forgiveness.  When young men and women go into pulpits and classrooms to offer the Savior’s forgiveness, we support them and pray for them.  But it takes the power of the Spirit to get us to this, for we will not do it on our own.  And so the Spirit blows on us hard, with gusts and blasts of accusation.  He shows us our mother Eve whose sin makes us rotten to the core.  He shows us our father Adam who daily rises up to oppose God in what we think and say and do.  He applies the knife to our proud hearts: Who are to withhold absolution?  Who are you to keep grace from others when I have given grace to you?  And when he has us tears and when we drop to our knees in loathing and disgust, he breaths on us with the gentle breeze of his love and he says, I absolve you in the name of him who lived you and gave his life for.   In this way the wind of the Spirit moves the Church of Christ to absolution.  The Spirit does not leave us; he restores to us the joy of his salvation and grants us a willing spirit to sustain us.  And then we teach transgressors his ways and sinners turn back to him.

             “Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I, but when the trees bow down their heads, the wind is passing by.” Who has seen the Spirit?  Neither you nor I, but when the Church of Christ moves on, the Spirit’s passing by.  Without the Spirit we are dead in the water; we are becalmed on the sea.  But with the Spirit’s wind at our backs we glide into life to proclaim, to reveal, to absolve.  This is what Christ called his Church to do.  And we do it by the Spirit.  Amen.     

 Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (www.gracedowntown.org) on May 23, 2010

 

         

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Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church | 1209 North Broadway Milwaukee, WI 53202 | (414) 271-3006

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