“IF YOU PLAY WITH FIRE, YOU MIGHT GET BURNED”
Acts 2:1-21
(05-11-08) Pentecost

This morning we celebrate Pentecost.
In the Jewish tradition, Pentecost is known as the Festival of Weeks, or Shavuot,
and falls 50 days after Passover.
It is a harvest festival and also celebrates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.
For Christians, Pentecost marks 50 days after Easter
and is most closely associated with the giving of the Holy Spirit
upon the disciples of Jesus.
The Holy Spirit.
Just the mention of the Holy Spirit can send some Presbyterians
into a state of squirming uneasiness.
We used to call the Holy Spirit the Holy Ghost.
Those words are stranger still.
Often when we speak about the Holy Spirit or Pentecost,
we picture people engaged in strange and unfamiliar acts,
speaking in tongues, falling and rolling on the floor, slain in the spirit.
And truthfully, there have been more than a few personalities
who have used a limited interpretation of what it means to be Pentecostal
and a particular manifestation of the Holy Spirit
to mislead people or misappropriate the teaching of the church for their personal benefit.

But we can no more be a church without the Holy Spirit
than we could be a church without Jesus.
And as I have said in past years, we Presbyterians,
we who cherish our tradition of bringing both the best of our faith and our intellect
into our worship and into the service of God’s kingdom,
we who take care to do all things decently and in good order,
we are a Pentecostal church.
We are Pentecostal in the sense
that if the Holy Spirit has not come upon and among us,
then God himself is not in and among us.
Living Faith, the most recent confession of our denomination
says about the Holy Spirit,
“The Holy Spirit is God with Us,
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the triune God
and is One with the Father and the Son.
The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of Life,
the Renewer and Helper of God’s people.
By the Spirit, God is present in the world,
the source of all goodness and justice.
By the Spirit, God convinces the world of sin
and testifies to the truth of Christ.
By the Spirit, Christ is with his church.”
By the Spirit, Christ is with his church.
We are a Pentecostal church,
we are a church and a people who need the presence of God the Holy Spirit.

Doctrinally, we as a people of the Reformed tradition,
believe that God is Trinitarian,
existing as one God but in three persons.
Thus God the Father,
God the Son made known in Jesus Christ
and God the Holy Spirit,
are all of the same substance.
This is critically important for us
if Jesus is to be actually the incarnation of God in human form,
not as some sort of reduced deity or some sort of superhumanity,
but fully and completely God,
even as he was fully and completely human,
so that his atoning sacrifice on the cross has efficacy,
is effective, for the forgiveness of every human sin
and leads to eternal salvation for all those who believe in him.
In the same manner, the Holy Spirit is not some sort of secondary presence of God,
some sort of discount version of the Creator,
but is equal and of the same nature as God the Father and God the Son.
Genesis, the first book of the Bible,
records that in the beginning,
when God created the heavens and the earth,
a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
This same wind makes an appearance in our text this morning from Acts 2.
Genesis also records that when God created humankind,
God said, let us make humankind in our image, according to our own likeness.
God speaks of himself in the plural,
‘in our image, to our own likeness.’
From the very beginning God has existed in this relationship
of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God, blessed Trinity.

The Holy Spirit is God.
We need the Holy Spirit, as a people and as the church.
The question you might be asking is, why?
What does the Holy Spirit bring to us as the church and as God’s people?
The disciples may have asked that same question those many years ago.
Jesus had left them with instructions to wait for the promise of the Holy Spirit.
I doubt that the disciples had any idea of what that gift might look like.
On the day of Pentecost, the disciples were gathered in Jerusalem,
all together in one place.
And suddenly from heaven, records our text,
there came a sound like the rushing of a violent wind,
filling the entire house where they were.
Then tongues, as of fire, divided and rested on each of them
and they were filled with the Holy Spirit
and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Let’s note two things here.
First, the Holy Spirit fills the disciples.
The Holy Spirit is the presence and indwelling of God within us.
The Holy Spirit is not optional for the disciples of Jesus.
If the confession of Jesus as Lord is necessary
for those who profess to be his followers,
then the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is no less necessary.
As I said earlier, the Holy Spirit is God,
we can no more be a church or be God’s people without the Holy Spirit
as we could be without Jesus.
Secondly, we note that when the Holy Spirit filled the disciples,
something in them changed.
They were given a gift,
in this case the gift to speak in languages that were not native to them.
In other places, the Bible records that the gifts of the Spirit include
the utterance of wisdom and knowledge,
faith, healing, the working of miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits,
speaking in tongues and the interpretation of tongues.
And the Spirit is also evident in gifts of love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, loyalty, gentleness, and self-control.

Ultimately, without the infilling of the Holy Spirit,
we cannot believe God.
Without a change in us,
we cannot receive the good news of Christ and repent of our sins.
Again, as Living Faith asserts,
“When we have turned and repented,
we recognize that the Spirit enabled us to believe.”
The Holy Spirit, in us and among us in the fellowship of the church,
is essential for our salvation
and for the salvation of the world that God loves.
When the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit that first Pentecost day,
they did not remain in their gathering place.
Rather, they went out, to the streets of the city
and they spoke as the Spirit enabled them.
When a people, when a church is Spirit filled,
we are moved to share that good news with others.
We share it because the good news is not good for us alone.
The good news is that God loves all people
and desires that none should perish
and God has chosen his people, the church,
he has chosen you and I,
to be conduits of that invitation.

We need to confess that we haven’t always been very successful
in allowing ourselves to be used by God for that purpose.
Part of the problem is that, as one preacher put it,
“If you want to set someone on fire, you have to burn a little bit yourself.”
(Edward Markquart, Sermons From Seattle)
But if we want to burn a little bit ourselves,
we have to accept the risk that if we play with fire, we might get burned.
Today is Mother’s Day and in the church we also celebrate Christian Family Sunday. Appropriately, in the latest issue of the Presbyterian Record,
the monthly magazine of our denomination,
there is an article about the importance of children for the future of the church.
Now this may seem so obvious that it would hardly need mentioning,
but as the article by Rev. Peter Bush points out,
in 2006, 164 out of 932 congregations in the Presbyterian Church in Canada
had no Sunday school in their churches.
That’s nearly 20%.
An argument can be made that traditional Sunday school models
are no longer accurate in measuring how we reach children,
so Bush looks at the numbers of people, children and adults,
being baptised in our congregations.
Again, in 2006, 36% of our congregations, 331 churches, did no baptisms at all.
Faster than the overall rate of decline of our membership,
the number of children in our Sunday schools
and the number of families under pastoral care within our congregations,
it is the number people being baptized within our congregations
that has fallen the fastest.
And when congregations don’t baptize and don’t have Sunday schools,
it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that those congregations will soon close.
Close to 40% of congregations
that don’t have a Sunday school
and celebrate no baptisms within a given year
close within 15 years.
I’m amazed that the number isn’t higher!

On this Christian Family Sunday, on this Mother’s Day,
I, along with the rest of you no doubt,
am so very grateful for the children who are part of this congregation
and I am so very grateful for you mothers and grandmothers
and you fathers and grandfathers as well,
who are so faithful in bringing your children and yourselves
to be part of this church community.
I’m grateful for the children who are baptized
and for the adults who also find the faith to seek baptism here in this church.
I am so very grateful for the teachers in our Sunday school,
who work so faithfully to share the good news of Jesus with our children
in ways that they can understand,
using the gifts that they have been given by the Holy Spirit.
But I don’t intend to stand here and pat ourselves on the back
when we know that there are still so many
who have not been touched by the good news of Jesus Christ.
Our congregation and our denomination, we Presbyterians,
we need to change the trajectory of our numbers.
Now, I have no delusions that God somehow
needs the Presbyterian Church in Canada to survive
in order for his will to be realized,
but I do believe that as long as God gives us life,
we ought to be passionate about using all that we are
to be in the service of his Son and of his gospel good news.

There is hope.
There always is with God.
Pentecost is all about hope.
Its about God not giving up on us,
but coming to us in the person of the Holy Spirit,
filling us and changing us because God just cannot abide the thought
of letting his creation drift off to its demise.
Even in the Presbyterian Church we find stories of hope.
The Record article names at least two congregations
that had no Sunday school and celebrated no baptisms in 1992,
that are thriving today.

How is that possible?
Because God the Holy Spirit brings newness,
God the Holy Spirit brings about a change in us.
But let me warn you again,
if we say yes to God the Holy Spirit,
if we would accept the fire of the Spirit,
we better be prepared to get burned.
What do I mean by that?
I mean that we have to be open to change, to newness.
On this Mother’s Day and Christian Family Sunday,
appropriately for us that change might be about family,
its about young people and old people
and every one in between.

Our text records that when the disciples started to speak
in the languages of the people who were in Jerusalem,
some of the people charged that they were drunk.
But Peter, one of the twelve, said to those who were gathered,
No, these people aren’t drunk.
They are filled with the Spirit,
just as the prophet Joel had said,
“In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams…
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy…
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

I love what the text says
about what happens when the Spirit fills people, fills the church.
Your sons and daughters shall prophesy and your young shall see visions.
Children, youth, in the newness brought by the Spirit,
become, not only the future of the church,
but the present of the church.
You don’t tell a son or a daughter who prophesizes
or a young person who sees visions from God
to hold off until they are older and can be part of the church.
They are already.
And don’t think that its just about the children and the youth.
Joel’s prophecy continues,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon those who are oppressed, in slavery,
I shall pour out my Spirit on both women and men, says God,
and they shall prophecy.
Old men dreaming dreams.
Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks!
Not God!
If you play with the fire of the Spirit, you might get burned.
You think you can’t change, you think you’re too old for that.
Hogwash, says God.
The seniors will dream dreams,
the oppressed with speak out boldly,
when the Spirit fills us, things change.
They always do.

God the Holy Spirit is about newness.
God is about making all things new.
God desires change in us and in the church.
Imagine a church community that takes seriously
our ministry to and with our children, our youth,
our middle aged and our seniors at every stage in life.
Imagine a community which celebrates and takes seriously
the prophetic utterances of our children and youth,
and don’t we hear that nearly every Sunday during the Children’s time!
And imagine a church community that also understands that seniors,
old men and old women alike,
are supposed to have new ideas, are encouraged to dream dreams.
Not too old, not past the best before date, not taken for granted.
And imagine a church community where those who are powerless and oppressed
can speak out powerfully and be listened to and included.
Why do we do mission, if not for that very reason?
Imagine a church like that.
Are we a church like that?
Could we be a church like that?
Imagine how many people might be interested
in being part of such a place of community, compassion and hope!
Imagine how many baptisms we might have to do!

But remember, if you want to set someone on fire,
you’ve got to burn a little bit yourself.
If we want to set others on fire,
we’ve got to burn a little bit ourselves.
What would that look like?
The disciples weren’t sure what to expect,
but we have some guidelines from scripture.
We need to grow in the gifts of the Spirit I mentioned earlier.
But I suspect that if we were honest with ourselves and with God,
we would need to confess that we all know already
where and how the Holy Spirit is at work within us.
We already know what parts of our lives God the Holy Spirit is moving
to be more and more aligned with his will and his intent for us.
We struggle, yes we do.
Just because the Spirit dwells in us
doesn’t mean that we are perfect or that we don’t struggle.
But the promise of God in the Holy Spirit is that God won’t give up on us,
God is faithful.
If we want to set others on fire,
we’ve got to burn a little bit ourselves.
We need the Holy Spirit,
we need to be filled,
we need to be changed.
Come, Holy Spirit, come.