“Come On, Light My Fire!”

A Sermon Based Upon Acts 2: 1-21, NRSV

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Pentecost Sunday, May 20th,  2018 

Perhaps you remember the catchy words of chorus from the 1967 Rock Song by the Doors:  “Come on Baby, Light My Fire…We’re gonna set the night on fire!”  

Now, we all know the “fire” they were referring to.   With all the sex abuse scandals revealed of people in high places last year, causing even the powerful and prominent people to crash and burn, haven’t we had enough of this kind of desire?   The New Testament book of James speaks of this kind of ‘fire’ of desire that ‘gives birth to sin’.   When this kind of ‘sin’ is ‘fully grown’, James says, ‘it gives birth to death’.  By this James means both spiritual and even physical ‘death’(James 1:14-16). 

But in the very next verse, James contrasts the wrong kind of ‘desire’ with the more positive, ‘perfect gift’ which ‘is from above, coming down from the Father of lights’ (James 1:17).   The most visual picture of this ‘perfect gift’ ‘coming down from the Father’ is on display at Pentecost, in Acts, chapter two.   Here, the ‘fire’ of God’s desire sits on the shoulders of the first Christians, whispers into their ears, and puts the words of God’s love on their tongues, so that they share and show God’s desire with the world.   When this kind of ‘perfect gift’ is given to God’s people, nobody gets burned, but God’s loving and saving desire is now turned loose into the world. 

But what kind of ‘perfect gift’ is this?   What kind of ‘desire’ is set loose in the world at Pentecost?   Can we describe it?  Would we accept it?   Do we want it?  Do we really want God to ‘light our fire’?  

Someone told me lately about a nearby church everyone is going to.  “The pastor there is ‘on fire’!”  he said.   What did he mean?  The pastor is on ‘fire’, but what about the church?  What about the people?  Are they on fire, too?   Is this a good ‘fire’?  Is this God’s fire, or is this just another temporary emotional high that will either burn out, or end up with somebody getting ‘burned’?   What does it, should it, must it mean to have the ‘gift’ of God’s fire of desire burning in our hearts?  Would we know it, if we saw it, or if we had it?   Do we really want it?  Do we really want God to ‘light our fire’?  Do we want this ‘gift’ of the Holy Spirit?’

THE WERE ALL TOGETHER…. (2:1)

One thing that becomes clear in this text, that everyone who was in that church, at that time, were ‘waiting’ on something to ‘come down’ from God.   I don’t think they all knew what exactly was, that they wanted.   The resurrected, ascending Jesus ordered them ‘not to leave Jerusalem’ and ‘to wait there for the promise of the Father’.  Jesus tried to explain: “John Baptized with water, but you will baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts. 1:4-5).  But even with these strict ‘orders’ and this explanation from Jesus, most of them still didn’t get it or understand.  “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the Kingdom to Israel” (Acts 1:6)?   

Jesus is talking about the coming of the ‘Spirit’ but they are still talking about the coming of the ‘kingdom’.   They are stuck in political realities, but Jesus is trying to move them toward spiritual power.   It’s as if Jesus is talking, but nobody is really listening, really hearing, or really understanding, even after all that has happened on the cross, or at the tomb.  

“It is not for you to know the times or periods the Father has set by his own authority (Acts 1:7).”  It’s as if Jesus is admonishing them.   Don’t you get it?   It’s not for you to know exactly what is going to happen, or how, or when?   But people still want to know, speculate about it, or claim to know when, how, or what?  Internet, Radio, and TV are filled with all kinds of preachers still speculating about all this. 

Jesus is talking about receiving spiritual ‘power’ when the Holy Spirit comes, and God’s people becoming witnesses ‘to the ends of the earth’, but still too many insist the gospel is about knowing when, how, or what is going to happen next.  Perhaps the ‘better angels’ (Lincoln, Dickens, Shakespeare) are still asking us; we who live on this side of Pentecost, ‘Why do you stand there...?’  “Did you not ‘receive power?  Are you ‘witnesses’…to the ends of the earth?’  ‘What are you still waiting for?’  Do you really want this gift?

Notable Preacher Tom Long, in a sermon, once speaks of receiving a gift from someone, opening it in front of them, and becoming a bit embarrassed because you don’t really know at once what it is, or what it’s for? 

“Is it a meat thermometer, or a tire gage?” 

“Is it a scarf, or a napkin?” 

“Is it earrings, or a fishing lure”?  

“Is it a pencil sharpener or a coffee grinder?” 

As the wrapping paper falls off, is the gift what you think it is, or is will it be what you hope it is?   All this is going on in your head, while the person who gave you the gift is watching for the expression on your face, and wondering what is going on in your heart? (http://day1.org/3822-whats_the_gift).

Certainly Pentecost is something of confusing ‘gift’ to many still today.  What kind of gift are we asking people to open here?  Is it a ‘fire’ that helps, or is it a fire that burns?    Is it a gift of ‘wind’ like a tornado; Will it be destructive or instructive?   The people were ‘all together’, but the tongues are ‘divided’ (v.3).   Is this a gift of tongues in the heart, or are people supposed to start speaking ‘in tongues’ (v.4).  Is this mere foolishness, like getting drunk on ‘new wine’, or are people actually speaking languages (v.13, 4)?   People are said to be ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’, but the ‘crowd’ that was ‘gathered’ there were ‘bewildered’ (v.6,7).  They were ‘all’ ‘amazed’ and ‘astonished’, but they were also perplexed (v.12).   Some were asking ‘what does this mean’? (v.12), while others were sneering, they are drunk on ‘new wine’ (v.13).      

So, after reviewing all the ‘amazement’ again, even we understand perfectly what the story mean then,  we could still ask ourselves ‘What does this ‘fire’, this ‘wind’, and all these ‘divided tongues’ mean for us, if anything?  Could we get ‘embarrassed’ about unwrapping or opening this kind of gift?   In fact, what does God still want or desire from us, his church today?   What are we waiting for?  What kind of promise do we expect?   And would we really want God to ‘light’ this kind fire among us?  This very dramatic story of Pentecost not only says that they were given ‘the gift of the Holy Spirit’, but it also implies that we’ve given a this ‘gift of the Spirit’ too.   If we have been given this ‘gift’, do we still want it?  Do we want to know what this ‘gift’ is, or what it is for?   

EVERYONE WHO CALLS ….WILL BE SAVED (2:21)

The Ascending Jesus plainly told them, in Acts chapter 1, that this ‘gift’  was ‘to receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you’ (Acts 1:8).  Certainly we still need ‘power’ in the church today, don’t we?   There are just a few of us, like there were just a few of them.  We too are ‘huddled together’ in an ‘upper room’, and we are ‘waiting’ on the ‘power’ or the ‘fire’ to fall.   When will it fall?  How will it fall?  Are we to ‘make it happen’?  Or, are we to ‘pray and wait’, as Jesus told the first Christians?    We certainly need the ‘power’ if it would come, but once again, we must still must ask, what kind of power is it?  Will we see it?  Will we recognize it?  What kind of power is this?

Many interpret this power, the filling of the Holy Spirit, to be the power of renewal, revival, or the ‘gift’ of energy and excitement the church needs to get the job done.   Again, as Presbyterian, mainline preacher Tom Long told a congregation, and I’m paraphrasing him:  “Some say that the power of Pentecost is the power God uses to shake off the dust from our lives, to blow away the cobwebs from our churches, and to allow the spiritual energy we need to reenergize the church. “   Certainly, this is one way of looking at it?  As Dr. Long says: “God knows we need it.” ?     (http://day1.org/3822-whats_the_gift).   

Indeed, this is one way to look at it!   It wouldn’t hurt at all for churches today to have more energy and excitement these days, now would it?  People seem to be drawn to such renewed energy and excitement, aren’t they?  Think of how young people, and others, still flock to those contemporary churches whose singers and musicians,  who shape their worship with emotional energy and rock’in music.  The energy of the ‘beat’ and this renewed ‘approach’ still ‘rock’s the boat’, but should it rock ours.  What kind of power is it?  What kind of ‘gift’ of reenergized ‘power’ should it be for us?

Now, I want to quote another story here, as an example of how, on one particular Pentecost Sunday, one church tried to ‘receive’ the power again.  Here, I’m quoting Tom Long again, (to whom I must thank for much in this sermon today):   Tom Long says:

“I never will forget the Pentecost Sunday years ago when my family and I were at worship. My children were very small then; and on this particular Pentecost Sunday, the minister had decided to infuse a little drama into the reading of the Pentecost story in the Book of Acts.

When he got to that part of the story about the wind blowing with a great sound, this was the secret cue for someone in the choir loft to turn on a tape recorder at top volume with the sound of a hurricane wind.  My children were already a little bored by that point in the service, lazily coloring on their bulletins with crayons, but when the loud sound of that wind kicked up, they snapped to attention and began looking around the sanctuary.

When the minister read that part of the story about tongues of fire landing on people's heads, there were people planted in the congregation who had hidden in their purses and coat pockets little red, flashy pom-poms, which they now pulled out and started waving above their heads.   As the minister got to the part about the apostles speaking in other languages some people in the congregation, some of them from Europe, some from Asia, some from Africa, stood up and began to speak in their own native tongues. “  Now, don’t miss this: People were really speaking in other languages.   

“At this point”, Tom Long says, his “children were practically standing on the pew and looking around. When the minister finished reading the passage, the choir began to lead us in a gentle rendition of "Breathe on me, Breath of God, fill me with life anew." And then we settled in (or so we thought) to hear the sermon, when suddenly a man stood up in the balcony and laughed rudely and raucously at the congregation, saying, "They must be drunk on new wine!"

Finally, Long concludes:  “My children, now far from being bored, were beside themselves with excitement. When we left worship that day, my son David, who was just a little boy then, turned to me and said, "Wow, Dad! That was really church!"

I repeat this story to you, because I do think the main question of the ‘gift’ and of ‘Pentecost’ is really this point that leads to this very question:  “What does it mean to ‘really’ be church?”  What does it really mean for us to have the gift and the power to accomplish and do what we are supposed to do and accomplish.  But what is this?  What is this story finally about?  What was all the fire, wind, and tongues really all about?   Was it about the drama, the feelings, the confusion, and the amazing excitement? 

Several years, when Baptist, during the 1980’s when some church leaders ‘feared’ that their church might just get a little too spiritual for their own good, there was a church in our own neighborhood around here that I heard about.  The church was going through a bit of spiritual confusion of its own.  They were growing, yes!   But they were growing, as some people who were sitting in the back of the church, were raising their hands, expressing their feelings, sometimes even praying in ‘unknown tongues’ and now feeling empowered to move to the front of the church, bring more people like them into the sanctuary.   The church was growing, so some were saying, ‘Wow!”  This is really church?   When the Spirit shows up, they said,  when you can feel free to show your feelings, wave your arms, shout or say, Amen, then, the Church isn’t boring anymore!   You receive the power, when you feel it!  Is this what it being ‘filled with the Spirit’ means?   Is what was happening, that everyone was really ‘feeling’ it, being ‘moved by it’ or found a way to ‘expressed’ what they felt in their hearts? 

I recall, something of the ‘spirit’ that happened, when I was a missionary pastor in a church in eastern Germany.   Now, the Baptist churches in Germany are very much a minority in their world.  Then, we were told that less than 5% of the people in Germany, an most of Europe too, for that matter, actually go to a church on a given Sunday.  Europe, a place filled with many nations that still name themselves “Christian” and have “State” churches, can be a very unreligious place.   In a country like Germany, there was a population of over 80 million people, but there were only about 80,000 Baptists.  You could fit every Baptist Christian, on the church rolls of that country, in one single Soccer Stadium.  Can you imagine how unreligious that is?  The weight of the spiritual darkness of that world, even when it became more open, after the decline of atheistic communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall, can be a feel like a very oppressive place.

The local churches there, most all churches are all really small, even the one with the big cathedrals.   Sometimes they come together and do things together; like Lutherans, Catholics, Baptists, and other groups might get together and pray together, especially at holiday times, like Easter and Christmas.   On a particular holiday season in our city, where I was pastor, the Lutherans and we Baptists, as well as some Seventh Day Adventists, were planning to get together and have an ecumenical worship service.   It was right after Christmas, when the established churches celebrate Repentance Day.  Can you imagine have a day after Christmas and New Years, to celebrate and invite Repentance?  What would need to repent from after the Holiday Season?  Well, there might be something, right?

As me, my church leader (like a Chairman of Deacons), and the Lutheran Pastor sat down together to discuss the service,  before he invited me to preach in that 700 year old sanctuary, which I was dying for a chance to get to preach in,  he looked at me and asked, “Now, tell me, what does it mean to be a Baptist?”   You, see in Germany most everyone is labeled either a Catholic or a Lutheran, and he hardly knew what a Baptist was.  So, he made a suggestion to me:  “Are you guys charismatics!”   If you don’t know what a ‘Charismatic’ is, this comes from the Greek word ‘charismata’, which means ‘gift’.  When he asked that question, he was asking me about whether or not we prayed in tongues, raised our hands, or jump up and shouted, as he thought all charismatics did, which he imagined that all Baptists did.

Hearing him suggest that I, or we Baptist, might be a bunch of charismatics, I immediately answered, “No way, we are not Charismatics!”  Then, my church leader, sitting beside me politely contradicted me, as he told the Lutheran pastor, “Yes, I am a charismatic!”  It shocked me.  I couldn’t believe what this stern, Prussian, Baptist was saying.  “You are?”, I asked.  He answered, “Yes, I prayer in tongues quietly to myself during worship!   “You do?”  I felt a bit embarrassed in front the ‘state’ Lutheran preacher.  I didn’t know whether he would allow me still to speak in his church, but he did.  

When the day came for me to preach, the power failed in the sanctuary.  I couldn’t hardly even see my notes.  I had to bend close to the Christmas tree lit by real candles.  I didn’t deliver it well.   Then, I wished I had been a little ‘charismatic’.  

Later, when I was back in our Baptist leadership meeting, and now that the charismatic ‘cat was out of the bag,’ the Church leader brought up the so called ‘Toronto Blessing’ that had been in the news.   He explained how a church in Canada had been ‘blessed’ with the charismatic spirit and were ‘dancing in the isles’ to the organ music.   “What should we think or say about this” he asked me and the group.  I looked at him as ‘confused’ as the first disciples must have been.  "What does this mean!”  Is this what this what “Pentecost” is supposed to be about?  I thought to myself:  “I wondered how this direction might damage my mission work with the youth.   I had lost a few of them when I showed them the “Jesus Film” depicting Christ’s resurrection.   I wondered how they might take it, if this kind of  ‘fire’, the ‘wind’, and ‘tongues’ is what we try to be about (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Blessing).

But wait a moment!  How does this story about Pentecost end up?  Have you looked at the end of the story?  Yes, there is a lot of ‘smoke’ ‘wind’ and ‘fire’, and tongues too, but do you see what was really supposed to be happening, and what the actual final result of that day turned out to be?  After all the ‘bewilderment’ and ‘amazement’ when all kinds of ‘devout Jews’ from many ‘nations’ heard Jesus’ followers speaking in their own ‘native languages’ (Acts. 2:6), and after a few others people too, we are told, ‘Cretans and Arabs’ also hear about ‘God’s deeds of power’ in their own language, can we finally see what the final result was?   

Near the end of this very confusing day, we will read Simon Peter, the rock, stood up with the remaining 11 disciples, and ‘raised his voice’ (v.14), quoting Scripture, that this is all the fulfillment of the hope of the prophet  Joel who said that ‘in the last days’ God would  ‘pour out his Spirit upon all flesh’, that is, upon all people without distinction, whether they be sons, daughters, old or young, even slaves, men and women…, so that, when this day comes,  ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved’ (1:21).   And it was then that Peter keeps standing, and preaches about Jesus to the crowd, about his death and his resurrection, and about human sin and the need to repent of our sins  ‘in the name of Jesus Christ’ so our ‘sins may be forgiven’ you can ‘receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’ (1:38).  “This promise is for you….”  This is what the gift is about, Peter implies.  “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation!”  were the last words on the preachers lips, and then we read how ‘three thousand persons were added to the church of about 50, as they ‘welcomed the message and were baptized’ (1:41). 

ALL WERE FILLED… BEGAN TO SPEAK… (2:4)

So, now, with all this review in our minds, let’s ask once more, both with the text and with all those first very confused Christians:  “What does this mean?”   Now, I know it means that they were ‘filled with the Spirit’ and they spoke in other languages, and the spiritual result was an energized preacher was preaching,  and an empowered people were repenting and being forgiven, so that many were being ‘added’ to the church.   We know that’s what happened, and we still know that is what we still want to see happen, have happened, especially in our own time of church decline and spiritual darkness.  We’d loved to find a way to repeat the miracle.   So, if we want this ‘Pentecostal power’ what is it that we should do, right now, to turn all this power and promise loose in us, and in our church, for our own day.  Is this something we can wish, should wish, or expect?  How should we ‘wait’ ‘pray’ and invite this ‘gift of the Spirit’ today?  What is the ‘gift’ the church most desperately needs?

When it is all is said and done, the gift that we still need from Pentecost is not the superficial gift of energy and excitement, ‘some miraculous injection of artificial adrenaline’, to quote Tom Long once again.   It’s not even the kind of ‘power’ that the world thinks is ‘power’. “Strangely enough,”  Long says, “the gift of Pentecost is the gift of something to say, a Word to speak in the brokenness and tragedy of the world that is unlike any other word.

Notice again what happened in the church when the Spirit was given?  It stood up and it spoke.  It moved from waiting in silence to moving with language. It talked and the whole world heard the good news in its own languages.  Again, As the prophet Joel said, "In the latter days, I will pour out my Spirit on all of everyone. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy!   That means that not just the preacher, but everyone will have a Word to speak.   And what the church spoke, ‘the deeds of power’ that they were hearing about was that they had discovered in Jesus Christ, that life is stronger than death, that hope is deeper than despair, and that any and every sin can be forgiven.   That word is simple that one day, some day, every tear will be wiped away, in the power of Christ's love and resurrection, when sin and death will be no more.  That is the Word, which is our ‘gift’ to speak.

When Dr. Elizabeth Kubler Ross was writing her famous book on death and dying, part of her research involved interviewing dying patients in the hospital, trying to find out how they felt and thought as they faced death.  As she went from room to room in the hospital, she began to notice a remarkable pattern. Sometimes she would go into a dying person's room and the person would be calm, at peace, and tranquil.  She also began to notice that often this was after the patient's room had been cleaned by a certain hospital orderly.

One day, Dr. Ross happened to run into this orderly in the hospital corridor, and she said to her, "What are you doing with my patients?" The orderly thought she was being reprimanded by the doctor, and she said, "I'm not doing anything with your patients."

"No, no," responded Dr. Ross. "It's a good thing. After you go into their rooms, they seem at peace. What are you doing with my patients?"

"I just talk to them," the orderly said. "You know, I've had two babies of my own die on my lap. But God never abandoned me. I tell them that. I tell them that they aren't alone, that God is with them, and that they don't have to be afraid."

Right there it is,  with this story, I show you, what Tom Long showed me.  Right here, in that orderly’s gift of the Word, is the Spirit gift of Pentecost: It is the Word God has given us to speak over against the brokenness and tragedy of this world, a word of good news and of hope that is unlike any other word.

One final story, I can’t omit, which may be the most important of all.  Many years ago, Tom Long says, when he was the brand new pastor of a small church, he announced to his congregation one Sunday, "Next Sunday morning at ten o'clock, I'm going to start a pastor's church school class on the basics of the Christian faith. If you are new to the faith, or if you would like a refresher course in the faith, I invite you to join me next Sunday at ten."

The next week, Pastor Long went to his classroom expecting to greet a large group, but was immediately disappointed. There were only three elementary school children, three little girls, waiting on me for the class. He tried to hide his disappointment and over the next few weeks, and do the best he could to teach them about the Christian faith.  It was the week just before Pentecost Sunday, and he said to them, "Do you girls know what Pentecost is?"

They didn't. So, he explained,  "Well, Pentecost was when the church was seated in a circle and tongues of fire came down from heaven and landed on their heads and they spoke the gospel in all the languages of the world."  Two of the little girls took that rather calmly, but one of them got her eyes as big as saucers. And when she could finally speak, she said, "Reverend Long, we must have been absent that Sunday!"

The beautiful thing about that, he says, is not that she misunderstood.  The beautiful thing is that she thought it could have happened even in our little church; that God's Spirit could have come even that small congregation and given us a Word to speak to those who desperately needs to hear what only the church can say.  Now, when the people in the church understand what they should say, and they actually say it, well, there are no other words for it, but that this is what it still means when we say, Pentecost.  Amen.