A Fourth Church Sermon by John A. Cairns

May 30, 2004 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Creating a People

John A. Cairns
Dean, Academy for Faith and Life

Psalm 104:1–4, 14–30
John 15:1–9
Acts 2:1–13, 37–42

The Bible constrains us to modify the general religious notion that a spirit enters an individual and causes some sort of ecstatic exhibition. God’s business is not with certain individuals as such, and God’s Spirit does not enter anyone for private benefit. God’s business is with his people and with his servants . . . for his people’s sake, for the sake of their life together as God’s covenanted people.

Joseph Haroutunian

“They were all together in one place.” That’s the set-up phrase Luke uses as he begins his telling of the Pentecost story. “They were all together in one place.” Of course they were. And that one place was behind a closed door—out of sight, out of harm’s way. Perhaps they didn’t know how to read the public’s mood; perhaps they had decided there was safety in numbers; perhaps it was because they had no idea where to go next, how to move on from here. One thing was clear: the group of disciples and followers of Jesus were not yet ready for public scrutiny, for the resumption of a daily routine.

According to the Gospel of John, they had already been given the gift of the Holy Spirit—a particular presence which was to enable them to remember all that Jesus had done and said, all that they had experienced with him. So the picture is one of a group of people with a new gift and yet afraid to use it—afraid of its emotional consequences, distressed over the prospect of remembering Jesus’ ministry, of reliving his death and resurrection, of recalling his personal relationship with each one of them. This band of disciples is a classic example of what it means to be “haunted by a memory.” They wanted to relish and treasure those days gone by, those moments and events with Jesus still fresh in their minds, but they knew these were the very same activities that had produced the public outcry against him and that might put them in jeopardy.

So they were all together in one place. Christ’s entourage, the core group of faithful followers, were in hiding—afraid of their memories, afraid of their world, afraid of their own convictions.

And suddenly the Spirit could no longer be contained by the limits of that hiding place, by the limits of their fear. Suddenly the wind blows! Suddenly a fire ignites! Suddenly everything is turned on its head. The status quo is not just disturbed; it is totally shattered! We look away for a minute, and when our eyes return, everything is different. The world—or at least the world of these disciples—is re-created. Words fail to adequately tell the story, but one word, Ruah, which can be translated as either “wind” or “spirit,” Ruah is the author’s attempt to communicate what happened. Ruah is the only way to describe the moment. A tempest, whirlwind, a spirit-filled moment, like the rush of a powerful, mighty wind—Ruah!

What’s going on here? What is this wild and strange episode all about? There is not an abundance of helpful clues. And to be honest, over the years we’ve moderated the moment, retold the story with more measured tones. Over the years, Pentecost has become a church holiday of minor proportion, celebrated as the birthday of the church. It’s hard to describe how the Spirit works, so that becomes our excuse to say very little, to leave this fantastic story largely unexplained and unexamined.

There are, of course, some who offered insights into this most unusual occurrence. One writer has this to say: “The work of the Spirit . . . created a people who were so interesting and perplexing that outsiders came running and asked, ‘What’s going on here?’” (Journal for Preachers, Pentecost ’96, p. 3). The Spirit creates a people who are interesting and perplexing, who are not like any other. There is an important insight here I don’t want us to miss. So often when we talk about the Holy Spirit, we talk in individual terms. We talk about someone being “filled with the Spirit” or having the gifts of the Spirit. But here our attention is drawn to the Spirit’s work in creating a people.

A couple of weeks ago, the program staff went on an overnight retreat. Our discussion facilitator for the two days was retired McCormick professor and regular Fourth Church worshiper, Hugh Halverstadt. Hugh shared with us some of the work of Joseph Haroutonian, who taught for many years at the University of Chicago Divinity School. It seems Haroutonian, too, challenged the notion that the Holy Spirit’s primary function is moving within us. Rather, he said, the Spirit is not solely about the business of working within us but also about working among us: “The Spirit inter-dwells my neighbor and myself for our communion with God and with one another.”

The Pentecost story is as much about God between us as it is about God within us. And the clear result of the Pentecost event is the creation of a people. The discovery of the Spirit is a collective phenomenon. The experience that was compared to wind and fire is a uniting force. Haroutonian’s phrase “the Spirit “inter-dwells” refocuses our attention on our common experience. So this Pentecost drama is not just about what Simon Peter experienced, or Mary experienced, or James experienced, but about what all those who were together in one place shared, about what empowered them, sent them out into the city.

We are getting into the essence of the church here, into what it is that has marked generations of Christians as interesting and perplexing. It turns out that it is our common windblown look! Our shared experience of an indwelling and inter-dwelling Spirit pulls us together in ways that are both powerful and irresistible and then sends us out with strength and confidence. It pulls us together like a whirlwind pulls everything it touches into its center. So it is with the church: the Spirit pulls individuals together to create a people, a people who bear the signs of their encounter with that wild and powerful wind and who then carry that windblown wilderness into all the corners of their lives.

To be a people “marked by the Spirit” can be a tricky proposition. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea! Knowing that there is a mighty wind blowing, we might be inclined to find a safe place, or as one wag put it, “To hunker in a bunker!” Whatever it takes to get out of the tempest. And then there are those who, when caught in the wind, do their best to show no signs of their encounter—no tousled hair, no disheveled attire—who act like nothing ever happened. But what of those “interesting and perplexing” folks who turn their faces into the wind? Is there a way to identify those windblown, Spirit-infused yet invisibly marked people? I’d suggest they are the ones who know the love and mercy—which is to say the forgiveness and compassion—of God. They are the ones who celebrate the community into which they have been drawn, who yearn for justice to be the mark of their common humanity. They are the ones who move out into the world, telling Christ’s story and sharing their lives with others.

These windblown people have discovered that the inter-dwelling Spirit brings no rest or safety. Quiet and serenity are not the marks of this Spirit, nor does its powerful tempest allow for things to be precise or tidy. In this environment, the expectation is that we will bump up against things, will be thrown into new and challenging situations, that circumstances are never under our control, and that standing still is not an option. What is emerging here is an image of Christ’s church, a picture of the life of those who have been drawn together by God’s Spirit as a new people, a people whose lives are marked by testing, challenge, and change, but who know that the still point in their turning world is—and always will be—their Creator, God.

But now we need to go back to where we started. “They were all together in one place.” They were a community of folks who knew Jesus and who found comfort and security in one another’s company. Friends, we are all together in one place. We are a community of folks who know Jesus and who find comfort and security in one another’s company. The questions that confronted those earliest disciples confront us as well. What awaits us beyond these walls? What will people say to us or about us? And perhaps the most critical question is “What will happen when the wind starts to blow?” because our smoothed-down and buttoned-up look this morning makes it quite apparent that we are here enjoying the quiet of the calm before the storm.

But we surely know that something very different awaits us. William Sloane Coffin writes,

It seems to me that in joining the church, you leave home and hometown to join a larger world. The whole world is your new neighborhood and all who dwell therein—black, white, yellow, red, stuffed and starving, smart and stupid, mighty and lowly . . . all become your sisters and brothers in a new family formed in Jesus. By joining the church, you affirm community on the widest possible scale. (Credo, pp. 142–3)

You affirm the inter-dwelling of the Holy Spirit.

You affirm a perpetual Pentecost, the day when, by the Holy Spirit, God begins creating a new people. The wind, the Ruah, the Spirit of God that we celebrate on this Pentecost Sunday is blowing us, forming us, shaping us into this new people—into God’s people, into a diverse but united community of people who share that windblown look; into a people who have known and shared the love of God, a people united by that love and compelled to go out and offer it to one another and to the whole of creation. We have been created into a people with work to do, a people who will not, who cannot, sit still when justice is subverted, dignity is denied, truth is corrupted, or hope is trampled. That’s what the church formed by the Spirit is all about; that is the direction the wind is blowing.

Coffin reminds us that “God is always beckoning us toward horizons we aren’t sure we want to reach!” (Credo, p. 146). The Pentecost wind is apt to surprise us at any moment. What if it is blowing us toward horizons we aren’t sure we want to reach? We need to decide whether we will “hunker in the bunker” or ride the whirlwind, whether we will be all together in one place—safe and secure—or really be the church.

Amen.