PENTECOST C

 

May 23,  2010       

 

 

  • Acts 2:1-21. The Holy Spirit empowers a bold witness for Jesus in which people in every nation where Judaism had spread hear the proclamation of the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus in their own language.
 

  • -Nothing but fire kindles fire.

     

    -The word for God in the Old Testament is “Ruach” which means breath.  God breathed into Adam and gave him life

     

    -In the Gospel reading, the Spirit does not come to the disciples under the guise of a mighty wind, as in the first reading. Rather, Jesus breathes on them and they receive the Spirit. Here too, it is the power of the Spirit working through them that is important.

     

    - If you want to set someone on fire, you have to buuurn a little bit yourself.

     

    -“The Spreading Flame

 

  • - Look what blew into town?

     

    - The birthday of the church. 

     

    -With God, adoption is everything.  Our  "natural" birth is redeemed by  adoption.

     

    - No one is a natural child of God--all are adopted.  No birthright Christians

     

    - Contemplate  (with temple)

     

    -aging is more important as a spiritual process than a physical shock.

     

    -All things created twice...mentally and physically creation spirit .

     

    -Spiritually, we are illegitimate children, invited despite our paternity to join God's family.

     

    -The continuing presence of the spirit in Jesus is the true beginning of the kingdom of God. (Jurgen. Moltmann)

     

    -Spirit is another word for "God Present" (Tillich)

     

    -"Inspired"....God breathed.

     

    - "Mystical moxie"

     

    -Christ left us that he may never leave us. spirit paradox.

     

    -For holy spirit we substitute: holy bible, holy church, holy father! Too bad.

     

    -We are blind -sided to the Presence beside us and within us.

     

    -Everyone is a house with four rooms: physical, spiritual, mental and emotional. We tend to live in one room . We need to live in all (Indian)

     

    -Life is really only a spiritual foreign-exchange program. 

          

    - Read  "Happy Birthday, Church!" by Ann Weems 

             

    - Use the color red in any ways you can imagine.  Balloons, crepe paper, clothes, etc.

     

    -Fire is a metaphor for enthusiasm and spirit.

     

    -Tower of Babel (God comes to us, not the other way around)

     

    - Little fish asks his Mother, "Where is the ocean?"  Mother replys, "It's all around you, it fills your holes."  Little fish doesn't believe her and spend his life asking others fish.

     

    -If you stand on six inches of rubber, 5,000 volts will refuse to go through you.   Spirit is like that...won't work unless it can go through you.

     

    -A scientist walked through the jungle and saw piles of wood as if someone was going to start a fire.  He discovered that the apes, mimicking man, laid the pieces of wood down.  The only trouble was the apes were missing the spark needed to finish the act.

     

    -Appropriate the spirit!

     

    -Take the Holy Spirit out of the church and 95% of what we are doing will go on.  Are we willing to hand over our religiosity to the Holy Spirit within us?

     

    -"The spirit remains in the humdrum of our daily lives, hidden and mostly unnoticed by us."   Paul

     

    -The river that never runs dry.

     

    - We are comfortable with Pentecost as a noun. but when you make the word an adjective ("Pentecostal"), we become nervous.  I find it odd that churches that observe Pentecost don't like the word "Pentecostal," and churches that like to be called "Pentecostal" don't observe Pentecost! Mickey Anders

     

    -  (true but funny) Celtic Christians chose the wild goose as a symbol representing the Holy Spirit.  A wild goose is one noisy, bothersome bird.  I like this image of the Holy Spirit as a wild goose because it jars us out of our complacency. 

    SERMON                                              THE HOLY SPIRIT      

     

       When talking to Helen Keller about God, she said,  "I knew there was something all along....just didn't know it's name. "  I bet those first Christians on the day of Pentecost could have said the same thing.  I bet we could too!  Lindy

                               

    • -Just when we get all settled down, comfortable with present arrangements, our pews bolted securely to the floor, all fixed and immobile, there comes a rush of wind, or a still small voice, a breath of fresh air, tongues of fire and.....the Holy Spirit prevails!  Willimon

    -Profound things are "hidden in plain sight" (gravity, spirit, love, God) simple, in us,

    -We are all sparks of the Divine flame.-Hildegard of Bingen

    -the INWARD LIGHT

    --The little fish asks his mother, "Where is the ocean?" Answer.."It's all around you" it fills your holes

    --Spirituality is becoming conscious of a relationship with God. We are already in that relationship but are we conscious of it?

    - The hatching of the heart  Allen Jones

    -Godly power depends on INSIDE things,

    -Here and there and now and then, I find a new being WITHIN me...sometimes hidden sometimes manifest. Buechner

    -Something DEEP INSIDE calls for something deep to answer it.

    -The truth already lies WITHIN the student. Kirkegaard

    -We are blind-sided to the Presence beside us and within us

    -God is the mysterium tremendum Martin Buber                 

    -There's a God-shaped vacume in all of us, yearning to be filled. Jan karon                         

    - Any God I ever found in church, I brought with me.

    -God is greater than my imagination; wiser than my wisdom; more dazzling than the Universe; as present as the air I breath and utterly beyond my control BBTaylor

    -God's tug, a kind of homing instinct

    -Breath on me breath of God

    -God's active force

    I  would remind all of us that God is hidden in plain sight.  Not in this book (Bible).  Not in this building (Church). .  God is hidden within the hearts of all of us....hidden yes, but in plain sight.   Lindy

    - spirit is God's presence.....Tillich                           

    -The divine disturber

    -Without seeing you, we love you; without touching you, we embrace; without knowing you, we follow; without seeing you we believe. Song called Without Seeing You by David Hass.

     

     

     

     

    QUOTES

    -Are we human beings having a spiritual experience or are we spiritual beings having a human experience. Tielliard du Chardin)

    -We age physically; we grow spiritually   Lindy

    -Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them. (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

    -John Macintyre, speaking at the Edinburgh Festival on art of religion, spoke of Pentecost as, “wholehearted expression of the almost unlimited imagination of God.”

    ILLUSTRATIONS

    -  Using balloons and mobiles remind us of God’s invisibility.  A person cannot see the wind but only the effects of the wind.  Likewise with us; we cannot see God but only the effects of God.  We see God’s footprints but not God’s feet.  We see God’s handprints but not God’s hands.  We can see God’s footprints in the lakes and see God’s handiwork with the mountains, but we cannot see God face to face. A basic tenet of the Christian faith is that God is invisible and powerful like the wind. 

    - Orchestra playing  Beethoven's Ninth Symphony   everyone working towards same end.  No in fighting, To glory of God. No discord,  one purpose, following the leader. Inspired.

    -  If you stand on six inches of rubber 5,000 volts will refuse to go through you. Spirit is like

           that will not work unless it can move through you

    -Holy Spirit Holes: Holes were punched  in the ceiling /roofs of churches in the Middle Ages

                symbolizing openness to God.  On Pentecost doves were released through the holes and bundles

                of rose petals were dropped from them onto the people gathered inside.  Choirboys moved

                 through the congregation making whooshing sounds and playing drums to remind everyone of the

                 rush of the Spirit.

    - Birth Date:     Pentecost  27 AD

        Size:           120 people  (the membership of that congregation)

        Older Sister:   Nation Israel

        Growth Potential:   Millions

        Ethnic:         All races

        Mid-Wife:       Holy Spirit  Bass Mitchel

    -A young man named Frank Mason North was led into the worst of the poverty, an area of New York known as “Hell’s Kitchen.” There he worked among the poor, devising new structures for the uplift of the poor, giving them hope. He wrote one of our favorite hymns in this setting — “Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life.” Again, despite all, the Holy Spirit prevailed.
     

     

     

    HUMOR

    -Morgan's piping voice can be heard

    through the church in that little preface  to prayer we often use;

    when the priest  says, "The Lord be with you,"  and we all answer "And

    also with you."A couple of years ago, Morgan and his family went to see the movie Star

    Wars As with everything else Morgan does, he was caught up in the

    story and hung upon every word. And at the point when the wise old man

    Obi-wan Kenobi says to young Luke Skywalker, "May the Force be with

    you," Morgan stood up and boomed out, "And also with you!"

    Good News, Liturgical Publications,

     

    CHILDREN

     

    - Have birthday cake for birthday of the church. Church will not be extinguished. (Use candles  that will not blow out

    - Tell story of Eskimo who saw light bulb for the first time in a store.  Bought the bulb, a lamp and some wire

    and went back to his home town and screwed bulb into lamp but light wouldn't go on.

    He had all the right equipment but was not hooked up to the source of power.  You might say

    the Holy Spirit was the source of power that "turned on" those first apostles, on the day of

    Pentecost and ever since.

     

    PRAYER PHRASES

    -Come, Holy Spirit. Come as mighty wind or gentle breath. Blow on the embers of our faith. Empower us to speak and to act so that there might come a day when there is not a needy person among us. Amen.  Rev. Dr. Barbara K. Lundblad
     

     

    "If you haven't seen http://www.textweek.com/  you're missing a great resource for ministers."

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