When All Heaven Breaks Loose

Acts 2:1-21 (NRSV)
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs -- in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power."
All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?"
But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: '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. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'

I had a dream. It’s June now and June for United Methodist preachers is a time we approach with lots of joy and a little anxiety. It’s joyous because we look forward to the Annual Conference - that time when clergy and lay people gather from all over Virginia for three days. While we’re there we will listen to great preaching and have great times of singing and we’ll ordain new clergy for our conference and we’ll hear reports of how our Church is engaged in mission around the state and around the world. We will dedicate these kits which we are dedicating this morning. We will take up an offering for new mission work in places like Mozambique and Brazil - the same offering we are taking up this morning.

But most of all, for many of us it will be like a reunion. We clergy have been many places over the last year. We have a lot of stories to tell about what God is doing. And we will enjoy being together.

June also means anxiety for preachers, too. At the end of the month is a day marked on the calendar as “Moving Day”. That’s when all the changes in pastoral assignments will happen. It’s a day the moving companies love because they can always count on business the last Wednesday in June from preachers leaving one church and moving to another. Last year we were going through that to come to you here at Franktown. Praise God, we’re not going through that this year. But I know it is a time of some anxiety and the occasion for tearful farewells. We’ll do some of that this afternoon with the Hewitts as he leaves the Shore on Moving Day to take a new appointment in Winchester. Our brothers and sisters at Epworth will be doing that as well as Tammy Estep moves to Parksley.

So with that as the background, I want to tell you about my dream. I dreamed that the bishop had called and told me that I would be moving. In this vision I was sent back to Trinity United Methodist Church in Orange, Virginia, which is the church I grew up in. Now Orange is not a big place. It’s a very small Piedmont town not far from Charlottesville. In times gone by it was home to James Madison and Zachary Taylor. It was the place where Confederate troops under Robert E. Lee wintered in 1863 and 1864. But today it is a struggling town that has seen its textile industries close one by one, along with the sheet metal plant and the telephone company service center. Unemployment is rising and young people are leaving as fast as they can for better opportunities elsewhere. As they say, Orange is a good place to be from. At the same time it is a place where a lot of new development is taking place as northern Virginia begins to creep further south. That is a worrying development for the people of the town.

But in my dream this is where I was sent. I stood before the congregation in the pulpit on my first Sunday. I looked out at a smattering of glassy-eyed faces dull with fatigue and not daring to hope that they would find something here worth listening to, much less worth living for. I cried out to the Lord. I said, “Lord,” I said. “Can these dry bones live?” And God said, “Ezekiel, that’s my line. I know that they can. Now deliver the word.”

So I turned back to this congregation and I recognized faces. There’s Billy Herbert who just lost his wife to cancer. There’s Judy Johnson who lost a child to a debilitating illness and who has MS herself. There’s Benny Moumaw who lost his eyesight and then his job because of it. There’s my fifth-grade teacher. There’s my Mom. There’s my Dad. Deliver the word. Yes, Lord. Deliver the word to Orange. You know, Lord, that a prophet is never accepted in his hometown. “Deliver the word,” came the reply.

So I spoke: People of Orange, I said, I don’t know why I have been sent to you but I know what I have to say to you. I know that you have struggled. I know that you have despaired. I know that your children and youth look up and down the deserted shops along Main Street and dream of the day they can leave. I know that the workers down at the lumber yard are looking over their shoulders wondering if they will be the next to see their jobs sent to another town or another country. I know that you have to travel many miles to see a doctor now. I know that you feel tired and despondent, sick and worried, and worried sick. I know that you feel you have no power.

And because you feel you have no power to change this place which has made us who we are, we seek power in whatever small ways it can be known. We argue over things that have no lasting import. It’s a lot easier to stoke the fire for an argument over the color of the carpet than it is to figure out how to reach out to the children we know are out there in need. When you feel you have no power you try to lock down whatever you can--your position in the community, your control over family members, ownership of the TV remote--somewhere we need to feel that powerlessness does not define our lives.

I know all this about you, people of Orange. And I am here to say that you have the power. I am sent here as a United Methodist pastor and if I do not say this to you each and every time that I deliver the word (how am I doing, God?), then it is time for me to move on. John Wesley told his preachers not to stay in any one place any longer than was strictly necessary and if I am not fulfilling my call, it is time for me to be on my way, because the call that I have is to proclaim the good news that in Jesus Christ, you have the power.

Now I know that you have begun to doubt this power. I know that you do not expect this power. Life has worn you down. Trials have torn you down. Others have put you down. Troubles have shut you down. Abuse has pulled you down. Addiction has dragged you down. The economy has sucked you down. And it’s hard to look up when you’re always looking down.

So I see you coming in to worship and not daring to hope that today could be different. Not daring to believe that tomorrow will be different. Not daring to trust that what the risen Christ says is true that “Lo, I am with you always to the end of the age.”

You know we’ve been in this situation before. The church--it has been in this situation before. The disciples, even after spending so much time with Jesus, after listening to his teaching, after watching him heal and welcome and challenge and speak to the deepest needs of those he met, after witnessing his death and disbelieving his resurrection and then sharing in awe and wonder for forty days with the risen Jesus…after all of this, they were in our situation. Jesus ascended into the skies and they stand there, looking up after him, and you can just hear the wheels in their heads spinning, “Oh, man. What do we do now?” They stare so long that two angels have to come along and nudge them along saying, “O.K. folks, why are you still looking up in the sky? Jesus will come back in the same way but in the meantime, focus, people.”

So they come to their senses, just a little bit, and they wander back into Jerusalem, and they do what any good Methodists would do considering the circumstances, they pray and have a nominations committee meeting to elect a replacement for Judas. It’s not bad, what they do, but it’s not the power they were expecting. Maybe because they weren’t expecting power.

But then the power does come and you know what happens next. It’s Pentecost. They’re sitting there in Jerusalem, which is filled with Jews from all over the known world. And then there’s wind and there are tongues as of flames resting on their heads and they are speaking in tongues that they have never spoken before and the visitors to the city hear them and they can understand. They hear them praising God. They hear them in their own languages praising God. And they are amazed and astonished…well, all of them except those who think they’re just drunk. But no, Peter says, no, they aren’t drunk. In fact what they are is possessed. They are possessed by the Spirit of God who is proclaiming a new day like the day the prophet Joel proclaimed when he said that God’s Spirit would be poured out on all flesh and people with no earthly wisdom…sons and daughters would prophesy….people on the margins of society, old people would dream dreams…people with no status and no freedom, slaves would proclaim the good news. Here’s the good news, brothers and sisters, people who are powerless will know that in Jesus Christ, they have the power.

People of Orange, do you hear the good news? Power is not to be wasted only on those who already have earthly power. Power is not to be postponed until some glorious time in some undetermined future. Power is not to be rationed out as if it is in limited supply. What you may not realize is that when Jesus Christ said, “Repent, for the reign of God is at hand,” he meant, “The reign of God is at hand. The power is here.” Jesus did not say to the transformed tax collector Zaccheus that salvation would come or might come…when he took that little man out of the tree and set him back on his feet Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house. The power is here.” When Jesus stretched out his arms and died on the cross he did not say, “It will be finished” or “It may be finished.” Jesus said, “It is finished. It is completed. The power is here, even on this ultimate symbol of powerlessness.”

The question for you people of Orange is do you believe that you have been given the power to live in a new day? Can you once again expect something to happen when you walk in those doors so that you can expect something to happen when you walk back out of them? Or will you be like the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz, refusing to believe that you have courage until the humbug behind the curtain verifies it for you? What the lion could not believe, though he had it all along, was that he had the power! Even Dorothy, the small and meek, couldn’t believe that she had the power to go home all along. People of Orange…you don’t have to wait for permission to be God’s people. You don’t have to apply for a grant from the conference office to claim the promise. You don’t have to wait on an authorizing body to start loving the community around you. You don’t have to look beyond Orange to know that you have every resource you need to transform the world. What you have is the Holy Spirit!

And who says that we can’t once again be vessels of that Spirit? Who says these open hearts, open minds, and open doors that we proclaim can’t be the vehicles for others to experience the power the world misunderstands? Who says the days of wind and fire and healing and proclamation are captive to history? Unfortunately, the answer is…we say that. I think it would be well and good if we were to experience the tongues of fire once again but settled beneath our posteriors instead of on our heads because we need to be launched from our seats to cry, “Love, Peace, Hope, Liberation, Joy, Life, Power” to a world that is thirsting…that is dying to hear those words.

Well, that’s what I dreamed when I had my vision. I don’t know what the congregation in Orange did when they heard these words. I don’t know if that was my last Sunday in the pulpit or not. But I know that the next time I step into the pulpit, I want to expect the skies to part and the wind to blow and the fire to fall and the voices to proclaim that God is here…to stay. And my goodness…that would be today. Thanks be to God.