Acts 2:1-21, Ezek 37:1-14, Psalm 104:24-34, Romans 8:22-27, John 15:26-27
Pentecost
Today is Pentecost Sunday – 50 days after Passover, the Jewish festival at which Jesus was crucified the disciples and many other people were gathered together in Jerusalem to celebrate the festival of Pentecost.
They gathered – not to celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit, but to celebrate the end of the Harvest.
Pentecost was one of three great Jewish feasts – feasts which adult males were expected to attend every year – if they were close enough to Jerusalem.
* * *
Shavout as the festival was called – celebrated the harvest, with the offering of first fruits, sheaves of barley and wheat, grapes, figs, olives and dates.
It also celebrated the giving of the Mosaic Law – the Ten Commandments.
A festival at which the Jews celebrated all that God had done for them:
Given them a land in which to farm, be provided for. A law, which helped them to live in peace in that land… acknowledging the fact that everything they had came from God – symbolising an offering of themselves back to God.
An important, harvest festival.
Today – we bring our offerings – a sign that we know that all that we are, and all that we have comes from God, and an offering of all of that back to God.
* * *
Jewish festivals were probably a bit more fun than Christian ones – in some ways. A sense of festival, of rejoicing, dancing and music; and occasionally there might have been the ancient equivalent of a beer tent.
They've had too much wine…
Acts 2:1-21
And so, Luke tells us in the The Acts of the Apostles that when the people heard the first Christians speaking in their own language and speaking about 'God's deeds of power', they sneered and said: 'they are filled with new wine…'
The Apostle Peter stands up – 'these people are not drunk – no this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel…'
* * *
Something was happening.
Something that the Israelites had hoped for, but hadn't expected in this way – the out pouring of the Holy Spirit, and the total transformation of a group of usually quiet people into what looked like a great party.
* * *
The prophet Joel had spoken about how God would fill his people with the Holy Spirit, how the Kingdom of God would be restored.
Real, physical, human and political transformation…
People came to Jerusalem to offer their first fruits to God – a symbol that everything they were belonged to him; God poured out his Spirit, the Spirit that would take what was his – his people, and helped them to be who he created them to be.
The transformation that the whole world waited for had come.
That day, Luke tells us, 3000 people were baptised, symbolising cleansing and the crossing of a river to enter the Kingdom. Symbolising their 'washing' in the Holy Spirit.
The word to baptise – also means to Dye – people who dyed cloth, baptised it in the colour, and when it came out it was transformed…
Transformation
Romans 8:22-27
In the letter to the Romans Paul speaks a little about the transformation that the Spirit works in people; he has referred on other occasions to the 'fruit of the Spirit' – Galatians 5:22-23 – 'love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control…'
Here, in Romans 8:23 he speaks about the 'first fruits of the Spirit'.
About people who have 'the first fruits of the Spirit' groaning inwardly and waiting – with all of creation, for God to finish what God started.
Creation will be set free from its 'bondage to decay' and people will 'obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.' (21)
* * *
All of creation – Paul says – longs to become what it was created to be; and so do we. Even though some of us don't know it.
We all, every human being, deep down inside of us, sometimes without being aware of it, no matter how seemingly evil we are, every creature, every created thing wants to be restored, wants to be what God created it to be.
* * *
And so this 'transformation' produces the first fruits of the spirit in us: Love, joy, peace patience, kindness, gentleness, and self control; not of our own effort – a tree doesn't bear fruit by concentrating and squeezing it out.
It bears fruit because it's a fruit tree.
Just the same – when we surrender ourselves to God – symbolised in offerings of those things which we do and are – but running deeper than that into our hearts and lives, we are able to be what God created us to be.
The 'first fruits' of the Spirit are what we produce when we simply open ourselves to God, when we surrender, when we stop trying so hard to not be the 'fruit' trees we were created to be.
When we say, 'yes to Jesus'.
Yes – you are the way, the truth and the life – I surrender all I am to you, take me and use me.
When we do this – we don't – by our own effort begin to bear this fruit, but God, that great gardener who is able to bring fruit out of the ground – brings it out of us.
Ezekiel's Vision
In Ezekiel 37:1-14, we read about 'Them bones, them bones, them – dry bones.'
At the end of Ezekiel's vision the LORD says: "I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act." (14)
* * *
The picture of those dry bones – is what we might just be.
Lifeless, dead. Nothing we can do about it.
The dead can not raise themselves.
But when the LORD commands it – when the Spirit of God breathes out…
Those bones – frightening as it is in Ezekiel's vision, come to life
And that is what God's Spirit does to us at Pentecost.
Takes our dry and lifeless bones, dry and lifeless because that is how we end up when we constantly resist the one that gives us life.
And makes us alive; sending us out into the world – filled with love and grace.
To be God's agents in the world.
* * *
When we accept the gift of God's Spirit poured out, when we surrender to God and allow God to transform us.
Then – I believe we will begin to see the Kingdom of God in this place.
AMEN
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Posted By Gus to Paarl Methodist Church on 6/03/2009 09:07:00 PM
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