- Sermon - Mickey Anders

Text: Acts 2:1-21

Today is Pentecost Sunday. It is a day with which mainline denominations like ours are comfortable. This is the Sunday we celebrate the birth of the Church and the coming of the Holy Spirit as recorded in Acts 2. We of the mainline tradition are comfortable with the word Pentecost, so long as it remains a noun.

We look it up in the dictionary and we find these safe definitions:

Pentecost: A festival celebrated fifty days after Easter or, in Judaism, seven weeks and one day after Passover.

Pentecost: The last day of the liturgical year and the beginning of ordinary time.

Pentecost: The birthday of the church.

Pentecost as a noun is a good strong word. It is a safe word, which speaks of a long distant, historical event that we can examine with a removed objectivity. It’s a proud word that can stand right up and be included in any company. We are comfortable with the word "Pentecost" so long as it remains 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!

We don't like the adjective "Pentecostal" because we associate it with words like wild, unpredictable, emotional, given to excess, unreasonable, and charismatic.

The definition of "Pentecostal" is a bit vague. Even the dictionary has a bit of trouble nailing down "Pentecostal:"

Pentecostal – of, relating to, or suggesting Pentecost

Pentecostal – of, relating to, or constituting any of various Christian religious bodies that emphasize individual experiences of grace, spiritual gifts (especially speaking in tongues and faith healing), expressive worship, and evangelism.

Pentecostal – emphasizing the Holy Spirit

Of course, "Pentecostal" is used in the name of one, or maybe several, denominations, but it should be clear that they don't really have a corner on the name. After all most denominations, including ours, emphasizes the Holy Spirit, believes in the "experience of grace, spiritual gifts, expressive worship, and evangelism." What really makes a church Pentecostal? I believe any church that talks about the Holy Spirit should be considered Pentecostal. But many Christians don't want the term applied to them.

If "Pentecost" belongs amid respectable society, why shouldn't "Pentecostal?" The words are close enough to be kissing cousins, even closer. Why have we let someone hijack a good word like "Pentecostal" and apply it only to a narrow band of ecstatic Christian believers. In fact, all denominations fit the definition, "of, relating to, or suggesting Pentecost." Every church traces its heritage back to that miraculous out-pouring of the Holy Spirit. We are all Pentecostal!

This reminds of other words that have been hijacked. Did you know that schools don't have "libraries" anymore? Now they have "media centers." What's wrong with the good honest word "library?" Why did someone in the field of library-ology decide that a straight-forward word like "library" just wasn’t good enough, so they invented the high-sounding, but weaker, "media center?"

Let's bring back "library" and let it stand. And let's bring back "Pentecostal" to mean what its supposed to mean – anything that smacks of the Holy Spirit. And let's be proud to call ourselves "Pentecostal." We believe in the Holy Spirit just as much as we do the Father and the Son.

Over the centuries, many symbols have been used to illustrate the mystery and power of the Holy Spirit: fire, wind, water, seal, oil and dove. Fire speaks of the Spirit's consuming power to purify the soul. Water fills the believer with spiritual life. The seal of the Holy Spirit is the promise of salvation. Oil speaks of the anointing power to serve the Lord. The dove represents the peaceful nature of the Holy Spirit.

But there is another symbol that I discovered when I studied a little about Celtic Christianity, the name for that unique brand of Christianity found in Ireland. Part of Irish Christianity's uniqueness and vitality came from its geographical isolation. It was robust, creation-loving, Christ-loving and adventurous.

The Celtic monks were very different from Roman Catholic monks. They lived in conspicuous poverty, while Roman monks lived well. Celtic monks were unworldly, while Roman monks were worldly. Celtic bishops practiced humility, while Roman bishops paraded with pomp.

The Celtic monks often chose their places of prayer in the remotest places in nature. They stood in the middle of the storm and prayed. They wanted to pray, and at the same time hear the roaring of the waves.

Perhaps you have heard one of their famous prayers of blessing:

May the road rise up and welcome thee,

May the wind always be upon thy back,

May the sun always warm thy face,

And may the rain fall softly on thy fields.

These same Celtic Christians chose the wild goose as a symbol representing the Holy Spirit. It sounds strange to us, but it has a long tradition in Ireland.

While the Roman Church imagined the Holy Spirit in the form of a peaceful, graceful dove, the Ancient Celts understood the Holy Spirit to be like a wild goose. When you hear of the Spirit descending like a heavenly dove on you, you hear harps and strings softly playing and get a peaceful feeling. The image of the Holy Spirit as dove has become so familiar and domesticated an image we pay little attention.

The image of a wild goose descending upon you is a different matter altogether. 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. We need such an image to correct our overly safe and overly sweet image of the Spirit. One preacher friend asked, "How many times can you sing 'There's a Sweet, Sweet Spirit in This Place' without your blood sugar reaching diabetes levels?"

When the Spirit comes in the Bible, it never seems to be sweet or safe. God's Spirit called the prophets to speak to Israel in words that were bold and sometimes dangerous. Ezekiel saw a vision of God's Spirit blowing through a valley of dry bones and bringing them to life. John the Baptist dressed in camel's hair and eating wild locusts proclaimed, "I baptize you with water but he who comes after me will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." Paul gave this advice to young Timothy, "For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline" (2 Timothy 1:6-7).

Neither safe nor tame, the Spirit inspired Paul to proclaim, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28).

It was this wild Goose that Jesus referred to when he preached his first sermon and quoted Isaiah, saying, "For the Spirit of the Lord is upon me for he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of God's favor" (Luke 4:18)

And just look at the radical nature of the coming of the Spirit in our text for today. At Pentecost, the disciples experienced the Spirit as "a sound like the rush of a violent wind" and "divided tongues as of fire." Nothing safe and sweet about this coming of the Spirit!

From the first pages of the Bible to the last, the tone of the Holy Spirit is more like that of a Wild Goose than like that of a calm dove. The Spirit is wild, noisy, unpredictable, and even dangerous.

There are several lessons that we can learn from the behavior of wild geese that apply well to the Spirit's work in the church. Wild geese fly in flocks, feed in groups, nest near each other and migrate together. The naturalists call this trait their "colonial" nature.

The first church I served as pastor was located on the White River in Arkansas, right on the fly-way of the beautiful Canada geese. I distinctly remember walking from the parsonage to the church building at night and hearing the honking overhead. These geese often settle in a farmer's rice field by the thousands. It is a wonderful experience to see 5,000 geese in one field. The noise they make is deafening.

Isn't that just like the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit brings us together and makes a noisy community of us. If an Arkansas hunter had approached Peter and the other disciples on that Pentecost day, they would have easily mistaken all that speaking in other languages as the sounds coming from a gaggle of geese. One of the great passages from Philippians 2:1 mentions the "fellowship of the Holy Spirit." The Wild Goose brings us together in God's special fellowship.

Another trait of wild geese is that they usually mate for life, and both the male and female take an active role in caring for the young. The male often leads the young to water and helps them find food. Unlike many species where the male mates and disappears, the goose breaks down the gender barriers. Leadership is a matter of function not position, not gender.

We see the same principle at work in the famous "V" formation of their flying. First one takes the brunt of the wind and leads the flock. When it tires, it drops back and the next geese in line takes the front position.

At Pentecost, the Wild Goose led Peter to proclaim, "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." In the Church, the Spirit calls everyone to lead and everyone to serve. Women become preachers, men learn to serve tables, and a little child shall lead them.

The great philosopher Kierkegaard told a parable of the wild goose. It left its flock flying in formation in search of food. It was weak and starved. By happy providence it found a barnyard filled with good food, ate until full and slept. When it awoke it was alone, no fellow birds in sight. Then he heard the sound of geese honking above. The sound stirred his spirit, but the comfort and plenty of the barnyard kept him there.

The next day he heard the birds in flight, the stirring was there but fainter. And again he resisted the calling of his spirit and stayed.

One day the birds flew by in "V" formation honking their call in flight. And the wild goose felt nothing.

I wonder if we have so tamed the Holy Spirit that we cannot hear the call of the wild goose. Have we failed to listen so long that we feel nothing? The Pentecostal Wild Goose is still calling. Can you hear it? I pray that we will hear the calling and rise up with wings to follow where the Spirit leads.