May 30, 2004
By Jack Price

The sounds of Pentecost, a loud rushing wind with flashes of fire all around, is eerily reminiscent of last night’s tornado warnings and thunderstorms.  The story of Pentecost, the birthday of the Christian Church, comes from the second chapter of Acts.  The Spirit came like rushing wind and tongues of fire, as the gospel was proclaimed in the language of all those present.

This was the beginning of the Christian Church even though it had not yet been called “Christian”.  That name would come later.  It had also not yet been called “Church,” from the Greek ecclesia, meaning “gathered ones”.  Now, they were only called disciples of Jesus and followers of The Way.  Like other devout Jews, they were in Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish festival called Pentecost.  On that day, the followers of Jesus became the Church of Christ as the Spirit entered the body of believers.  What a noisy beginning!

Jesus was gone and the disciples were cloistered in an upper room.  There was a sudden rush of wind.  The Hebrew image for wind is the same as breath and also the same as Spirit.  Tongues of fire appeared over the disciples -- the image of John the Baptist proclaiming that Jesus would baptize the people with the Holy Spirit and fire.  Another image of burning tongs that touched the lips of Isaiah at his commissioning help deepen the understanding of what was happening.  The followers became the leaders of a body being born, the body of the risen Christ -- the church.  The ones who were silenced in fear now find the words and the passion to proclaim a truth they have experienced so that all men, women, and children can hear and understand.

These disciples gathered with Jesus, according to John’s gospel, in another upper room, before his death.  Jesus tries to teach them about the Spirit and their minds are full of questions.  (John 14: 8-17)

“If you love me, keep my commandments.”  What did Jesus command?  “Pray in this manner” (the Lord’s Prayer); “Blessed are the meek…”  “Love the Lord your God with all…”  “Love your neighbor…”  “Love one another as I have loved you.”  “I will ask the Father” who will send the Spirit.  Out of the intimacy of relationship of the Father and Jesus, the Spirit is given.  The Spirit is another advocate, counselor, and friend like Jesus -- to teach and comfort.  Then the gospel writer makes an astounding claim – that the disciples, a by extension the rest of us, will be greater works than Jesus.  These will be greater works of healing, justice, and revelation because the kingdom of God is closer to being born.  Jesus provides a closer connection for us to God.

            What is spirit?  We spend a lot of time and energy seeking to hear a word from God for our congregation.  Our whole life as church, including our worship, is predicated on the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Theologian Walter Wink defines spirit as “the capacity to be aware of and responsive to God”.  Such capacity is not limited to individual, but is shared by systems, by institutions, by corporations, by families, and even churches!  We may then define Spirit as the capacity of God to enable us to be aware of and responsive to God. 

            How is the Spirit present?  Sometimes this presence is loud and sometimes quiet; sometimes with sudden clarity and sometimes in the mysterious flow of growth -- sometimes in the deep ebbing of changelessness.  You will do greater things because of the presence of the Spirit. 

The absence of Jesus brings the presence of the Spirit.  The Sprit is a tangible symbol of God within us.  That decisive revelation of God, in Jesus, is translated into all believers.  It is, in effect, an aperture of faith opened with ultimate reality (God).  The Spirit is our God-given capacity to be aware of and respond to God’s presence --

Jesus taught his disciples that a leader is to serve the best interests of his/her followers.  The wisdom of our faith is that the God we serve, the truth the Spirit reveals, is that we are partners with God and partners with each other.  Through this partnership, we assist the new creation to be born among us – changing from invisible to visible.

The Spirit of Truth reveals that our world exists under the influence of the dominant world myth of redemptive violence.  According to this worldview, justice comes through war, peace can be accomplished by hating our enemies, and redemption is possible through the violent destruction of those enemies.  As crazy as it sounds when written this way, this is our current worldview and enjoys the consent of most of our world’s governments, including our own.

For more than 2000 years, the Spirit has revealed an alternative view.  This is the understanding that the basic makeup of creation is love, and that the Creator has the desire for partnership with humanity rather than dominance over it.  Jesus’ life and teaching represents this alternative understanding.  To be sure, God is God, but God does not seek to be over us to exploit to dominate us. 

Jesus’ whole life brings an alternative to redemptive violence.  Men don’t need to dominate women nor adults children.  God’s design for creation is just the opposite of the way so many of us live.  Husbands are not to be over their wives, but in partnership with them.  Parents are not to dominate children, but lead and prepare them to be adults.  It is out of synch with God’s way for the wealthy to exert exploitive power over the poor, the educated over the uneducated, the healthy over those who suffer with disease.  In God’s creation, the stronger don’t need to dominate weaker.  This is true for people and nations both. 

Jesus’ life challenges the myth of redemptive violence, a myth permeating so much of world’s thinking and a myth to which we as a nation too often succumb.  Witness not only our policy in Iraq, but even more the violence in our society, our prison system, a child welfare system, the social and economic stratification of our society, the results of our entertainment industry, and our exploitive pop culture.

Jesus told his disciples, a.  “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  The Spirit of truth will be your comforter, your advocate, and even more.

            Pentecost is the birthday of the Church.  Birthday celebrations are times to look back and, especially, to look forward and inward.  One of the results of our recent annual retreat was the production of a diagram of our church’s ministry.  There were three divisions of work groups.  One was the “journey inward” of theological exploration and spiritual growth.  Another was the “journey outward” of partnership missions with Wayne Ave, Guatemala, and Community LINC.  The third was care of the congregation community – the “body building” of discipleship training and worship.  There were three circles of focus with a circle in the middle.  The spirit of this congregation is filled with the Spirit of God.  Our identity statement is  “to live and serve in the Spirit”.

            The challenge Crossroads faces is often framed as, “What will we do in the coming year?”.  Another way of asking this is, “Who will we be?”.  If we are to be Spirit-led, then our choice will be to hold open the space for God to act in the world through us:  through our prayers and our actions.  Being congregationally-led means hearing, discerning, and following the Spirit by committing to listen to our many voices.  By so doing, we believe we will hear the voice of God.  Such a commitment by the body will only be successful to the extent that we, as individuals, listen to the Spirit speaking within each of us.

Every person is a mixture of spiritual and material.  We are physical, meaning that we have the capacity to live in the atmosphere of creation.  We are spiritual, meaning we have the capacity to be aware of and respond to God as members of the creation. 

Families, institutions, nations, and even churches have a spiritual dimension as well.  Spirit is the capacity of individuals and institutions to be aware of and responsive to God.  This capacity represents our essential nature as individuals, as members of institutions, and of institutions themselves.  Spirit involves our essential calling in life.

What does this mean for us?  This Pentecost Sunday birthday of Christian Church is a time of decision and destiny for this nation, for this congregation, for our world, and for us.  You and I are creatures of material and creatures of spirit.  The material is our identity as members of God’s creation. The spirit is our capacity to be aware of God – the ultimate and personal “being itself,” – and responsive to God – as partners and co-creators.  To be fully human is to live intentionally as beings of material and spirit. 

To fail to be aware and responsive to God is to be false to who we are.  It is to be out of touch with our primary relationship.  It is to miss the meaning of life and to ignore our primary purpose, calling, in life.  It is to fail to be fully human.

            Crossroads Church is an institution with spirit.  Spirit is the institutional capacity to be aware of and responsive to God.  This capacity is our essential nature and our true identity as a congregation.  Our true identity reveals our essential calling in life -- who we are and where we are going.  By embracing our capacity to be aware of and responsive to God, we can be fully church.  To fail to be aware and responsive is to fail to be church: out of touch with our primary relationship, losing meaning in life, missing our primary purpose and calling in life, and losing track of our identity. 

            What author Elizabeth O’Conner (Cry Pain, Cry Hope) says of individuals is true of institutions as well:

We carry within us the image of God the Creator; we have the task of making the earth into a fairer and kinder place.  We are not powerless in the oppressive situations in which we feel caught.  We are not bound to the reality we see.  We are creators.  We can make the new. 

This is the message of Pentecost.  God is working in us.  God is working with us to do a new thing.  Behold and see, it is even now being born.