Pentecost - The Challenge for Mission
Acts 2:1-21 (Hold mouse over reference for reading)
I had a birthday recently. It wasn’t one of those milestone ones with a zero at the end which somehow demand a celebration (or wake), but to be honest, I don’t really do birthdays now, don’t like being reminded of how old I am getting, so I tend to get a bit ‘Bah, humbug!’ about the whole thing, rather like Scrooge and Christmas.
Pentecost is said to be the birthday of the church, isn’t it? That
was the moment, many years ago that we can detect the birth of something
resembling the Christian church as it differentiates itself from its Jewish
roots. But it was a long time ago, wasn’t it?
And such a familiar story, repeated every year since we started coming
to church. It is part of our Christian furniture, like the Nativity and
Easter narratives, comfortable and somehow reassuring, but rooted over
2000 years ago.
What are we to do with it? Bury it somewhere like a time capsule, as belonging to a time in the past – like England winning the World Cup in 1966? That was then, this is now, move on!
Unsurprisingly, I’m going to say ‘No!’
It may be familiar, but that doesn’t mean it’s not relevant to this church and all churches now!
First let’s put it into context, and that starts a little earlier in Acts1:3-5
‘…He (Jesus) appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.’
We think of the disciples as being frightened and confused by the whole crucifixion/ resurrection episodes, well out of their comfort zone, and why not when the one who they had given their lives to was no longer with them in person. Now they had to step out in faith and that was a little bit scary.
What we have to realise about that special Pentecost day is that it didn’t just happen out of the blue. If you read Acts 1 you will see that the disciples, despite their natural uncertainty about how things were going to turn out, were not inactive. We can see that they were obedient to Jesus’ command to go back to Jerusalem. They met together for prayer in the upper room where they were staying. They organised themselves in preparation for whatever Jesus had promised by choosing someone else to fill Judas’ place in the leadership team. And lastly they were patient, not rushing out and doing what they thought best, but waiting as Jesus had commanded.
When Pentecost came around, all the pieces were in place and God could do the rest. It was one of the three festivals to which every Jew within 20 miles of Jerusalem was legally bound to attend. Pentecost means ‘fiftieth’ as it fell on the fiftieth day after Passover. It was also known as the Feast of Weeks, and because it took place in June travelling conditions were ideal which could explain why Jerusalem was full of visiting Jews from more or less all the known world at that time. Not only Jews, because Luke tells us that there were Gentile converts as well. We’re talking about an area stretching from Italy through what we now call Turkey, Crete, Israel, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Arabia, Egypt and Libya. I think we can safely say that if you were planning a big mission event in Jerusalem then June and Pentecost would be perfect timing!
So that sets the scene. The disciples have done their bit, prepared as well as they could given the circumstances, and are hanging on in there at Jerusalem wondering what’s going to happen, and more importantly when. Do you remember Jesus saying to the first disciples that they would become fishers of men? Well, here’s God rounding up fish from all the surrounding countries and bringing them to Jerusalem – not to catch them but to set them free!
We’re not sure where the disciples were on Pentecost, other than
they were all together in one (presumably substantial) house.
There’s the sound of a strong wind, and what seem to be tongues
of fire – the sound is loud enough to bring a crowd to the door
to find out what’s happening.
There are two explanations of what happens next. The crowd being Jewish would understand both Aramaic and Greek which were the common languages of the people at that time (even Romans spoke Greek), so language wasn’t actually a problem. They either heard these with regional variations and were amazed at that, or (and equally valid) the disciples were caught up in the Spirit and were ‘speaking in tongues’ which is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit as described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 14 (which would explain the comments that they were drunk with wine). Luke wasn’t there, so he has to rely on witness statements. Either way, God’s at work here and people are amazed!
Peter is the one who steps up to the mark and preaches what is actually the first Christian sermon - and a pretty good one too! He starts, as most preachers should do by putting what was happening into its context. This wasn’t something new, scary and unexpected, after all hadn’t Joel prophesised that this would happen in the last days?
The people should have been looking forward to something similar, because at the heart of Jewish thinking was the hope that God would break through into human history and herald the new age. Peter is about to tell them that this is what has happened when Jesus came to earth, and with a few exceptions so far they had missed the whole event.
The birthing of the Christian Church was a moment in time, when God’s power and the Good News were proclaimed to people from all nations, who then returned home and spread that Good News. But there’s a whole back story to it as well. It has to do with the people’s expectations of how God will enter time, with the voices of the prophets, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and the obedience of the disciples to his instruction.
I want us to briefly travel back in time again, this time just to 1735 and Wales. This was the year that Hywel Harris and Daniel Rowlands were converted and began travelling around the country spreading the good news of the Gospel. George Whitefield completed the trio who sowed the seeds of what would be the character of Welsh Christianity and lead ultimately to a revival in faith, fuelled by the hymns of William Williams (such as ‘Guide me O thou Great Jehovah’). Soon other well know preachers such as Christmas Evans appeared. Another, John Elias writes that as a teenager in 1792 he and a group of young people would walk 40 miles there and 40 miles back to hear these great preachers. The conversation was all about the Bible and they sang hymns and psalms as they walked.
Chapels proliferated as people responded to the message that was being preached.
In 1859 a preacher called Humphrey Jones felt compelled to move back
to Wales from the US. His preaching was a spark that over the next year
and a half added 100,000 people to the churches.
In the late 1890s another expatriate Welsh Minister W.S. Jones came back
from the US to Wales with a fresh passion and zeal for revival. It was
said of him ‘It was at once observed that the minister who returned
to Wales was different from the one who had left Wales a few years before.’
In 1903 there was the first Keswick in Wales Convention at Llandrindod Wells. A number of young ministers were convicted of their lack of spiritual power and re-committed themselves to God, returning to their home churches with a fire for spreading the Gospel.
Around this time the Revd Joseph Jenkins was concerned at the low level of spirituality in the area around New Quay in West Wales, and organised some conventions at the end of 1903 and beginning of 1904 to try and address the situation. It had an effect. On Feb 2nd 1904 a young Florrie Evans stood up in church and testified that she loved the Lord Jesus with all her heart.
And that moment is recognised as the spark which ignited a flame that spread throughout Wales in 1904, picked up six months later by the one we remember as the most influential person of that revival, Evan Roberts. But the truth is, the ground work had already been done by the time Roberts appeared on the scene.
Why am I telling you this, and how does it relate to the Pentecost story? Well, consider this. We think of the Welsh Revival as happening in 1904. We might even have heard about the previous awakening of faith in 1859, but they didn’t happen in isolation, they were part of a continuing story of Christians being obedient to what God was telling them to do. It’s a story of ‘Ifs’. If those amazing preachers like Hywel Harris and Daniel Rowlands had stayed put and not spent their lives travelling around Wales; if John Elias and his friends had not felt compelled to walk a round trip of 80 miles just to hear a sermon; if Humphrey Jones and W.S. Jones had not heard the call to move back to Wales from the US; if Joseph Jenkins had not felt compelled to organise the Christian conventions in New Quay; if Florrie Evans had not gone to them, then would Evan Roberts have caught the flame of the Spirit and carried it on?
It took time and patience for revival to come to Wales. The hope was there for centuries. It took obedience from a handful of people, and it took God’s timing when everything and everyone was in place to bring it to fruition. The process was not unlike that described in Acts with just a few obedient followers of Christ doing what they knew they had to do to prepare the way. Their preparation was good, God did the rest.
So where does that leave us? How might these interconnecting stories speak to us now?
Let me ask you something, questions I could ask any church anywhere… What is the point of this church? What does it exist for? What do you use it for?
Possible answers might be that it serves the spiritual needs of those who attend. It has a social function, meeting together as a fellowship. It’s a place of worship and teaching. All admirable in their way, but what about mission? The disciples could have carried on meeting in that upper room even after the Spirit descended on them, but their first instinct was to get out and spread the Good News – Oh, and if you read on in Acts you find that 3000 of those listening committed themselves to Jesus Christ THAT DAY. And as the disciples continued to be obedient and met together, and lived out their faith then we read that ‘the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.’
In 18th century Wales it was not easy travelling from one end to the other. There was no motorway and getting from south to north was even more difficult than it is now! Hywel Harris, Daniel Rowlands, the Wesleys and their contemporaries could have set themselves up in their local areas and done a good work there, but they realised something fundamental to what it is to be a Christian, that we have a commission passed down from no less a person than Jesus to ‘go and make disciples.’
Back to the question. What’s the point of this church, and indeed any church?
It is not to be self-centred, tied up time and effort-wise with the problems of survival and raising funds (important though this might be for the fabric) but to have a concern for the spiritual health of this town and nation and be open for God to use this building and the people within it for His mission, to touch the lives of all those who are on the outside.
You see, he can only do that through our obedience, because he uses us to be his hands, his voice, his compassion and love in this world. He can only do that if, like the disciples of the first and the eighteenth century we have a passion to spread the Gospel, a patience to see God work in his time not ours, and an obedience to God’s word.
We are called to be a mission church, not a cosy church.
Pentecost is not a comfortable story for the church, because it challenges
us to get up from our comfortable place and take the Good News out beyond
these walls, not just through Ministers or preachers but through ordinary
people like young Florrie Evans who could stand up in church and testify
that she loved the Lord Jesus with all her heart – and become at
that moment a spark of flame that would be taken up by the wind of God’s
Spirit and affect a nation and beyond, as missionaries from Wales spread
the Gospel to India, China and other countries.
That’s one of the reasons why there are over 60 million Christians in China today, and the largest church in the world in South Korea. And what are they doing? Starting to train for mission!
‘You are the light of the world.’ Says Jesus. But he also adds that if you have a light you do not cover it with a bowl, or no-one will see it.’
Pentecost is about the birthing of the Church, but more importantly it is all about the mission of the Church.
Don’t forget what you are here for!
