Sunday, June 8, 2014

Sermon by Rev. Robert McDowell (June 8) - "How We Got Our Start"


     It was on this very day, twenty-nine years ago, at two in the afternoon that Penny and I were married at the Stewartstown United Methodist Church in Stewartstown, Pennsylvania.  We picked this date because this was the Saturday closest to the birthday of Penny’s grandfather who was a very important part of her life.
     Two United Methodist pastors officiated and we had five wedding attendants on each side. Our colors were light blue and yellow.
     The reception was held in the church basement and we had lots of leftover macaroni salad. The weather that day was warm and humid with some sun and a little bit of rain.
     That’s how we got our start as husband and wife. Anniversaries are times for us to reflect on how it all began.
     Today, we celebrate Pentecost, the birthday anniversary of the church. Luke gives us some important details to help us remember how we got our start.
     The first detail he gives us is an important one and one that I hope we will never forget. We got our start when God sent the Holy Spirit upon those first followers of Jesus.
     I shared a little bit ago that our wedding day was humid with some rain during the day. Luke gives us a weather report as well. It was extremely windy.
     It got windy because God sent the Holy Spirit upon the church and in the bible, wind is associated with the Holy Spirit.  It wasn’t just a slight breeze. He describes it as a violent wind.
     Do you remember that terrible wind storm we had a couple years ago late in the summer? I’ll never forget it.
     I was walking toward the church parking lot and noticed black clouds that were coming our way but while I was walking, everything was still and calm. By the time I turned around to come back to the house, the wind came out of nowhere. I noticed our hanging plant on the back porch swinging back and forth like it was going to be ripped off the hook.
     I ran as fast as I could to the porch, took down the plant, and made it into the house. We heard this really loud bang and we noticed what looked like the tarp of our neighbor’s boat lying in the middle of Wheeling Street. When we looked a little more closely, we realized that it wasn’t their boat covering. It was part of their roof. After just a couple of minutes, the stormed had passed and everybody was out in the streets helping each other clean up the mess.
     That’s the kind of strong wind that I think about whenever I hear this Pentecost scripture reading. The big difference was that this wind didn’t do any damage. This wind was from God and it filled each person with God’s Holy Spirit.
     It’s good for us to remember how the church got it’s start because it can be so easy for us to just go through the motions of church activities. Many of us remember when our church had the Unbinding Your Soul emphasis during the Season of Lent a few years ago. Several of us participated in small groups in which we really focused on prayer and being led by the Holy Spirit.
     The whole point of that several week focus was to help us get our focus away from just being a busy church to becoming a church that relies more on prayer. Unbinding Your Soul was our church’s Pentecost moment. Those several weeks helped our church to remember that we need to listen more, to pray more, and to share our faith more.
     I can’t tell you the number of people who shared with me how transformative that experience was. I think that it made our church more aware of how the Holy Spirit is at work in and through each of our lives. The fruit of that experience continues with us to this day.
    Some have shared that it was because of our Unbinding Your Soul focus that they are now praying more on a daily basis. For others, it has given them confidence to pray out loud at church gatherings. Together, we learned that prayer is simply practicing the presence of Jesus Christ in our day to day living.
     One of the reasons we became stronger in our prayer lives is because Unbinding Your Soul was a church wide focus. There was a lot of positive peer pressure to pray together as well as individually.
     As time goes on and as we allow the busyness of life to take over, have you noticed how prayer can so easily take a back seat when it should be the most important thing we do as a church? Pentecost reminds us to not let that happen. We got our start because one day a mighty wind blew open the doors of where the disciples were meeting and the Holy Spirit filled each and every one of those disciples.
     And God’s Spirit continues to blow through these church doors prompting us to be the people God has called us to be. Pentecost Sunday won’t let us forget. The first thing for us to remember about how we got our start was that God sent us the Holy Spirit.
     The second detail Luke gives us about that first Pentecost is that the church is meant to be inclusive.  Pentecost was a Jewish holiday in which people from all around the world would come to the city of Jerusalem to celebrate.
     There would have been large crowds on that particular day giving the city a multinational, multicultural and multilingual feel to it. Here’s a challenge you can try after you get home from church. Just try reading this Acts chapter two passage out loud. You’ll find it very difficult to pronounce the names of those foreign places.
     Clarence was lucky enough to read this scripture for us today and he did a great job with those hard to pronounce names. Let’s give Clarence a hand.
     We are given obscure names of places, many of which no longer exist today. When the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples, we are told that they began to speak in the languages of all of these out of towners. The disciples had never spoken in these different languages. It was the Holy Spirit that enabled them to do this. Luke wants us to know that we got our start by being inclusive and welcoming to all people, not just to those who think, speak, and act like we do.
     Several years ago, I attended a monthly ministerial association meeting. Pastors and lay representatives from each of the several churches in town attended these meetings. We were quite the diverse group.
     There were Presbyterians, Baptists, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, United Methodists, Episcopalians, Church of Christ, non-denominational, Pentecostal, and probably some others that I haven’t mentioned. Some of us were conservative, some liberal, and some in between. We were black and white, male and female, old and young.
     I never truly appreciated the diverse make-up of our group until one meeting in particular. For our closing prayer, the leader of our association invited us to gather in a large circle and join hands.
     It’s amazing how something as simple as forming a group circle can become a powerful sign of God’s presence. I watched in awe as a female Episcopal Priest took the hand of a Baptist church member. A non-denominational pastor clasped his hand with a Roman Catholic. A black hand was being extended to a white hand.
     I had to do a double take, but I even saw a Buckeye hand holding a Wolverine hand! As God as my witness!
     We joined hands together in this great big circle because we were the church of Jesus Christ. Only God could bring a diverse group of people like us together in Christian fellowship. That was a Pentecost moment for me that I will never forget.
     Luke tells us that when the church first started, it was inclusive and was welcoming to all people…to all people, no matter our differences.
     There’s a third detail that Luke offers about how the church got its start. It got its start by dreaming big. After the rush of a mighty wind came upon the disciples and the Spirit enabled them to speak in different languages so that everyone was included, the disciple, Peter got up to speak.
     He knows that the crowd is wondering how they were able to speak in all of these different languages. They were acting this way and doing these things because what God had spoken through the prophet Joel in the Old Testament, was now being fulfilled.
     That scripture said that “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”
     Visions and dreams. That’s the third important detail about Pentecost.
     These first followers of Jesus, now filled with the Holy Spirit, knew that they were part of something that was going to change the world. They were on the ground floor of a holy movement that would offer hope and salvation.
     Have you ever thought about our church’s mission statement? It’s very bold and daring. Our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of our community and world.
     Now that’s crazy. Who would ever have a mission statement like that? The church would. Those first disciples of Jesus, now empowered by the Holy Spirit, saw themselves as world changers. And the rest of the Book of Acts records how the church carried out Jesus’ ministry. The church is the visible expression of the presence of Jesus Christ in our broken and hurting world. And we get to be part of this incredible mission.
     Our Bishop of the West Ohio Conference, Bishop Palmer, wants every church to dream big. He wants us to dream big because we are the church of Jesus Christ and we have been blessed with a mission and a purpose that brings transformation to all people.
     This time last year during our West Ohio Annual Conference sessions up at Lakeside, Ohio, Bishop Palmer challenged us with a vision. He said that there’s no reason why our churches can’t raise 3.5 million dollars over three years to help end the deadly disease of Malaria which kills an average of three thousand children every day. Three thousand children.
    We all kind of gasped when we heard that goal of 3.5 million dollars. But then Bishop Palmer told us that the number of children dying each year from Malaria has gone down from one million children a year to 655,000 a year, thanks in part to the financial support of the United Methodist Church.
     Another way of thinking about it is that in 2007, a child died from Malaria every 30 seconds. Now it’s every 60 seconds. Obviously, our financial support is making a huge difference.
     Let’s watch this three-minute video about Imagine No Malaria.


      When I heard our Bishop challenge our conference to raise 3.5 million dollars over three years, I’ll be honest with you, I began to wonder how our church might respond to this.  We have the large Crossroads loan that we are seeking to pay off in the next couple of years. At the time, I also knew that we were projecting some necessary increases to our general budget for the coming year.
   So, here’s what I have learned and I have all of you to thank for this. With God, all things are possible. Last year, our church was able to contribute over $10,000 to “Imagine No Malaria.” And thanks to all of you, when Pastor Cheryl and I go up to conference this afternoon, we’ll be submitting another check from our church in the amount of $2,700.  And I’m sure we’ll give a lot more before this year is over.
     Our Bishop is reminding us, and especially this pastor, that the church exists to dream big and to live out our mission of bringing transformation to the world.
     How did the church get its start? It was filled with the Holy Spirit, it reached out to all people, and it dreamed big dreams.

     Happy Anniversary, church. And a happy anniversary to my lovely wife.

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