A
new age… a new vision
Chapter
28 Pentecost story
Rumc-
2/15/15
Marc Andreessen, who invented the
Netscape internet browser, tells of a lunch he had with Steve Jobs not long
before the iPhone was unveiled to the rest of the world. It was the fall of
2006 and sitting at an outside cafe, Jobs pulled his personal prototype iPhone
out of his jeans pocket and said, ‘Here, let me show you something.’
He proceeded to share with Marc all
of the features of the new device. And “after an appropriate amount of oohing
and aahing” Marc said, ‘Boy, Steve, I don’t think people will buy it if it
doesn’t have a physical keyboard.” Jobs looked his friend right in the eye with
a piercing gaze and said, ‘They’ll get used to it.’” In the last 8 years, Apple
has sold more than half a billion iPhones (none of which has physical keyboards
by the way). Steve Jobs was a man with a vision.
Thomas Edison tried 1000 prototype
light bulbs before he found one that worked. He said, “I didn’t fail 1000
times. The light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps.” Edison was a man with
a vision and even 1000 “steps” couldn’t stop him.
In 1962, Sam Walton opened a small
store. By 1966, he had 20 stores. Now the Wal-Mart brand is behind 11,000 stores, under 71 different names, in 27
countries. Why? Because, like it or not, Sam had a vision of a new way of doing
business, and he never swerved from that vision.
Jonathan Swift wrote, “Vision is the
art of seeing things invisible.”
In their own ways each of these men,
were men of vision.
The Pentecost story is a story of
God’s new age and new vision.
·
Not
an age created by a new gadget, or philosophy; but an age marked by the power
of the spirit of God working in and through God’s people called the church.
·
Not
a new vision from a human mind; but directly from the mind and heart of God. A new
vision for God’s people empowered in a new way, on a new mission, in what was
in some ways an entirely new world.
A new age, and a new vision, going
hand in hand. Pentecost ushered in a new age and a new vision for God’s people
and all of creation.
After the resurrection, Jesus appeared
on the road to Emmaus in order to say, “Surprise... I’m here in the bread.” He
appeared in the upper room in order to say, “I’m baaack… In flesh and blood.” He
appeared at the beech to say “Bazinga. I know where the fish are hiding.” He appeared
in Jerusalem to say “Now you see me now you don’t.” and then he was gone from
sight. Before he ascended to heaven, though, he left one last instruction. He
told them to wait in Jerusalem until “the
Holy Spirit comes; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in
all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” There is our
first clue to the meaning of Pentecost.
Many
people do not realize that Pentecost is not a Christian holiday. It is, rather,
a Jewish holiday on which something important happened to a bunch of Christians.
Of course, they wouldn’t be called Christians for another 30 years. As
Christians, we have almost completely forgotten that Pentecost is the first
Sabbath day after the 50th day after Passover. It was a harvest
celebration, because that is when the barley harvest should be completed. Jews
from all over the world came to Pentecost, not quite like Passover, but you can
tell from the list of hometowns in this passage that people came from all over
to offer the first fruits of the harvest to God in thanksgiving.
There
were 120 disciples, the Book of Acts tells us. One hundred-twenty followers of
Jesus gathered in the upper room in which Jesus and the disciples had eaten the
last supper. It doesn’t say what they were doing. We might speculate that they
were debating their next move. While they were there, something happened.
Something they weren’t expecting and something that had never happened before.
First, there was a holy rushing wind, then tongues of
fire. Both wind and fire are manifestations of the presence of God’s
power.
Then, everyone started speaking languages that were
foreign to the disciples Galilean ears… yet they were coming from their very Galilean
lips. Don’t mistake this for the United Nations. These were relatively uneducated
Galilean disciples, who likely couldn’t point to these places on a map, let
alone speak their language. This is nothing short of a miracle.
Everyone was scratching their heads, trying to
figure out what is happening, except for Peter. Peter knew that this signaled a
new age .Peter caught God’s vision and began to preach.
He quoted from the book of Joel,
saying, “God will pour out His Spirit
upon all flesh, and our sons and our daughters shall prophesy, and our young
men shall see visions, and our old men shall dream dreams.” That explains
everything we need to know, doesn’t it?
God poured his spirit out upon Peter,
and he caught the vision. But not just any vision, God’s vision. At Pentecost,
God’s spirit was poured into Peter and the disciples and they caught God’s
vision of a completely new chapter in Salvation history… they caught a vision
of the new age of God working through the church.
The
coming of the spirit at Pentecost marks a completely new chapter in the story
of God’s quest to bring his upper story vision to bear on our lower story lives.
In the beginning, God asked Adam and Eve to walk hand in hand with him, but sin
took over, and the Old Testament tells the story of how that turned out. In the
incarnation, God says, I’ll walk hand in hand with you, but even with God in
the flesh, sin took over and we all know how the gospels ended- with Jesus
death. In Pentecost, God does something completely new by filling the disciples
with God’s own Holy Spirit. Not to live hand in hand with God, but to live
heart to heart with the creator of all that is, heart to heart with the savior
who died for our sins, to live heart to heart with the presence of the power of
God. Or is it the power of the presence of God?
That
is God’s vision for this new age…and that is God’s vision for us.
The
disciple’s new Job is to be the hands and feet of God. To catch God’s vision to
take God’s story to Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth…. To be honest,
for Peter and the other disciples, Reinbeck would have seemed like the end of
the earth. It is our job as disciples in Reinbeck in this new age, then, to
catch God’s vision, to be the hands and feet of God, and to take his story
right out the door of our church, down spruce street, through all of Reinbeck, to
the rest of Grundy county, and to the ends of the earth… like waterloo,
DesMoines and Nigeria. But it all starts with the vision.
A church without that vision, looks
just like a country club except we sit on uncomfortable wooden “couches,”
singing 200 year old songs, and talk about doing good a lot. With vision, the
talk stops, and the action starts. The vision comes alive in our loving, our sharing,
our hoping, our praying, our proclaiming, our doing justice, our loving
kindness, and our seeking righteousness.
A
church without vision knows in theory what it is supposed to do. They can read
it right in front of them in black and white in the Bible, but they don’t do
it. A church without vision talks about love, but a church with vision lives the
new age of actually loving. A church without vision talks about justice, but a
church with vision sees a new age of justice coming and actually stands up for
the weak and the powerless. A church without vision talks about filling the
pews, but a church with vision actually bears witness to God’s new age by
filing needs in its community which may or may not fill a pew, but it sure
fulfills God’s vision of the church being his hands and feet in this new age.
Remember I said that Jonathan Swift
wrote, “Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.” The vision for the
church is not made up of visible things like big buildings, full pews, and
budgets being met. God’s vision for the church is that the invisible things will
be made visible in our ministry. That generosity will be visible in every one
of our checkbooks. That Love will be visible by the hands we hold. That mercy
will be visible by the food and gas, we buy, and the utility bills and rent we
pay using the aid and assistance funds. God’s vision is that hope would be
visible in the children that come on Wednesday night. That joy might be heard
in the songs we sing. That acceptance will be visible in every word we say. And
that God’s new age would be visible in his hands and feet, which we call the
church.
In the Healthy Small church
initiative group Sunday, we shared an illustration that gave me an idea. This
is not exactly the same, but I think it drives the point home, so to speak.
Imagine the church as a car. Even better, let’s make a car. And let’s
get a driver. Let’s call that driver “vision.”
At Pentecost, and when any new church
is being started, there is lots of vision but not much else. There aren’t any
or many programs, (would you go sit in the back seat behind vision) There isn’t
much structure (Would you go sit in the back seat beside programs). It is just
vision and a few friends that we will call relationships. (Would you go sit
beside vision?) As the church ages, things shift around a little. Programs
might come up here, and relationships back there. All four might be sitting in
the front seat on each other’s laps (I won’t ask you to do that) but no matter
where anyone else sits, vision is still in the driver seat with both hands on
the steering wheel and the pedal to the metal.
When programs kick vision out of the driver’s
seat, the church starts to decline because no one understands why they do what
they do. If relationships kick vision out of the driver’s seat, the church
becomes a by invitation only country club, but no one is ever invited. If structure
or administration kicks vision out of the driver’s seat, the church can get a
lot of talking and planning done, but they may never actually get around to doing
ministry by starting the program or developing the relationships. No matter how
it happens, if vision is no longer in the driver’s seat, the church starts going
downhill at first slowly, then more quickly. Attendance declines, energy
declines, volunteers are harder to find, and conflict increases. If vision is
left in the back seat long enough it falls asleep and no one can really tell
which direction the car or the church is going.
There have been a few times, to be
honest, when I am afraid we might have been guilty of at least making vision
let go of the steering wheel and slide over into the passenger seat so we could
coast. Perhaps because we didn’t want to go where God’s vision was leading us. Perhaps
we didn’t even realize it at the time. It is always easier to see these things
in retrospect.
There have been many more times,
however, in our ministry together, when we have had vision squarely in control
of the car, driving us to do things like start LIGHT, offer the community
pancake breakfast, take on THE STORY, and lead the way in Homes for Haiti.
Solomon said in Proverbs, without
vision, the people perish. Peter would probably say in conclusion to his sermon
in Acts that we read today, that without vision the church will perish. If our
old men and women stop seeing the vision of God’s new age ; if our young men
and women stop dreaming the dreams of what God can do; when our children stop
leading us toward God with their child like faith and understanding; the church will perish. And none of us wants
that. That is in part why we are engaged in the Healthy Small Church Initiative.
I am not saying that the church is
dying. Far from it.
I am saying that being a faithful, vibrant,
life-giving congregation requires that we not get distracted from the vision God
places before us.
I am saying that being a faithful,
exciting, life-transforming community of faith requires that we get ourselves,
our agendas, and our egos out of the way of God’s vision.
I am saying that being a faithful, proactive,
world-changing people of God requires that we all be dragged, some of us
kicking and screaming, into God’s new age.
The way we used to do things won’t
work. The way the church used to think has to be put on the shelf with the
history books. The church of the 1950’s, or even the 1990’s will no longer work
in the 21st century.
Because along with the new age, comes
a new vision. Not the pastor’s vision, not your vision, not our vision, not a
vision for a new gadget, or a new company, not a vision of flesh and blood at all; but of power and
spirit. May the spirit blow like a mighty rushing wind through our church. May
the spirit burn like an unquenchable fire in each of our hearts. And may our sons and daughters prophesy. May our young
men and women see visions. May our old women and old men dream dreams.
And may the rest of us catch the wind,
catch the fire, catch the vision, or get out of the way.
AMEN
No comments:
Post a Comment