Waiting on God - Pentecost 2020
Reading - Acts 2:1-21
Right now, we know a lot about waiting.
Waiting in lines.
Waiting in lockdown.
Waiting for our favourite public health official to give us some good news.
Waiting is our current experience.
We have done a lot of waiting.
I’m sure we still have lots more waiting to do.
For many of us this time of lockdown has been confronting for many reasons. One of them, I’m sure, is that we don’t necessarily like to wait. Our world is so often in a hurry and it’s taken a Pandemic for many of us to realize how much of a rush we were all in.
Over lockdown I enjoyed reading a Wendell Berry novel about a barber in a small town called Jayber Crow. As an old man, Jayber sets up home by the river, enjoying the peace and quiet of nature.
However, in the weekends people come to recreate. (slide)
He reflects, saying:
On pretty weekends in the summer, this riverbank is the very verge of the modern world. It is a seat in the front row, you might say. On those weekends, the river is disquieted from morning to night by people resting from their work. This resting involves traveling at great speed, first on the road and then on the river. The people are in an emergency to relax. They long for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above the noise of their motors. They look neither left nor right…They have much equipment. thousands of dollars worth. They can’t fish in one place for fear that there are more fish in another place. For rest they have a perfect restlessness.”[1]
I totally resonate with this observation. I myself, identify with those restless fishermen.
Over the past few months our hurried world has come to a grinding halt, and I wonder, what are the lessons that God wants to teach us?
Today we celebrate Pentecost.
Our reading from Acts 2 is read every year because it is so significant in the life of the church.
Whenever we celebrate Pentecost, we find ourselves swept up in this dramatic story.
There is fire, rushing wind, and they speak in tongues. It is so dramatic that the onlookers think this crowd of disciples are drunk and out of control. Peter assures them that the disciples are not drunk, after all it is only 9am in the morning. I don’t think this reasoning would work during student orientation week in Dunedin, but it works in Jerusalem.
This is a thrilling and exciting moment as the Holy Spirit is poured out on the church.
But do we think about what happens before this moment?
In verse 1 of Acts 2 we hear this: “When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place.”
The scene is set – they were all together in one place.
Waiting.
In Acts chapter 1 we hear this: (slide)
Acts 1:4–5 (ESV): 4 And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.
The disciples wait.
They have been given a commission by Jesus to go out and make disciples of all nations. They have witnessed his resurrection. They have news to share, and good to do. But not yet. First, they must wait.
Why do they have to wait?
What are they waiting for?
They are waiting for the one thing that will make their mission possible. They are waiting for what they need more than anything else to be all Jesus has called them to be and to do all that Jesus has called them to do.
They are waiting for the Holy Spirit.
The very presence of God with them.
This waiting is so important to get our heads around.
In the stories of Scripture, it is a major theme. Think for a moment of the story of Abraham. Sarah and Abraham wait years for the birth of their promised son, Joseph waits years for the fulfilment of the dream he had as a boy, we might even think of the inter-testamental period between the prophet Malachi and the coming of the promised Messiah Jesus…400 years!
In the book of Acts, we discover that the church begins with waiting.
The waiting reminds us that this is God’s mission that we see unfolding in Acts. It is God’s project to renew this broken world, to bring salvation.
The disciples can’t do it. But God can do it in and through them.
At this Pentecost moment the church is born as the Holy Spirit fills the people. A living temple filled with God’s presence. In 1 Corinthians 3:16 Paul calls the church “God’s temple” because “God’s Spirit dwells in their midst.”
This is the defining mark of the church – a people with the presence of the Holy Spirit dwelling in them and working in and through their lives.
What makes the church different? What sets the church apart?
The church is the “Spirit-filled community.”
Because of this the disciples must wait to be filled. They don’t go out on their own, they wait, for the Holy Spirit.
This Pentecost, this theme of waiting really struck me afresh.
The theme of waiting as I have noted is a big theme in the Bible, and it is a central theme in Christian faith and belief. The first disciples wait for the sending of the Holy Spirit and go out sharing the good news of Jesus – the one who came, the one who lived, died and rose again, and the one who will come again.
New Testament view of history.
The Spirit filled community lives in the tension between what Paul calls “this present evil age”[2] and the age to come, a time when all things will be made new.
We live between the 1st coming of Jesus Christ as told to us in the Gospel accounts and the 2nd coming of Christ as promised by the Scriptures.
Our lives are not all they will one day be. We are a work in progress.
Our world is not all it will be, but God is transforming this world and renewing it, bringing hope through the community called the church.
The Apostle Paul develops a theology of the Holy Spirit in his writings and his metaphors are helpful in understanding this dynamic of living in between times. One of the metaphors that Paul uses to describe the Holy Spirit is found in Romans 8:
Paul talks about the Spirit as first fruits, like when you get a harvest of fruit on a tree and pick the first one to taste. The Holy Spirit gives us a foretaste of what is to come.
Romans 8:23: And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies,
Paul acknowledges that the whole world is yearning for its restoration.
In between the times, in the midst of a world ravaged by Pandemic, in a world full of injustice and pain and suffering, the Spirit is with us. The Spirit is given as a promise – God is present with us in the day to day reality of life.
Not only is the Spirit with us, the Spirit groans just as we do.
Romans 8:26 (ESV): 26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.
Biblical scholar, Paula Gooder says:
“Just when we are about to give up, groaning in frustration we discover the Spirit alongside us, groaning too and communicating our deeply felt emotions to God. The Spirit draws us on to where we might be but also meets us where we are and conveys to God everything about who we are and what we do. In characteristic divine form God calls us onwards to places we never dreamed of being, but also drops back and walks with us on the way.”[3]
I love this point that the Holy Spirit both lifts our eyes in hope to where God wants to take us and draws alongside us wherever we are.
The Holy Spirit comes to God’s people at Pentecost both as “presence with” and as a “promise of what is to come”
This image of groaning inwardly and waiting eagerly captures my imagination. What does it look like to “wait eagerly” I wonder? What does it look like to wait eagerly for what God wants to do in our lives?
Waiting can take several forms.
There is the toe tapping frustrated kind where we think “What are we waiting for?!”
Then there is the resigned kind where we think “Oh well, what will be will be.”
But there is another kind which I think we see modelled at Pentecost.
There is an expectant and active waiting.
Acts 1 tells us that those who were gathered in the upper room were all of one accord devoted to prayer.[4]
They weren’t toe tapping in impatience, neither were they resigned.
They were waiting actively.
What might it mean for us to come before God with such expectancy and yearning?
Notice too, that they were together on this, of one accord. They were united in their praying and waiting.
What would it look like for us to wait like this? What might happen if together we all asked that the Holy Spirit would come and work in us and through us, in this church, in this community afresh bringing renewal in our midst.
Talking about renewal and revival in the church, Martin Llyod Jones said this:
“I shall see no hope until individual members of the Church are praying for revival, perhaps meeting in one another’s homes, meeting in groups amongst friends, meeting together in churches, meeting anywhere you like, and praying with urgency and concentration for a shedding forth of the power of God, such as he shed forth one hundred and two hundred years ago, and in every other period of revival, and re-awakening. There is no hope until we do. But the moment we do, hope enters.”
I think he is onto something here.
Pentecost is a season in which we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit. The role of the first Christians gathered at Pentecost was an “active waiting.” They were there praying for and expecting that God would do something in their midst.
Is this our posture too?
There are several potential response to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
1) We can resist God’s presence. For whatever reason, we can push back. Whether through fear, or guilt, or lack of belief that God wants to work in our lives.
2) We can try and renew ourselves on our own strength and seek to go out on our own with God’s leading.
3) We can accept with open hands, asking that God would work in us and through us, pouring out the Holy Spirit on us afresh.
How we respond is up to us…the invitation is there plain for us to see. It is spelled out boldly in the final verse of today’s reading.
In Acts 2:21 we hear this:
“Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”
What a beautiful invitation that is.
Will we call out?
Will we wait actively on God, asking that he would save us, and come and be with us by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Let’s call out afresh together this morning…
[1] Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow
[2] Galatians 1:4
[3] Paula Gooder: This Risen Existence: The Spirit of Easter
[4] Acts 1:14 (my paraphrase)