Like a Mighty Wind

Acts 2: 2

May 15, 2005

Like a Mighty Wind

We had a Shetland Sheep dog named Amber. Amber loved windy days. No matter how windy it was she would stand on our front lawn, face the direction that the wind was coming from, put her nose up in the air... and she was in doggy heaven. She was oblivious to anything else going on around her. And I think I know why. It was the smells that the wind brought her. Her movements were, for the most part, restricted. Other than for the occasional walk or ride in the car she was confined to the house or our yard. The wind was, for her, a sumptuous blessing. The wind brought her experiences of a world beyond her powers to visit. On the wind come to her smells of a dozen kinds of trees and hundreds of wildflowers, of squirrels and rabbits, of pigs and cows. A world beyond her immediate experience was borne to her on the wind, and she was ever so reluctant to quit it and come inside.

There is in that example, I think, a picture of Pentecost. The opening words of Acts 2 read: "When the day of Pentecost had come, they (the disciples) were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting." These same disciples had seen Jesus ascend from their midst just days earlier as he was taken up from earth to heaven. This Jesus whom they had walked with, talked with, ate with, this Son of God upon whom they had staked their lives and futures…was now separated from them by time and space sitting at the right hand of God reigning over an eternal kingdom. What would they do now? They were earth-bound. They could not ascend to his realm, nor, until the final day, would Jesus descend again to earth. How could these earth-bound disciples experience, again, the Lord Jesus who was now in a world beyond their powers to visit? The answer came at Pentecost when the Spirit of God came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind and on those winds were borne the things that are of heaven. When God gave his spirit at Pentecost he supplied a way by which we, separated from heaven, might still be touched by his presence.

I can still see Amber in my mind, face to the wind and nose in the air, straining every sensory nerve to get all the smells that the wind brought. I wonder how different our lives might be if we were that intense on experiencing every bit of heaven that blows from the Spirit of God, if our spiritual senses were as focused on winds of the Spirit as Amber’s were on the winds of her world.

Were our spiritual senses so tuned we would have a keener understanding of God's power and what it means in life. In Acts 1, the writer says that Jesus charged his disciples not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, and then goes on to quote Jesus saying, "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you..." That promise was fulfilled days later on Pentecost.

There is much talk today about different groups being powerless. (Racial, ethnic, gender, religious.) That, says Jesus, is one thing a Christian will never be; powerless. God, at Pentecost, saw to that.

A Colorado pioneer some years ago built a rock cabin. After he had completed the house he started a fire in the fireplace. The whole cabin became a burning holocaust, for the rocks were oil shale and were impregnated with oil. The oil had survived for millions of years within the rock and then a touch of fire released its energy. Lives of people, created in the divine image, have within them light and energy that breaks forth in a brilliance when they are set on fire by the Holy Spirit of God. Pentecost is a time when we are most mindful of the divine spark that ignites the power with which we have been created. Everything we need to exercise divine power is there; we simply need to yield to the match that will light it.

When Archimedes introduced the fulcrum and lever, he simplified the work of humankind from that day on. He was convinced that the length of the lever and the height and location of the fulcrum were the critical concerns. If these could be correctly situated, anything could be moved. So convinced was he that he said, "Give me a place to put my foot, and I will move the world."

That is the work of a Christian, to move the world toward God. When our feet are planted firmly in the promises of Pentecost, we can exert that kind of power.

Leslie Weatherhead observed the following in his book Key Next Door: "If in this pulpit I stood on a thick mat of dry India-rubber, I could lift up my hand and touch a live cable carrying one thousand volts without any harm to myself, for the simple reason that electricity will not come in unless it can go out. The same is true of the power of the Holy Spirit. If I try to make my religion a soul-saving smug little bit of self-satisfaction for myself; if I say my prayers and read my devotionals or even the New Testament, only to save my own soul, my devotion will become so self-centered and stagnant that I shall be self-poisoned. Power comes in when it can get out."

That is a not-so-gentle reminder that Pentecost is not automatic. You probably have heard, and perhaps have even prayed, “O Lord, fill me with your Spirit.” That is an admirable prayer but it falls just a bit short. The power of the Holy Spirit comes not so much to fill as it does to flow through. The Holy Spirit comes not to containers but to conduits. There is a great difference between energy and power. Energy is stored; power is used. Jesus didn't promise that his disciples would receive energy; he promised that they would receive power. And power comes in only when it can get out.

Power is a nervous business. It does not come without baggage. Career blood is often spilled on the way up the corporate ladder. The resources power has give access to the alluring and the comfortable. Power creates elites who understand one another well and who can catch the look of fear or envy in other people's eyes when those people confront their power. Power says things to us like security and self-sufficiency, entrenchment and domination.

But the power of the Holy Spirit is not like any of that. It is a power with compassion, a power not so much to serve the self as to allow the self to serve others. It is a power to forgive, a power to overcome adversity, a power to discipline desire, a power to be holy and Christ-like... power to become the children of God.

The Rural Electric Company was launched in 1935 and over the next dozen years succeed in getting power into the most remote sections of the country. One day a man, who had wired his house in anticipation of that day, noticed that the light bulb he had screwed into a ceiling socket some months before began to glow all of a sudden; the light filled the room with a brilliance no oil kerosene lamp had ever made possible. He rushed outside, ran down the road, and shouted the good news: "The power is on! The power is on!" Today is Pentecost. The Holy Spirit of God comes like the rush of a mighty wind, connecting heaven to earth with the message, "The power is on! The power is on!" May we be receptive of its gifts, attentive to its guidance, and channels of its power. Amen.

May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.