Power Surge - Page 1 of 3
Good morning, church. My name is Peter and I’m here in your pastor’s body to talk about the
church’s first Pentecost.
One of the things I really enjoy about going around to preach in the 21st century is the chance to
use the Internet, and I’d like to share this observation from William Willimon: “Someone has said the
church is somewhat like a football huddle, the huddle that players go into at a football game. You know
that something important is being said, but you can’t understand a word of it, and all you can see is their
rear-ends.”
Well, what I want to say is that the huddle is only the beginning of what the church is all about,
as we learned that day.
Notice I didn’t say the first Pentecost - Pentecost already was a big Jewish festival that
occurred fifty days after Passover and was one of the three pilgrimage feasts, when Jews from all over
the world gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate God’s goodness toward Israel.
Also, notice I didn’t say it was the birthday of the church. In a way it was, but some people
would say the birthday of the church was Easter or Ascension - or even Good Friday, when Jesus
asked his Father to forgive us and the few people who heard what he said wandered off wondering how
they would live with that. But, whenever you think the birthday of the church was, the important thing is
the church was born.
Looking back, I will never forget that first Easter and the days after when Jesus, our risen Lord,
was made known to us in the breaking of the bread, and how he opened our minds to understand the
scriptures, and spoke about God’s kingdom, and the last time we were with him before he was taken
up into heaven. We still had questions. We wanted to know, “Lord, is this the time when you will
restore the kingdom to Israel?” But Jesus told us it wasn’t for us to know and promised we would
receive power to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
And then he was gone.
It was an awesome promise, one we took seriously, so seriously that we went back to
Jerusalem - not to get busy with being witnesses, but to pray for the power from on high Jesus
promised. We knew this power would be a gift, God’s gift, and we knew would receive it in God’s
time, not ours.
And so, we waited - together, of course, about 120 of us. I guess you could say it was like that
football huddle.
Until the day of Pentecost came and the action started.
I’m going to talk about what happened, but please remember this: it’s really hard to put what
happened that day into words, and I’m going to have to use some pretty strange language to talk about
what it was that changed us from a group of well-trained disciples but scared disciples into powerful
witnesses able to proclaim the truth about Christ to the world.
So - here goes: it was about dawn on the day of Pentecost. Devout Jews were in Jerusalem
from all over the world - all those places that make today’s Pentecost a real challenge for worship
leaders: Parthians, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Cappadocians, Phrygians, Pamphylians, every nation we
knew under heaven. It was like a big party of old friends gathered to celebrate the 50th day after the
consecration of the harvest and the Passover.
But we weren’t outside celebrating - or witnessing - but inside waiting and praying for that
power we knew we needed if we were to witness to all those folks who didn’t know Jesus.
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