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Acts 2: 1-21; Luke 11:

God’s Big Bang!©

It’s funny.  I’ve heard several explanations about how the world began.  There are different groups that have differing ideas about how the world began.  There are some who point to God and say, ‘God created the world’ [that’s a Christian position], and there are some who talk about a Big Bang Theory. They say that there was a big ball of stuff that one day exploded…with a Big Bang! And the Universe began. 

It occurs to me that no matter how you come down on the beginning of the world, if you combine those two ideas—God’s action and a Big Bang—you do have the beginning of the church.  You really do.

It was God’s activity, using a very big bang, that that started the church.

·        It didn’t happen slowly, the way many organizations get their start

·        It didn’t begin with a few of Jesus’ followers sitting down and making a plan about how to follow Jesus’ commission to go make disciples around the world.

·        They didn’t make a five-year plan and begin to execute it

·        They didn’t begin a mass advertizing campaign or send out personal invitations to every zip code in town.

·        They didn’t hire a pop band and rent a great hall and sell tickets

·        No!  It all began with a big bang, and God was at the center of it…directing the whole thing.

·        It was God’s Big Bang!

            To understand it we have to go back to the Apostles and the rest of the 120 followers of Jesus in the Upper Room.

            Their lives had been changed, several times, by Jesus.  They had witnessed and experience such remarkable events during that time.  I wonder why they didn’t race out and begin the church right then?  Why did they not begin following Jesus’ commission as soon as they heard it?     

            What was missing?  What did they need?  They had so much already.  They were certainly not the men and women they had been before they met Jesus.  They had been changed by their relationship with the Lord.  You could say that  they had everything they needed to step out and begin the church.  They had seen it all, felt it all, and experienced all those changes themselves.  They had a lifetime of things to share with folks who hadn’t met Jesus themselves.  They were ready to share their faith….almost.

            Jesus had ascended to heaven, leaving the 11 Apostles gaping up at the sky.  He had told them to wait just a bit for the gift of God that was about to come to them.  Then, ten days later, very early in the morning, they sat in the Upper Room praying—just as Jesus had told them to do.  Suddenly they heard the sound of the wind blowing outside.  It began blowing hard against the window shutters, and suddenly the wind blew the shutters open and the door, too, and the wind blew into the room.

            Each person there in the room seems to have been encircled by his or her own personal eddy of wind.  And each person began speaking of the things they had seen with Jesus.  They spoke excited works, even using different tongues; they told of the events of the past several weeks.  They told about the Lord Jesus, his rising from the dead.  Each person seemed to have flames of fire dancing above their heads, even as they continued to exclaim the good news of the Lord.

            They certainly couldn’t contain themselves. Their excitement grew, and the followers began dancing out the door, down the stairs, and into the streets of Jerusalem.  They were proclaiming Jesus to everyone who would listen.

            There were visitors in the city that day. Jews had come to the city from many parts of the world in order to celebrate the Pentecost, the Day of First Fruits.  These men and women heard the good news of Jesus in their own languages, as the followers were speaking in languages they could understand.

            There was no little confusion.  And many onlookers wondered what was going on.  Then Peter rose and addressed the crowd. He assured them that what they were seeing was not the result of too much drink, but that this event was actually foretold by the Prophet Joel years before when he wrote of God pouring out His Spirit on all flesh. Peter told them about Jesus, how he had died and that he lives today.

            And the Spirit moved among the crowd, and some three thousand people came to faith in Christ and were baptized that day.  That was the beginning of the church.  We could call it the birthday of the church.

            It wasn’t the efforts of Jesus’ followers that built the church.  It was the Holy Spirit.  It was the Holy Spirit, God working as the Holy Spirit.

            The Holy Spirit filled the hearts of the people who heard Peter’s message and brought them together as the first church meeting.  It was Jesus’ Spirit that had come to fill them and live with them that energized them and encouraged them and gave them the wisdom and insight to lead this new event that was developing right before their eyes.

            Jesus’ followers had been preparing for their roles in the thing that was happening.  The gathering of people that came to  hear the good news about Jesus was called a synagogue; it was known as the Ecclesia in Greek; and in English we call it the church.   It means the gathering of the people by the Holy Spirit.

            Highlands is an outgrowth of that first church.  Wouldn’t it be fun to be able to trace our faith heritage from that first day, those first Christians, down through the ages, places, people, and events to see how the message of Christ and the gospel has come to us?  It would be fascinating to be able to follow the story from the very beginning to the present, but I don’t suppose it is possible.  It would probably get bogged down in history.  But we can be sure that as the gospel message moved, it moved because of the Holy Spirit touching people to hear the message of Christ and to respond.

            The church began, not by the efforts of Jesus’ followers; it was the power of the Holy Spirit moving in the hearts of the people to share the gospel. It is the same Holy Spirit that gathers the church every time it meets.

            The Holy Spirit didn’t fall on just any people.  These were people who knew Jesus from the very beginning of his ministry.  Jesus told them to stay together and to pray and wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit.  They were all together in the Upper Room when the Holy Spirit fell on them.

            The Holy Spirit is the One who gives the growth to the church.  We can plan and work hard, but without the power of the Holy Spirit there will be no growth.

            We don’t hear about how it was that the church grew from that first day.  We know it grew rapidly.  It was an amazing phenomenon.  God’s Big Bang began that day in Jerusalem, but it didn’t take long before small communities of faith in the risen Lord had sprung up all around the Mediterranean Basin.

            I was listening to Dr. Timothy Luke Johnson talking about the remarkable nature of the growth of the church during that time just following Pentecost.  He observed that the only real information we have about the spread of the church is found in the New Testament—the Acts of the Apostles and in the various letters to the new churches.

            Johnson points out how unusual the growth of the early church was:

·        The young church was not dependent on military or diplomatic power

o       Which contrasts greatly from the rise of Islam seven centuries later

o       The Moslems used great military force to move their faith forward

·        Christianity spread on the basis of persuasive speech on the missionaries convincing people to trust Jesus

·        The church grew almost accidentally:  i.e. when Paul was forced to leave one city, he would go to the next city and tell the people there about Jesus…and a new church would rise up

·        All the original leaders died off in the first century—Paul, Peter, John, James, Stephen all died

·        There was not strong, controlling center of the new faith. (although Jerusalem was the location of the first church, it quickly became quite poor; it didn’t have the power to control the movement.

·        There was no catechism, no source of lessons, no Bible or Sunday school material, to use to teach.  Scriptures (OT) were cumbersome to carry around

·        The movement made a shift from the itinerant/rural preaching of Jesus to an urban/house church setting

·        There was a linguistic shift from Aramaic of Palestine to Greek of the greater world

·        There was a demographic shift from Jew to Gentile.  Whereas most of the first Christians were Jewish the church quickly became mostly populated by gentiles.

            All of this activity was the work of the Holy Spirit.  You can tell when the Holy Spirit is at work because there is little apparent organization to events, but they are exciting, joyful, good, kind, up-building, and loving.  It was the work of the Holy Spirit that caused the growth of the church.  It is always the work of the Holy Spirit that causes the growth of the church.  

            That tells me tells me that we need the Holy Spirit if we are to be the church.

            Jesus told the crowd that when we need something we should ask for it.  Jesus asked, ‘Is there anyone here who when asked by their son for a fish would give him as snake or if he asked for an egg would give him a scorpion?  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”  (Luke 11:11-13)

            Jesus is telling us that we should be asking God for the Holy Spirit, often. The Holy Spirit is a gift of God, but it needs continual refilling.  Just like when we get physically thirsty and need refreshment, we drink nice, cool water to assuage our thirst, so we also need to be filled with the Holy Spirit to refill our spiritual selves.

            Jesus also told the crowd, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.  As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’  (Luke 7:37-39)

            Jesus calls everyone who is thirsty.  That’s all of us. We’re all in thirsty.  It’s a universal condition.  God made us that way.  Remember, God placed his image in every human being, so we are all spiritual beings, and we have a need to grow in our spirit just like we need t satisfy our physical thirst…everyday.

            “If anyone is thirsty, come to me.’

            Not only us individually, but we, as a church body, need the Holy Spirit.  It is the Holy Spirit, after all, who convenes us, who gathers us together as a body of Christ.  It is the work of the Holy Spirit that teaches us, reminds us of Christ’s teachings and promises.  It is the Holy Spirit who fills us to over-flowing with love and encouragement for one another and for our world.  It is the Holy Spirit who empowers us to follow Jesus.  On our own all we will do is limp along, hoping that something will happen.

            All of you, who are thirsty, come to Jesus.

            Jesus promised to give us the Holy Spirit to be with us always.  That is his gift of Himself.  He literally indwells us; he lives in our hearts.

            ‘And let the one who believes in me drink.

            The second invitation is a bit different.  All who believe in Jesus can come and drink from him, be filled anew with His Spirit.

            Looks like belief in Jesus is a prerequisite to drinking the living water, the Holy Spirit.  Yes, but the gift of salvation was given freely to all (for all are in need), but only those who believe in Christ, who believe that his death has merit will benefit from Christ’s offer of salvation.  So only those who believe will receive the Holy Spirit—the river of living water.

            Pentecost is the birthday of the church.  It is the first day the church ever met.  The church actually had a beginning--exactly fifty days after Easter Sunday. 

            We could pretty closely approximate the age of the church to be 1985 years old today. 

            Today I am noting another special day for me…my retirement day, my last day to serve as the pastor of a congregation.

            It’s a little strange to think that I’ll be ‘retired’ after today. I certainly don’t feel old enough to RETIRE retire.  Some of you were several years older than I am when you retired.  Although I may be ‘technically ‘retired’, I have to say that I am not retiring from being Christian.  In fact there is no such thing as retiring from being Christian.

            Whereas there are many jobs that one can ‘retire’ from, being Christians is not one of them.

            Although I will not continue here at Highlands as your pastor, I am not retiring from following the Lord. None of us who calls him or herself Christian can do that.

            So, for me today is more like a birthday—a day to celebrate and recognize what has been in the past several years in my pastorate.  It is also a time that I can look forward to many more tomorrows in Jesus’ service in new capacities.

Copyright © 2009 Marjorie Palmer. All Rights Reserved. No portion of this writing may be reproduced in any form without specific, written permission of the author.

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