Consumed: Father

 May 26 2024

Acts 2

         As I thought about Pentecost I remembered a story which is very much a Pentecost story. It has been almost twenty years ago that I found myself suddenly out of work and in need of employment. So I put out resumes and waited as one does, but I just couldn’t sit around waiting for something to happen so I helped a local church do some building projects in anticipation of opening a community youth center. This church already had a ministry to the the growing number of Hispanic immigrants so the person in charge of that ministry, Marlin, was often around as I worked on the various projects I was doing. Many times at lunch time Marlin would invite me to eat with him. Now it was inevitable, I guess, that one day when Marlin called and said lunch was ready that there at the table with us was a young Hispanic man. I have to admit, I do not know a lick of Spanish and this young man, I’m pretty sure knew very little English but Marlin helped us to get to know each other. I found out that he had walked over a thousand miles to be sitting at that table with us. He had left his home, his family, in search of a better future for them. He was hoping to find a job and to work hard so that he could send as much home as he could. Being out of work, I could very much relate to his desire to provide for his loved ones. I respected his willingness to defy the odds in order to give his family a better life.

As we continue to explore what happened on Pentecost in this series of messages entitled, “Consumed”, it may be surprising that this simple lunch conversation with someone who was vastly different from me in so many ways, this was very much a Pentecost experience.  Perhaps as you listened to the scripture for today you may have heard mention of how the people of Pentecost, those simple fisherman from Galilee suddenly were able to speak a multitude of languages, that this is what I might be referencing in my story. As true as this might be, the real reason I thought my lunch with my Hispanic friend was a Pentecost experience was that there at that first Pentecost, something deeper, and more profound was discovered, something that when we understand it changes forever the very way we encounter one another.

As we said previously, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost was preceded by those in upper room fervently praying what we know as the Lord’s  Prayer. In the eleventh chapter of Luke, Jesus teaches on how we as his followers are to pray. This prayer is our asking for the life of the kingdom, that life which is victorious over death. Those in the upper room that day had spent forty days being taught by the one whose life had indeed conquered death, the one we know as Jesus. Here was one speaking to them who had been most assuredly dead yet here he was living among them, teaching them about the kingdom for the kingdom life was his indestructible life. Yet, Jesus did not just teach them about the kingdom, no, he also instructed them to pray and not just to pray but they were to be consumed in their longing for the kingdom. They were to remember the promise of Jesus as found at the beginning of the eleventh chapter of Luke, that when they prayed the Lord’s Prayer, you know, Father; your name, holy; your kingdom come; give us today the right amount of bread we need; and forgive us our trespasses; and we forgive the debts others owe to us; do not bring us to testing. Jesus ends his teaching on the Lord’s Prayer telling us  that when we pray this prayer anticipating an answer, this is when the Holy Spirit would arrive. You see, it is the Holy Spirit who gives  us this kingdom life that we long for. So it should be no surprise that indeed, after a time of unrelenting prayer, there at the festival of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came in the most incredible of ways.

Today, in this second installment of these messages called, “Consumed”, we are going to discover just how the Holy Spirit fulfills our hearts cry, for Father, because, after all this is how the kingdom prayer begins. When we look at what Luke records in the second chapter of Acts, we find that as the disciples were there together, they heard the sound of a mighty wind coming from heaven and this roaring windstorm filled the whole house. To those who knew their scriptures as well as the disciples did they must have recognized that this was the sound of beginnings, the very first sound, of the Spirit hovering, as a bird flaps its wings stirring up the wind as it goes. So here it was again, that same cue that signaled a beginning, a new creation being brought forth from the chaos of the old creation. Yet what appears to us as being chaotic, this strange fire from heaven, lighting upon each one present, this was, in fact, the very ordering at last of God’s highest creation. This fire was the fire consuming a sacrificial soul, this unified passion for the Father, his name, holy, and his reign to come.

When the Spirit came upon the chaos of the old creation, it appears that his presence has just created more chaos, so many voices chattering in different languages by those who previously were unable to do so. Yet, this was not disorder at all but rather these voices were a sign pointing to a new creation. You see, this speaking of different languages by these former fishermen and tax collectors, was a reversal of the story of the Tower of Babel as told in the eleventh chapter of Genesis. There, when the all the people of the earth came together to make a name for themselves by building a giant stairway to heaven, God came upon their construction site and made a confusion all of the languages that the people spoke. Then God took and scattered these people all over the world. So, here on Pentecost it is as if God is saying that the age of babbling at each other is over, now has come the time to bring back together what had once been scattered. This was yet another mark of the new creation. The reason why God said that we are to now come together across all languages, tribes and nations is that the solution God had put forth to reverse the curse the world is under had at last been accomplished. This solution of God, found in the twelfth chapter of Genesis, is to call a man named Abram and through him and his descendants, all the families of the world would experience the blessing of God. The descendants of Abraham, the people of Israel, had failed to be the bearers of God’s blessing for they too were people under the curse of sin. No, the world had to wait for the arrival of Jesus, the descendant of Abram, now Abraham, who would be, at last, the true Israelite, who would take the curse upon himself and bear it unto death. You see, only by first eliminating the curse could the blessing of God flow out to every family on earth.

         And just what is this blessing, we might ask? To discover the answer we have to keep in mind that in the Old Testament, the blessing was a gift given by a Father to his oldest son. When a Father would bless his son they could expect to receive the full abundance of the richness of the Father, his inheritance and much more. In much the same way, the blessing our Heavenly Father is our inheritance, the hope of one day experiencing the full abundance of our heavenly Father’s riches which is his love for us. You see, through Jesus, the love which our Heavenly Father has always loved his Son, a love which was even before the very  foundation of the world, this love is now ours, and the home where are welcomed into is none other than the home of the Son of God, our Lord Jesus. This eternal home that awaits us is our anchor of hope for the present and the faith we can hold onto for our future; this is blessing, the blessing which undoes the chaos of the curse.

         This blessing that has come through Jesus, the descendant of Abraham, is the life of standing in the grace, the welcome, of being with Christ before the Father. The God who brings this life to us is the God we know as the person we call, Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit, Paul tells us in the eighth chapter of Romans, that is our Spirit of adoption, the assurance that we are no longer orphans, without any hope, no faith, and no future, but instead, through the Spirit, we have the certainty of knowing God as our Father. In that same eighth chapter of Romans, Paul states that through the Spirit, we cry, Abba, Father.  Here Paul is speaking of how when Jews and Gentiles begin the Lord’s Prayer, their cry for their Father sound very different from one another yet, we are assured that it is the same Spirit that is at work. The Spirit answers this yearning all of us have to be united with our Heavenly Father and to know his blessing.

What greater way could God communicate to us that language no longer must separate all of the families on earth than through his actions of Pentecost. Across the barriers of language, we are invited to come together in this life given to us by the Spirit, the life where can find a home with Christ and our heavenly Father. This is a life of blessing given to all, and in this blessing we are all equals. This is what Peter spoke when the words of Joel were uttered by him. This prophesy of Joel foresaw the day when God’s promise to Abraham to bless the whole world would become a beautiful reality. The blessing upon all families becomes, in these words of Joel, the Spirit poured out on all flesh. This coming of the Spirit, we are told, will be accompanied by all people becoming prophets, and young men and old will see visions and dreams. Yet, we have to wonder just what is this prophecy trying to say to us ? Perhaps the answer is found in our knowing that prophecy is, as explained to us in the eighteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, the very words of God being formed in a persons mouth. The Spirit, as we already witnessed, caused the barriers of language to come crumbling down between everyone so that all might speak of the mighty acts of God. So too, here the barrier between us and God also has been crossed so that God now is able to speak not only to us but through us. 

In this new creation in which the Spirit hovers above, the word that speaks order into the chaos is the word that the Spirit speaks through us, and the words we now speak to each other become the very words of blessing. When we cry out for our Heavenly Father, the Spirit reaches out to us and brings us to our Father’s side. Yet what the Father desires of us is that we speak his language, to follow his lead and be people who bless others just as we have been blessed by him. This is the very reason why Jesus went to the cross, to take upon himself the curse which for so long had kept the world from experiencing God’s promised blessing. This is wonderful news for us yet what this also means is that if we refuse to be people of blessing  then we are stating, in effect that, the work of Jesus upon the cross meant nothing. It is simply impossible to claim our Father’s blessing of an unfading eternal future yet here in the present refuse to be a blessing to others. We could say then that our longing for our Heavenly Father comes with expectation that we will work with our Heavenly Father so that all the families of earth will at last experience blessing. So for us to pray, “Father”, means that the Holy Spirit answers this cry by bringing us to know each other as brother, as sister, those who work together in the family business of blessing others.

This blessing of our Heavenly Father, given to us through the Holy Spirit, cannot be simply left behind when we go out into the world. In all of our interactions together, maybe just sharing lunch, whatever we might be doing, we must hold on to this: if God is our Father then he is most assuredly every other person’s Heavenly Father as well. This person we meet may not have heard what Jesus has done for them. They may be someone who has never heard that they have a Heavenly Father who is longing for them to come home. They may not know that this Father only desires that every person be blessed with an eternal inheritance; perhaps for them this gift remains theirs to discover. Yet, maybe the way this person can receive this blessing of their Heavenly Father is simply for a brother or sister to treat them as one of the family. The greatest blessings, as Pentecost shows us, are the blessings of having our voice be heard and  the blessing of being spoke to with love and respect.This speaks to the wisdom of our Father who knows that life is just better, together; this is what being blessed is all about. So, beyond the curse which divides, the life giving Spirit brings us into a love relationship with the Father, a relationship where we know each other as brothers and sisters. This is the blessing which unifies us, the blessing that stokes our passion and causes us to be consumed with a longing to be home. But for now, we must go forth and seek to bless our brothers and sisters, listening with attention and speaking to them with dignity, always, for to them the Father gives his blessing.To the Father’s honor and glory! Amen!