my sermon from yesterday: pentecost

We're going to be in Leviticus 23 and Acts 2 this morning. 
So let’s pray together.
Merciful and heavenly Father, we praise you for incorporating us into the mystical body of your Son, Jesus Christ, and making us heirs thorough him of your everlasting kingdom. Help us this morning to see this gift more clearly and to give ourselves over completely to the work of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Long ago,

after rescuing the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt,

God gave a series of feasts to help them commemorate

and remember how great their deliverance had been,

but also to be a picture of what he would do thousands of years later.

These pictures are prophetic. 
So you're a person in first century Jerusalem.

You've wandered around with Jesus for the last year.

You're one of the 120 that comprise the broader group of disciples

at the time of Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem on the Sunday before Passover.

You're an observant Jew,

so, looking at Leviticus chapter 23 verse 2

you keep the Sabbath.

You don't work on Saturday and you go to synagogue on that day. 
Second, you keep Passover.

Verse 5,

In the first month,

the very month that God delivered the people out of Egypt,

on the fourteenth day of that month,

as the sun is setting,

the Passover begins.

That's when Jesus celebrated the meal together with the twelve.

Then on Friday,

as hundreds of lambs without blemish were being slaughtered in the temple-

-imagine the noise and the stench,

the blood running down the altar

into the stream the runs underneath the temple and out into the city—

at that very moment

Jesus hung on the cross

and his blood flowed down.

The fifteenth day, verse 6,

is the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Not only does your bread not have any leaven

but there isn't even any in your house.

If you are a woman

you have scrubbed every inch of your house

and washed every single solitary piece of clothing

to keep the commandment to get rid of the leaven.

Why?

Because leaven is a picture of sin.

A little bit goes a long way,

spreading itself through the whole loaf.

Jesus is the unleavened bread,

he is without sin.
So then you have to rush around

and prepare to keep the Sabbath

because from sunset on Friday

to sunset on Saturday

you can't do any work.

You don't want to anyway

because Jesus' body is lying in a tomb

and you're exhausted with grief.

What comes next?
The feast of first fruits is next.

So way back in the early spring,

if you are a man and you hadn't been following Jesus around,

you would have planted all your crops,

barley and wheat especially,

and around the time of Passover,

the first barley shoots would be just ready.

Verse 11,

You cut them

and bring them tied into a loose sheaf

to the temple that Sunday,

after the Passover Sabbath.

What does Jesus say about his death before he dies?

John 22:24 Unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies,

it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

Inevitably, necessarily,

the grain that falls into the ground

will rise out of the ground.

The loosely bound sheaf of barley is a guarantee of the harvest to come.

Jesus walked out of the grave

on the day

that the sheaves of barley were brought into the temple.

Paul writes in first Corinthians 15:20

'But in fact Christ has been raise from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man, Adam, came death, by a man, Jesus, came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all day, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ, the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.

Jesus, the first fruit,

risen,

is the guarantee of future harvest,

in this case,

of us rising again when he returns in glory.

It is inevitable. It will happen. 
So then what happens?

Verse 15.

You shall count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, that's Resurrection Sunday.You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath, that's another Sunday, today, the day of Pentecost. Then you shall present a grain offering of new grain to The Lord. You shall bring from your dwelling places two loaves of bread to be waved, made of two tenths of an ephah. They shall be of fine flour, and they shall be baked with leaven, as first fruits to The Lord.

This is the Feast of Weeks,

called Pentecost on the New Testament,

the celebration of the wheat harvest.
So now let's look at Acts.

The whole group of disciples, numbering 120,

are altogether in one place.

The place is probably the house that has the upper room

where Jesus celebrated the Passover.

Everyone in Israel

is bringing their two loaves commanded in verse 15

to the temple.

The disciples are praying and singing

because this is the forty ninth day after Jesus rose again.

And that day has changed everything for you.

Ten days ago, on a Thursday,

Jesus left you again ascending into heaven,

shouting down from the cloud that everything would be fine,

just wait for the Holy Spirit,

which was very confusing.

But because he told you to go wait that is what you've been doing.

Every day, in the temple and in each others homes,

with the other believers, waiting. 
So then, on the Feast of Weeks,

which we call Pentecost,

as you're all praying and singing,

there is the sound of a mighty wind,

like a hurricane force gale.

The sound of a mighty rushing wind.

The wind during the Exodus drove the water back all night

so that the people could pass through the sea on dry land.

Ezekiel was told to prophecy to the breath,

the wind,

and say,

let these bones live,

and the valley of dry dead bones was filled with living people.

Jesus spoke with a Pharisee very late at night,

and said, 'the wind blows where it wishes and you hear it's sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with the spirit.'

Nicodemus, likely standing in that room,

should have heard the sound and known what was happening.
Then the tongues,

as of fire,

descended on the heads of each of the disciples.

The Lord spoke out of the fire to Moses

to call him to work to free the people of Israel.

He appeared as a pillar of fire at night to lead them through the desert.

Here tongues,

as of fire,

alight on the heads of those in the room,

all the believers in the whole world gathered in one place.

No one is excluded.

All see and receive the sign.

This is the baptism of the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised in Acts 1:9.

So, then

verse 4,

they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues,

as the spirit gave them utterance. 
So, in short order three amazing things have happened.

There has been the sound of the wind,

the appearance of fire

and now they are all speaking in other languages as the Spirit leads,

and here it becomes a little unclear in the text

but it seems like they are propelled out onto the streets of Jerusalem

because Luke describes the various people who are out there, verse 5.
Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem, devout men,

that means men who fear God and who are paying attention,

Devout men from every nation under heaven

and at the sound they all came together—

So they heard the sound and it drew them

and then they were bewildered,

confused,

because each one was hearing them,

that is the 120 disciples,

speak in his own language. 
Let's pause for just a second and clarify under what circumstances the Spirit came. 

What were the disciples,

the 120, doing when the Spirit came?

they were together worshipping.

Did they know and perfectly expect how and when and what was going to happen? 

Did they play any kind of big organizational roll?

No.

the Holy Spirit came to them when it was the right time

After thousands of years of preparation.

They didn't summon him by the excellence of their prayers.

They were obediently waiting and he came when he was ready..

I am belaboring this point

because I think sometimes we get confused about the Spirit.

We know God the Father and Jesus don't depend on us to do their work,

but when we come to the Spirit

we think it depends on us praying in the right way

or being in the right place at the right time

Then we somehow get the Spirit to give us what we want

knowing that the Father would never give it to us.

Suffering with Jesus,

but glory with the Spirit.

But that's not true.

The work of the Spirit and of Jesus and the Father is the same work—

the redemption and sanctification of human beings for the glory of God.

The Father wants you to be saved and to be holy

and so the Spirit brings it about

through the work of the Son.

They all have the same end goal because they are One, they are God.
But the Holy Spirit does his part of the work in three stages.

First, he regenerates you.

He brings you alive where you were once dead.

We see this in John 3.

You are first born of the Spirit which allows you to see the kingdom of God.

Then you submit yourself to Jesus in faith

and the Holy Spirit comes to live in you.

The technical word is 'indwell'. 
For some,

the point of being indwelt by the Spirit isn't particularly experiential.

I don't even know the exact moment this happened for me.

Matt, on the other hand,

can tell you a whole story about what it was like for him.
Which brings us round to the third stage of the Holy Spirit's work

and to the word 'fill'.

Those who were all together in one place were 'filled' with the Holy Spirit.

It implies that they weren't before.

To be filled, there has to be a lack,

there has to be some room. 
The Holy Spirit moved in to your dark cold stone like heart

and set up his little fire there to burn

and try to shed some light on the subject,

that is you,

he's in there, that's called indwelling ,

but he could take up a lot more room.

He would like to fill you.

So

often,

at the initial point of faith

some big things that are killing you

need to go right away.

But after that,

his work is much slower.

One room at a time,

one dirt pile at a time.

And this is where you cooperate with him,

this is where the filling comes in.

Sure, he is going to have to pry some things out of your vice like grip,

but other things you're going to give him

and then you'll have more room for him,

more room to be filled with him.

And as he fills you,

guess what kind of experience it is?

The best word to describe it is the dreaded word 'Submission'.

You submit,

you yield,

you give in to the work of God in the person of the Holy Spirit.

It is an experience of joy and forgiveness and letting go of grief and hurt,

but it is also an experience of doing some things

you might never have done before,

or doing some things you don't feel like doing,

or doing some things that seem really beyond you.

Why? Because it’s not just you doing them,

it's the Holy Spirit doing them in and through you.

You can make it harder by not cooperating,

or you can give in,

cheerfully doing what God calls you to do.
The birth of the church,

this moment where the disciples are spit out into Jerusalem

in an amazing rush,

preaching the gospel so that everyone understands,

people of so many languages

who are going to go all over the world with this news.

What is being fixed here that was horribly broken?

Remember, at the Tower of Babel,

how language was confused?

Now the confusion is made into understanding.

Now all the languages speak to the glory of God.

So they rush out and the church suddenly becomes huge.

They baptize 3000 that day.

You think you're tired now,

doing whatever it is God has given you

to make the Kingdom of God real to this city?

Imagine if 1000 people walked in and we had to do hospitality,

coffee hour

integration into mission groups

discipleship

and then also cleaning the kitchen floors

and the bathrooms.

So let's tie in the harvest and the Feast of Weeks/Pentecost.

Remember the barley first fruits were brought in bound in loose sheaves,

but not so the wheat harvest.

At Pentecost, the birth of the church,

the wheat is picked and beat out for the grain

and then the grain is pounded,

milled into flour

and mixed with water and leaven,

that's right, guess what there is in the church?

Sin.

There is sin here.

It's being gently removed but it’s here.

And then heat is applied

and the grain is forged into a loaf of bread.

All warm, and comforting,

bread,

except when you think about the pounding and the mixing and the heat.

And it's being all together in one loaf.

This loaf is also called Jesus' Body.

A body where everything is connected.

Your decision to sin affects everyone else

just like my decision to sin affects you.

It's not Easy. Sometimes it's very Hard.

But, Jesus says, 'nothing is impossible with God'.

He can and he will make us holy.

He can and he will spread the gospel through us to the world.

He can and he will make us alive together in himself.

But he's not a battle ax.

He brings light to you and woos your cooperation.

He wants to fill you with himself.

He wants to use you to build up his kingdom.

He wants to use you to bring healing to other people.

He wants to use your prayers,

your conversation with him,

to bring about his plans and his desires.

He wants to be with you.

And he wants you to be holy. 
Just like the first fruits,

the resurrection of Jesus is a guarantee,

this harvest,

the gift of the Spirit,

is a guarantee, an inevitability.

Paul explains in Ephesians 1:13-14,

in him, that is Christ, in him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

Sure, there's the beating out of the grain

and the pain of the fire

as we are forged into a loaf,

a body through the one Spirit

with Christ as our head.

And it's messy

because the leaven is all mixed in,

but this isn't the ultimate harvest.

We are still planting seed.

We can work and be filled up because we have the guarantee,

the Spirit,

alive in us.

……………let us pray.

one thing and another

I haven't been able to read the Gosnell stuff much because of needing to sleep through the night and function during the day. I've lightly and carefully skimmed various news sources so as to know sort of what's going on, and prayed for God's mercy to fill in the rest. It all came sort of to a head for me last Thursday, though, when I finished reading a little book with Romulus about the D Day landings in Normandy. He's very interested in the question of battles and warfare and to get him to read at all, I've been forced to turn to warfare for subject matter. But of course, none of them, who were all listening in, really knew what the war was about or who, as it happens, Hitler was or what he did. Which led necessarily to a discussion of ethnic genocide and then to racism and finally to abortion. We all went to church for the evening bleary eyed and sad. 

Because, I'll just go ahead and say it out loud, death is A Bad Thing. 

Whether death happens to a very old person or a young soldier or an ambassador or a child or a baby, born or unborn, it's bad. It's not, as some Senator recently and stupidly opined, 'a part of life'.  It's the opposite of life (I can't believe I'm bothering to write this down, but clearly, it needs writing because of all the confusion), the antithesis of life. It is The Wrong Thing. 

And we can see how very wrong it is in the surprising desire of Gosnell not to want to die himself. If its no big deal, or even a 'part' of life then shouldn't he be fine with the death penalty? And yet his lawyers have worked hard to get him life in prison. Well, as a Christian, I think that's fine. Mercy is always a reasonable option and I appreciate having more time to pray for his soul and ultimate, hopefully, salvation. However, let the fact of his desire to live put to rest the idea that other people dying is ok and better for them.

And now I'm going to go bake a pie or something, because all the stupidity and lying is too much to bear.

i'm the mother

I'm still basking in the glow of Mother's Day. Matt bought me this gorgeous cup and also cleaned the kitchen very late on Sunday night after I decided I really didn't want to stand up any more. 

Elphine is addicted to drawing angular tulips. Every chance she gets she draws another tulip. She gave me several over the course of the weekend.

People always greet me on Mother's Day enthusiastically. There's no question about it. I am a mother, so many times over, so happy Mother's Day to me. And happy Mother's Day to my own mother.

Doesn't this just make you all weepy and nostalgic? Sitting on a mud floor watching peanut sauce come together under the brilliant hands of Jallaya...me, I'm feeling so nostalgic. 

Motherhood, having babies and then feeding them-- it almost always comes down to the kitchen. Not that you can't be a good mother if you don't love being in the kitchen (just like you can be a good mother even if you don't blog) but liking to be in the kitchen helps, I think. Being in the kitchen helps me to stop screaming. And the children stop screaming--here, stop crying and eat this. 

So thanks for all the breakfast helps. I'm pondering carefully the whole waffle soaked in egg extravaganza. In the meantime I've made two new kind of muffins and Just This Morning I dished up a most easy and delicious fruit thing, inspired by Nigella. Frozen blueberries and strawberries plus and mango mashed in a pan and coated with sugar and cornstarch and then covered with a layer of uncooked oatmeal mixed with brown sugar, cinnamon and melted butter. Baked at 350 or something for a while. So delicious I broke my diet, blast it all. 

Also, I amused myself all weekend by thinking of new categories for those churches that make their poor mothers stand up during the service on Mother's Day. So instead of oldest mother, youngest mother, mother with the most children, newest mother etc. I thought of things like

Mother Most Disappointed in her Children

Mother Whose Children Still Live in her Basement Even Though They're All Grown Up

Most Stressed Mother

Mother Who Thinks Everyone is Secretly Judging her for being A Bad Mother (then we could all stand)

Most Hypocritical Mother

Worst Mother

and then, as the crown jewel,

Best Mother (but only after a contentious and public vote).

And on that note, I'm going to prepare myself for another undesired visit to the dentist. Clearly, I have to go there so often because even though I am sometimes A Good Mother, today I must have at some point been A Bad Mother and God is judging me. (Just kidding, obviously I am going to the dentist because of my teeth and not because of my adequacy as a human person, srsly everyone, lighten up.) 

breakfasts

Been devoting myself to doing breakfasts ahead since I'm not really a morning person and I hate interacting with anyone, let alone small children, before nine in the morning. So I welcome any suggestions of do ahead interesting breakfast food. I generally cycle through cinnamon rolls, crock pot oatmeal and cream of wheat (not do ahead but fast) and I'm getting bored. This week I ventured out and made Nigella's Croque Mssr. Bake which was delicious but still approached with suspicion by my ungrateful hoard. And then I finally pulled off a really fine oatmeal bread from the rest of the crockpot oatmeal.

Crockpot Oatmeal my way consists of jamming one of those disposable turkey roasting pans into my Crockot to act as a double boiler and then doing three cups steel cut oats and six cups milk with cinnamon, brown sugar and a dash salt from 10pm to 2am on low. I wish I had a timer so that it would kick off in the middle of the night but I don't so never mind.

For bread I take the rest of the oatmeal after its been smeared around and ruined by the children and add two T yeast, 2c milk, 2 eggs, quarter cup oil, and then yogurt to bring it up to four cups liquid. Then however much flower to make it all not sticky as with regular bread, kneading of course. Oh, and more salt. And then I rolled it out and smeared jam in the middle.

But they ate that yesterday, blast it, so now I have to go make pancakes.

{phfr}:gasp

In a last ditch effort to save my children from the "indifferent" education I've always feared I would give them I've dropped just about every single thing I was doing before and have directed myself towards the exercise of 'school' for nearly every waking moment, except for some moments to cook and do laundry. It could be construed as a narrow and confining existence except that, hysterically enough, I'm enjoying myself and haven't really wanted to bother about anything else. In my stock taking I discovered that Elphine is only a week away from finishing all her work for the year, whereas Alouicious and Romulus have been 'working' in the modern sense of the word which means they have been doing nothing at all. But all is not lost. They are chaffing a bit at my constant presence in their lives but at least they are Doing Something, and that is no small achievement.
{pretty}
In the small extra moments, I have been rescuing tulips out of the hand of Marigold whose great desire to pick them is driving me to abstraction.

{happy}
On Sunday we threw a Farewell Party for a friend, indeed no cause for happiness, however, I happened to make a cake (the cake itself was too dry but I loaded up the cream with a little something and no one seemed to notice) and also a golden pile of crepes. It is only a matter of standing around in the kitchen for a couple of hours on a Saturday evening drinking a modicum of cheep wine out of a box and watching something weird on Netflix.

{funny}
The children aren't suffering too much from actually having to work. No matter how much I suppress them, they refuse to be suppressed. The indomitable human spirit I suppose, thriving under adversity, or whatever.

{real}
Marigold is a fuss budget. She wanted a 'little tiny braid' in her hair but it was crusty (don't judge me) and Lord help me if I was going to muscle her into the bath on a Monday. So I bunged pony tails in and when she started crying I plunked on the big bows and took her picture. Every day it's something. Every.single.tiny.day.

7 quick takes

one
I started waking up half an hour earlier this week in the effort to have one half hour without the babies down my throat. I love them, obviously, but there isn't one moment of any day that I'm not holding one or talking to one or taking something away from one. So I thought, maybe if I start the day with a half an hour of quiet, I'll love them even more than I do already. Miraculously, though, after the first quiet morning, they figured out, perhaps through telepathy, that I was awake and readjusted their arising to mine yet again. So this week we have had the usual squall, beating me and each other as we all lie in bed together, shouting and pulling hair and generally doing that mixed marshal arts routine. After the initial 'lie in' they get up and roam around, covering themselves with bandaids, eating all the bananas, taking advantage of Alouicious' spaceball bat that he always leaves lying about. Then we all have a shower together and get dressed. And then they drape themselves over my back while I try to do school with the rest of the crew...for the rest off the day...until nine o'clock when they are finally wrestled into bed...even though they're not really napping any more...this sentence doesn't really have an end.
two
I did mean to say Spaceball. Alouicious is playing on a Little League team this 'spring' and every time he goes to get in the car for practice, Marigold flings herself on the floor and screams to be allowed to go to Spaceball Practice too. It's one of the three or four things that brings joy to the marathon that is Little League. The others include the good chocolate from Aldi on the way out to his practice (which is a Very Long Way Away), the fact that he's so happy about the whole enterprise, and the fact that no one can any longer accuse me of not doing anything fun. I'll be able to look back on this golden time when they're whining and crying and say, 'No No! Remember! Alouicious got to play baseball in the spring of 2013!'

three
I shouldn't have put spring in scare quotes. My tulips are finally blooming and I've been able to walk outside all week and the children, with coats on, have been able to eat lunch in the patch of sun out the back door.
four
My walk outside includes going up one light hill, down one side and then back up another and then home, a sort of undulating loop. Yesterday I had to carry my fat dog up the first slight hill because he sat down at the bottom and glared at me so that I was finally pulling him along on his derrière by the leash. But the person on the opposite walk was giving me a suspicious look so I picked him up and lugged him up the hill. Stupid dog. Every day when he sees its time for a walk he tries to go in the backyard and hide from me.
five
Matt has been spending his spare time trying to calculate how many acres of wheat it would take to feed a family of eight and where to buy a scythe. The last time we went through this I think it was potatoes. And he's been muttering to himself about goats and chickens. Just a heads up to the church.
six
I just want to grow a full yard of tomatoes and flowers and skip everything else. And I'd like a forsythia bush and a flowering cherry tree and some tall cypress trees growing up the wall of the church. But I don't really have time so tralala.
seven
Really grateful for every day that life is quiet, dull even. The wide world is so full of heartbreak and woe and drama. Every day we quietly go about our duty is a day of real joy for me and a treasure to my brood. So strange to me how happy they are. I seem to remember crying through much of my tenth year. Elphine, on the other hand, only cried recently because she caught herself in the eye with a piece of paper. Where is her deep well of sorrow and grief? Maybe growing up without excitement and adventure and travel is ok. We all wrote a paragraph together this week about living next to the church. It is my parting weekend gift to you. Go check out Jen!

We live next to the church. On Sundays we go and ate cookies and doghnuts. Living so close is convenient because our dad is the pastor. Many people come to visit is because of our close proximity*. We love living here as the Church of the Good Shepherd lies heavy upon us**.

*This was a collaborative effort with me insisting in the the word 'proximity'. I couldn't let it go which I now see is sort of ridiculous.
**This last sentence is all Gladys. I don't know. I know she's only five but sheesh.

i'm so very umble

Here is the audio from my talk at IV way back whenever that was all those weeks ago. I think the audio is better than the straight text because I made a couple of jokes accidentally...well, maybe more than a couple. Anyway, there's nothing like dealing with the subject of humility for several weeks to come out feeling like you've been through a good old fashioned ringer washer. And on that note I'm going to go watch another episode of Dennis the Menace, which, weirdly, I and the kiddos can't get enough of. What A Terrible Child! And his mother comes out looking beautiful every time. Pip pip.