Pentecost and the Power of Connection

Preached on Pentecost Sunday, May 20, 2018

Scripture readings: John 15:26-16:15; Acts 2:1-21

We all know people who are connectors. Some people dabble in matchmaking.  Some people always want all their best friends to be friends of each other. But there are plenty of other areas in life where we need to make connections or be the connector.

Walks Along the Columbia River and Crab Creek
April 2018

Sometimes a generation will be the connector in a family. Usually it’s the oldest generation that keeps the branches of a family in touch.

Some of my ancestors were Irish. They owned a farm in county Tyrone, in the old kingdom of Ulster in the northern part of that country. The farm was too small to support all the kids when they grew up about 1850, so all but the oldest son left the farm. Some went to England, some to America, and some to Australia.

They kept writing letters from the very start. Since about 1850 the cousins in Australia and America have been writing to each other every generation. I’m the family connector in America. I write the letters and connect the news on either side of the Pacific. I hold the family together, on my side, as well as I can: to keep going a connection that has lasted one hundred and sixty-seven years.

Someone told me about a grandchild who kept the older generations of a family together, after a divorce had broken up part of the family and made enemies among that older generation.

The child forced the peace. It can be a hard job for a child (and not really a fair job, for a child). Children often show a powerful instinct to be connectors.

Jesus is a connector, building a bridge for us to peace with God through the cross. All the talk, in the Bible, about the faithfulness of God says that it is the nature of God to pursue, restore, and maintain connections.

It is the special work of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, to be “The Great Connector.” The Holy Spirit connects us with all the reality of Jesus. Jesus said that the Spirit, “Will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.” (John 16:14-15)

When the Holy Spirit connects us with Jesus we are connected with nothing different and nothing less than God himself: The Spirit, the Son, and the Father. The Holy Spirit is our living, personal, supernatural connection with all the reality of Jesus and all the reality of God.

Jesus calls us to be his witnesses, so that others may know him through us.

The work of being the church and the work of being a witness to the world, and to your family, and to your neighbor is the work of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The connector, Jesus, gives his connection work to the Holy Spirit, who gives the connection work to us. A witness is a connector. A disciple in the family of the church is a connector. But I want to concentrate on the connection work of witnessing to others.

A witness is a person who has special knowledge, or experience, or a special relationship. A witness is a person who knows what they know, not by hearsay, but by reality. They have seen what they have seen. Or, what has happened has happened to them.

Jesus says that the Spirit “will take from what is mine and make it known to you.” Now, what has the Holy Spirit made known to you, out of the things of Jesus? Or what is there about Jesus that you have discovered, through your connection with the Spirit?

I don’t know whether this is really a good thing or not; but I find that as I get older, I have seen, over and over again, the same pattern taking shape. The pattern of my life is that anything of any importance has taken me a long, long time to achieve.

Some of the most basic parts of living have taken a lot longer for me than they normally take for anyone else. Tying my own shoes, riding a bike, driving a car all took me a lot longer than they normally take anyone else. I look at my personal history, and I see how I have tried my own patience, over and over again; to say nothing of the patience of others, but I have never, somehow, seemed to have tried the patience of God.

I learn that my life must be full of examples of the patience of God, or else I must go crazy. But I also find that the patience of God must be more than only a theory that I can talk about. After all, the patience of God could be nothing but a figment of my imagination, or my wishful thinking. That patience had been a gift that has worked and enabled me to serve God in a way that is a bit different from the gifts of others.

The Holy Spirit is the living, powerful, personal, supernatural connection between the patience of God and the story of my life. And, so, I believe that I could be a good and faithful witness of the patience of God.

If I don’t have that living, personal connection to the patience of God, then I will not be qualified as a witness to that patience. Patience is part of the grace of God. And, if I don’t have the Spirit-connection to that grace, I will not be very convincing.

For one thing, if I am not totally convinced of the grace of God, then I will not be convincingly gracious or patient in my words and my life. I will probably not give much grace to anyone who really needs it. Or, if my words and behavior are gracious and seemingly patient. Others will be able to see though me. My grace and patience will be strangely fragile, or else have a pretend quality to them.

Once, years ago, my dad said something that I thought was the most screwball idea I had ever heard from him, and I told him so. We argued for at least a half hour. I never lost patience with my dad’s ability to listen to reason, when reason was surely on my side. We went on and on and on with this and finally my Dad stopped, and looked me deep in the eyes, and said, “Son, the trouble with you is that you don’t know when to stop.” See how genuine he thought my patience was? (Ha!)

We are, none of us, perfect. That goes without saying. And so, people who have the Holy Spirit’s connection to the grace of God will have lapses and breakdowns of graciousness.

They will need yet more grace for themselves. And they will earnestly, and prayerfully, and repentantly turn to the Lord for that living connection to grace. But, if that is not there, it will become clear.

Does it sound odd to say that when we are being a witness to Jesus, in telling others what we know about him, then we are bearing witness to something that does not belong to us, because it is a gift?  Does it sound odd to say that this is how it is supposed to be? Scripture teaches us to call God “My God” and to call Jesus “My Lord.” But to call him “mine” or “yours” is a gift, and not a possession. It is this way, because what we have is a gift that we call a personal relationship.

You cannot possess a person. A relationship is always a gift.

            I think even being in touch with reality is a gift. We cannot take it for granted.

What we have is like a telephone connection, or an electrical connection. Sometimes, when you are on the phone, the connection goes dead. Suddenly you realize that you may very well have launched into some brilliant or very touching observations, and none of it was heard, because the connection went dead and you didn’t even notice.

Without your personal connection to the reality of Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, your connection with the patience, or the grace of God, may have gone dead, at least for the moment. You have to hang up and dial again. Or let the Spirit call you back.

What are you a witness to? What can you make known about Jesus and his Father, because of what the Spirit has brought home to you? Are you thoroughly connected to grace? Are you thoroughly connected to holiness? Are you thoroughly connected to the truth? Are you thoroughly connected with peace, or the servanthood of Christ, or the fellowship to which Christ calls us together?

Or, better yet, can you stand in the crowd that stands on a hill just outside Jerusalem, at the foot of the cross, with others who were the enemies of Jesus, or those who were indifferent to Jesus, or the friends who denied Jesus and ran away? 

Do you have a living, personal connection to that scene, and do you know that it happened for your salvation; that it happened to give you a new life?

Jesus implies that the Holy Spirit is a great connector. That is what he means when he says that the Spirit will witness, will testify, about him. And, since that is so, we are to testify, too. We are to make ourselves available as junior connectors to the Great Connector.

But it was not enough for the disciples to simply have been with Jesus from the start. They could have tried to be witnesses of the things they had seen, and heard, and experienced. But without the living, present connection, working within them, it would not be enough.

Remember that Jesus said the Spirit would be their new Counselor, their new Comforter? Jesus had been their first Counselor.

Part of Jesus’ job had always included explaining the disciple’s behavior and words to the people who were offended by them: like the time when the disciples walked through the wheat fields, and plucked grain on the Sabbath, or when they ate with unwashed hands.

Jesus had to make the connection between his friends who were trying to be his witnesses and the people they were supposed to be witnessing to. From now on, Jesus said, that would be the work of the Holy Spirit.

We need The Great Connector to do his great connecting between the people around us and ourselves. The miracle of the many languages of Pentecost was just as much a miracle of effective hearing as it was a miracle of effective speaking.

We need the Holy Spirit to graciously explain us and interpret us to others, because we do not often deserve to be understood or listened to. We need that grace first, in order to share the grace of God so radically given in Christ. The work that God has graciously assigned to us will always require his grace to make the real work happen.

And then, if we have this living connection with God’s reality, we will see God at work preparing connections with people, and we will do our best to be on the spot, when and where God is working.

To be in the Spirit is to live in a world that is full of connections in various stages of contact or unraveling. To be in the Spirit is to be amazed at the gaping need for connection with God, and the connection with love of God reaching out to those in need. This need is everywhere.

The test question is: Are you connected with this? And the question that goes along with it is: Can you stand in that crowd, at the foot of the cross, and know that that cross is the price paid in blood for you and paid in blood for the whole world?

You cannot be a witness of Jesus, carrying all our sins on the cross, without that living connection of the Holy Spirit to that cross.

And, still, this is what Jesus promises to give you, through his love and grace.