Can You Hear the Wind Blowing?

On Pentecost Sunday, we often concentrate on the fire of the Spirit. But we mustn't forget about the wind of the Spirit! My sermon today considers what that wind is like, and what marvelous things it can do!

Today is Pentecost, the day that Jesus’ followers were changed from a group of frightened disciples into the Church of Jesus Christ. Those men and women began the day as people who locked themselves into their room and concentrated on encouraging one another; but they were changed into courageous travelers who journeyed all over the known world spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. What caused such a radical transformation? It was certainly the fire of the Spirit that filled them on that Pentecost morning; and there are many pictures of the tongues of fire that rested on their heads that day. But it was also a result of the wind of the Spirit that blew through their gathering place in a mighty way.

Jesus knew that Spirit well. He had tried to explain it to Nicodemus years before (John 3:5-8), but Nicodemus was too set in his old, familiar ways to understand what Jesus was talking about. “The Spirit is just like the wind,” Jesus said. “You can hear the wind, but you don’t know where it came from or where it’s going. The Spirit works in the very same way.” Nicodemus didn’t understand a Spirit that stirred people into new ways of doing things. But that’s exactly what happened on that first Pentecost. When the Spirit swept in, the disciples were blown out of their comfort zone and into situations that they had never even imagined. Peter, who had never been known for his speaking ability, stood up on Pentecost morning and gave a sermon worthy of Billy Graham. You can read it in the second chapter of Acts. It was such a good sermon that three thousand people converted to Christianity on one day! (That sets the bar pretty high for preachers!) That same Spirit blew Philip onto the road out of Jerusalem, where he met an Ethiopian eunuch and baptized him into the Christian faith – the very first non-Jew who became a Christian. (Acts 8:26-39) And Paul – well, Paul was literally blown away by the Spirit when he met the risen Lord on the road to Damascus. (Acts 9:1-19) He realized that he had to rethink everything that he had been taught about the Messiah. That encounter with Christ eventually sent him all over the known world with Jesus’ message of love and forgiveness.

Oh, yes, the wind of the Spirit blew those men and women into places they thought they’d never go. And it’s been blowing during the 2,000 years since that time. It blew a young man back to the place where he had been enslaved as a young boy; and because it did, he brought Christianity to a whole nation. Today, we call that young man Saint Patrick. It blew a music scholar and master organist into medical school, and from there into Africa, where he spent the rest of his life offering medical care to those who were in most need of it. Because of that work, Albert Schweitzer was awarded the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize. It even blew a young, genteel schoolteacher from her home in Massachusetts to the battlefields of the Civil War where she tended to thousands of wounded men. Today, the organization that she began, the American Red Cross, provides humanitarian aid to all kinds of disaster situations, and it’s all because the wind of the Spirit blew Clara Barton to places that no woman had not dared to go before.

I offer all these examples not just so we can give thanks for what the Spirit has done in the past (although I hope that we do), but so that we can recognize the wind of the Spirit as it blows today. A modern Christian writer has said that on Pentecost, we should replace our frilly church hats with crash helmets; because the wind of the Spirit is not always as gentle as we would like it to be! The fact is that the wind of the Spirit sometimes behaves very much like the gales that can sweep through a summer storm. Those winds move all kinds of things around! The grill cover ends up over here, and the lawn chairs end up over there, and the tiki torches are scattered all over the yard. We never know quite how those winds will rearrange things. The wind of the Spirit is just like that, and it’s blowing right now in the lives of the young people that we honor today: our graduates Jenny and Sierra and Holly; and Deanna, who was just baptized and confirmed into church membership. We don’t have any idea where the Spirit will take them. It might blow them to Brazil, or to the Middle East, or to Africa – or to the town just down the road. But even though we don’t know where the Spirit will take them, we can be sure that its guidance will never fail.

So, Deanna and Jenny and Holly and Sierra: we wish you well as the wind of the Holy Spirit fills your sails and blows you into the future! Don’t be afraid when new experiences challenge you. The Spirit will fill you as well as guide you; and Jesus will be right there beside you, helping you to make wise decisions and to adjust to whatever the future brings. And we’ll be praying for you all along the way. Listen! Can you hear the wind blowing? We can give thanks to God that it urges all of us into the future, where the fullness of God’s kingdom awaits us!