We’re taking a little break from our Life On The Road series this morning because today is the feast day of Pentecost. And of course it’s also Mother’s Day, so I was thinking I should preach about Holy Spirit filled mothers... or something weird like that. Not really.

But we do want to honor all the moms on this day...

Now, you heard the Scriptures read, about how Jesus, after his resurrection, breathed on the disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit”, and then about how the Holy Spirit came upon those first followers of Jesus in a powerful way on the Day of Pentecost. And so, the natural conclusion is that on Pentecost we should just celebrate and think about the Holy Spirit.

God has given us the Holy Spirit. How cool is that? Well, it’s cool... except for one problem. And that is that since we have confused ideas about Jesus in our culture, it follows absolutely that we have confused and extremely vague notions of the Holy Spirit among Christians. In other words, if you don’t have some sense of what Jesus is really like and what he really came to do, then how can you know what “the helper” (as Jesus called the Holy Spirit) is being given to you for?

Of course there are some Christians (usually the more charismatic/Pentecostal variety who pay a lot of attention to the Holy Spirit), but if the truth be told these folks almost always fall into the trap of chasing feelings, of chasing experiences with the Holy Spirit... again, because there is not really a sense of what the big picture is, so the Holy spirit becomes all about me and what I’m feeling. But the Kingdom of God Jesus spoke of is about bigger things.

So on this Pentecost morning, I want to suggest a couple of perspectives, rooted in Scripture, to help you know how to respond to the Holy Spirit in your life, if in fact you have come to believe in Jesus and His Way, and have decided to follow him.

First, I want you to hear something Jesus said to his friends before his death, when he was talking about the fact that he would be leaving them in terms of his bodily presence.

Notice the interchangeability of the meaning of these phrases:

For 40 days after his resurrection Jesus appeared to his disciples and taught them about the Kingdom of God, then he disappeared, and then... the Holy Spirit came to them on that day of the feast of Pentecost. So here it is: The Holy Spirit is Jesus present to you and within you.

This is terribly important, because we tell people that they need a relationship with Jesus, and I think many people wonder how that can be real, how it can have any kind of tangibility or reality. And the answer is that when you open your heart to God and you say, “Okay Jesus, I receive you and I will follow you, God gives you his own Spirit—which is, of course, its own kind of mystery—but God gives you his own Spirit to live in you and help you. But you must know that the Holy Spirit is available to you or else it’s like owning a car you don’t know about. You could go somewhere if you knew the power to do that was available to you.

And guys, I find there is a tremendous difference between a Christian who has a real awareness the Spirit’s presence in their life, and the one who does not. If you are new to this journey with Christ, I know what I’m talking about is mysterious, I know it’s not the kind of thing they talked about in your 8th grade science class, but you know what? You cannot allow for the possibility of a real God, but try to keep him in the realm of ideas only—if God is God, then He is God and He’s big enough to get to you. Personally, when I am honest about just how much help I need in this life on a daily basis, I find myself desperate for the reality Jesus speaks of: I will not leave you like orphans... I will come to you.

My second suggestion this morning, or maybe I’ll make it a question is this: Where do we suppose the Holy Spirit is supposed to take us? Is the Holy Spirit just kind of a cosmic babysitter and encourager, or does the Holy Spirit play some part in the continuation of Jesus’ purposes in the life and in the world. And frankly, this has been the problem with the more charismatic chunk of the church... when we ask what the Spirit wants to do, we hear about power, and spiritual gifts, and tongues and prophecies, and it’s oh-so-exciting, but when we say, “For what? For what big purpose?” no one knows. It’s just exciting!

Remember what I said: If you don’t know what Jesus came to do, you won’t know what the Holy Spirit is being given to you for. My time is limited this morning, so I’m going to cut to the chase and make what some will consider a rather bold statement. Are you ready? Alright, here it is: this idea that the Gospel, the good news, is that we all just accept Jesus and then we wait to die so we can float off to heaven and live with him forever is not what the Bible teaches, not what Jesus taught, and not what the early Christians believed. It is the stuff of many country songs, and many worship songs, and it’s how we all talk at funerals.

In the things Jesus preached, right from the beginning, we hear the seeds of what he came for. He didn’t come and say, “Want to know how to get to heaven when you die?” He said, “Repent—that is, think and live a new way—The Kingdom of the heavens is near!” He said, “If I work the works of God among you, then the Kingdom of God has come to you.” He taught them about the Kingdom as a here-and-now reality. In fact, Luke specifically tells us that for forty days after the resurrection Jesus appeared to his disciples and taught them about the Kingdom of God. And how had he taught them to pray? May your kingdom come, and your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. On earth. The Kingdom of God—God’s rule and God’s way—when it erupts in the earth, changes things, it restores things.

Do you know what the one thing was that the early church hung its hat on as the absolute sign that the Kingdom of God had landed, so to speak, that Jesus was Lord over the whole earth? The resurrection. You may remember at Easter how I talked about the fact that Luke gives us a husband and wife, Cleopas and Mary, the two on the Emmaus road, as a new Adam and Eve. He uses the exact same phrase that described Adam and Eve (“then the eyes of both of them were opened”) to describe Cleopas and Mary—only instead of the opening of their eyes plunging them into shame and exile, the opening of their eyes as Jesus serves them the bread and wine in Emmaus plunges them into hope and restoration. Luke goes so far as to lay out his Gospel with eight meals, the 7th of which is the last Supper, the Passover, from which he goes to his death... but the 8th of which is the Emmaus supper, which comes on the first day of a new week! It is Luke’s artful way of saying that with the resurrection of Jesus, death has been reversed and the world has started over.

God is recreating the whole earth, starting with human beings, and the resurrection of Jesus is the opening bell. Did you know that Jesus died on Passover, as good Jews all over the city were cutting up lambs and smearing their blood on the doorposts of their houses? Do you know where that comes from? The night God brought the Jewish people out of their exile in Egypt. And his body was laid in the tomb as the feast of Unleavened Bread began. And his resurrection came of the Feast day of Firstfruits. Do you know what that was? It was the day the people would bring the first sheaves of grain from the Spring harvest and wave them before the Lord. Jesus rose on that day. And Paul got it... he wrote:

Resurrection is terribly important, because we have this idea that it’s just about dying and going to heaven. We did not get that picture from the Bible. Have you read the end of this book? It doesn’t say, “And they all lived happily ever after on clouds playing harps.” It says that God comes down to a renewed earth and dwells in the midst of his creation. Your going to be resurrected—bodily—and live in the world the way it is supposed to be... in the Kingdom of God.

Oh, but wait a minute... Jesus said to pray what? (Kingdom come on earth... now).

Galatians... fruit... a recreated me... Our other reading: Jesus breathed on them (Genesis)

And if God is restoring the whole world, and the resurrection of Jesus is the opening bell, then those who are receiving the recreating breath of God will work for something very different than if they were just saving souls for a disembodied future existence in heaven. What will they do? They will comfort the brokenhearted, they will seek justice for the poor, they will feed hungry children, and they will restore beauty wherever they can. Why? Because in the future Kingdom of God there is no sadness, no oppression, no hunger, and much beauty. And we, as the firstfruits, let God’s breath blow us out into the world, where we ask God to use us to bring His future Kingdom and all its goodness into the right here and the right now.