If this is Christianity, where’s the revolution?

Third Sunday of Pentecost June 29, 2025

A small unlikely, very diverse group gathered in that Upper Room in Jerusalem:
fishermen, tax collectors, tanners, a recovering Pharisee or two, a few bold women--huddled together in a single room.

Jesus had instructed them to stay in Jerusalem of all places (Acts 1:4) Stay in Jerusalem and wait, he said; the very place of the trauma they’d suffered not so many days before where a mob raged against their beloved Jesus, dragged him from a garden, threw him before Pilate and nailed him to a cross. It was a place of rage and brutal upheaval and staying would have had to have stoked the shock of that dark night and those lost days.

Staying there they would also remind them of their own cowardice, abandonment and betrayal, as well as their overwhelming grief.

But they obeyed and they stayed and while there went to the Temple and praised God, where they no doubt pondered all that Jesus had said and done. I think they also pondered all they had said and done and not done and re-evaluated everything in the light of Jesus’ resurrection.

And I’m sure they pondered what this Gift of God’s Spirit Jesus promised would mean.

And then when they were gathered in the Upper Room a sound swept in—sweeping in mightily as in over the dark deep at creation: A sound like the winds of a hurricane. And then a vision--flames of yellow and orange, delivering a gift: 
a gift of healing that swept away all that shame and pain, a gift that replaced painful memories with epiphanies of grace. A gift of animated freedom and boldness. A gift of speech and with that speech “portents in the heaven above, signs in the earth below.”

And open flew the doors, out streamed these anointed people, into the streets they rushed and out of their mouths came the Story—the Story of the One who died and rose and lives to rescue and restore.

The great, mysterious and invisible, yet palpable Holy Spirit had come. The very Spirit of God. The Spirit who swept over the primordial deep as a mighty wind,

The Spirit who pulsed when the Divine Voice said “Let there be light.”  The Spirit who breathed into the nostrils and awakened the first one of us.

A potent transforming Presence.

Willie James Jennings marks this moment with the observation: the Revolution has begun…a beginning without an end.

And what kind of revolution?

First, a revolution that begins in a place frozen in stagnation and riddled with fear.

Second, a revolution that transforms that place of stagnation and debilitating fear into a setting ignited with light, broken open and drenched with love through the invincible Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit of the God of Love

I will pour out My Spirit God said:

I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon slaves, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit
and they shall prophesy.

All flesh: God’s Spirit will be party to everyone--not just the Chosen; not just this select people or that approved group, but all flesh.

Sons & daughters will prophesy. God’s Spirit will cause the young unseasoned to proclaim God’s truth, the young will see visions, the old will awaken and dream dreams. It’s usually just the opposite. We think it’s the young who ponder the future and dream dreams and the seasoned sages who have visions.
And slaves, including women slaves, will be blessed with God’s Spirit and they too will proclaim God’s truth: those who have no position, no voice, no power, will preach prophetically.

A revolution indeed; a great upending. 

But is it without end as Jennings says?

As we consider our Jerusalem-like-state today with the pharisaical-like legalism and, dare I say it, self-righteous judgment that’s captured so many within Christendom along with the divisiveness in our society, the fear, the rattling of power, of hearts hardened against faith but soft on vacuous spirituality, we might well ask ourselves where is the revolution? Where is the Faith and Truth of which Jesus spoke: palpable and probing and contesting the stagnant air?

Annie Dillard, in her essay, “Polar Expedition” (Teaching a Stone to Talk, p 52) writes

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? . . .It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.

We often speak of the Spirit’s quiet voice in our inner ear, or think of the whisper of breath that met Elijah in the cave but the Spirit is by no means tame. The Spirit is a force of nature—God’s Nature.

Jana Childers, of San Francisco Theological Seminary, says that Acts 2 shows a big God with a big word at work expanding out into a big world…a Spirit who can make believers madly expressive.

We might all ask ourselves how sufficiently sensible of conditions are we, and how madly expressive are we?

Consider the unlikely alliance of Jesus’ disciples--enabled to work through their petty jealousies and flatten out their social disparities. Consider those in that upper room: bringing the likes of Levi the tax collector with Nicodemus the Pharisee together in table fellowship and prayer. Consider the great ethnically diverse Jerusalem crowd who, at first confused and suspicious, repents and joins them in worship.

Again from Childers: The Spirit-baptized are drawn together, this time in the Spirit’s power for the purposes of extending the realm of God.

When we let God’s Spirit do God’s work in us, our personal priorities and agendas dissipate and we awaken to visions and dream dreams that capture our imagination and ignite our passion.

Not only does God’s Spirit invigorate our spiritual vitality and realign our priorities and draw us into common purpose, God’s Spirit infuses us with power.

It isn’t a power like the world thinks of power. It isn’t like an armored tank or a fortune five hundred corporation securing concessions from government.

It’s like a frail grandmother walking down the street to face down a gang member.
It’s like a youth stepping alongside one being bullied. It’s like the palsied hand of a Medicaid recipient writing a letter of appeal to an amoral politician. It’s like people singing hymns outside a prison calling for the release of unjustly held immigrants.

That imagery of the tongues of fire at the original Pentecost can be understood as a visible challenge to the image on the Roman coin that depicted divided flames above the head of Caesar, declaring Caesar to be the son of God. 

When God conferred God’s spirit and power on a motley crew of nobodies, the Holy Spirit challenged the power Caesar claimed, Empire Power.

God’s Spirit unleashed on the world a spiritually ignited, united, empowered cluster of believers who refuted fear, nurtured burning hearts, anchored themselves in covenant community, did the work of revealing the Light of Christ, told their story boldly but with gentleness and reverence and embodied a hope that could not be quelched.

That Spirit is our Spirit as well and that Pentecost can be our Pentecost. That revolution that started then can be our revolution that reignites now in our own sphere.

Now, it’s tempting to respond to such as this with “Oh, more work. We can’t take on more things to do.” But let us understand this: the admonition Jesus gave to that original group of followers is an eternal admonition reverberating through all the subsequent generations. It is an admonition to we three congregations, calling us to the stay in Jerusalem and do what? Wait. Wait. Wait for what God has promised (Acts 1:4) and what has God promised? God’s Holy Spirit.

That’s what they did. They prayed that the Holy Spirit would come.

And that’s it.  

Now we all have long-established ministries, worthy ministries to be sure. But is it not true that they place demands on us we find difficult to meet? We’re tired and we can feel more discouraged than encouraged. And we weary of thinking there’s more we ought to be doing. But are we too tired to pray? too discouraged to pray?

Now I know you all pray. That’s not in doubt. But I want to speak to the kind of prayer I believe is implied in this Acts 2 account. It’s a prayer wherein we lay our lives in complete surrender to God, where we yield ourselves: mind, heart, soul, and strength to God’s will and leading. And though this prayer is one each of us should pray as individuals, it is a prayer that congregations should pray in company.

I want to share what Rev Fleming Rutledge in her book Means of Grace says about the Holy Spirit. I’m going to change the pronoun of ‘You’ to ‘We’ and ‘Us’:
So hear what she says not as an individual, but hear what she says in terms of our respective congregations: She says 

The Holy Spirit is the love of God reaching out to us when we are too depressed, or too angry, or too tired to reach out. The Holy Spirit is the power of God to set us on our feet when we feel we cannot stand up. (p146)

Even as we worship in separate buildings, let us continue and move forward in seeing ourselves as one, united people, praying in common cause that God’s Holy, empowering, enabling Spirit will set us on our feet?

Are we not a people who have an opportunity but also an obligation to prepare ourselves for what God wants to do through us, especially with the coming of Rev Rhett Ansley?

It is the Holy Spirit who will unite us, inspire us, equip us, and make a way forward for us. It is ours to whole-heartedly believe and to fervently pray. 

This is where hope resides, my friends: on the solid foundation of God’s promise. This is how a Holy revolution is ignited, my friends: a revolution wrought by the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit wherein we change the way we think and visualize who we can be.

May we pray it will be so.

L Quanstrom, Pastor 

Cornelius UMC