It is good to be alive! And it is good to worship God! And it is good to celebrate our heritage and those who represent fifty-year membership and more in the life of our church. This is indeed another full service in May. We have had many and it’s great to celebrate. And I have to tell you that two of my most favorite times in the life of the church are times of Baptisms and times of receiving new members because both are opportunities to celebrate new beginnings and new life. And so we give thanks.
Pentecost is like that as well. Pentecost is a time of beginning, yet the day of Pentecost is probably one of the least celebrated times in the life of the Christian church. But I would say it’s probably the second most important time in the Christian year after Easter. We need to remember that Pentecost started originally as a Jewish holiday – as the festival of weeks. It was fifty days following Passover when they commemorated the giving of the law to Moses and also giving thanks for the in-gathering of the harvest. And for us as Christians that has been changed to the fifty days following Easter.
So that’s where we are today. It’s commonly called "Whit" Sunday – you might have grown up with that tradition. But today is Pentecost when we celebrate something very special in the Christian community and that of course is the birth of the church. The disciples, in a sense were dormant and still in a period of grief after they had seen the risen Lord. It wasn’t until the day of Pentecost when the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples and those who were gathered, as Dick Peebles read in our scripture lesson how they all received gifts of speaking in different tongues and all the different manifestations of the spirit. You think of the symbols of the Holy Spirit being the heavenly dove – which came down in the time of Jesus Baptism, and also the idea of fire and flames and the whole notion of what it is to be alive in God.
That’s the beginning of the Christian church on Pentecost. And we now each year celebrate the birthday of the church on Pentecost, the time when the church began to spread out and be organized. Until that time it really hadn’t had that kind of infusion, if you will, to really be born. And that’s what we celebrate on Pentecost.
So you may be wondering by now what the title "Summer Fires" has to do with the notion of Pentecost. One doesn’t have to be Smokey the Bear or a forest ranger to know something about forest fires.
If you’ve been watching the news at all lately you know there have been numerous forest fires. Just in Florida and Georgia alone over 300,000 acres have been consumed by forest fires. And then of course, there have been the fires out in California – over 300 forest fires have already taken place this year alone – we aren’t even half way through the year. We haven’t entered the real dry season yet – where the drought and other heat will just add to more and more forest fires.
Now, I don’t know about you but Michelle and I love to have a fire when it’s cold in the dead of winter – just snuggled around a fire. So, the idea of summer fires may not be making sense to you at this point. But, I’m not talking about physical fires now – I’m talking about a fire of the heart. We’re talking about the infusion of God’s spirit – of God’s holy spirit. The word spirit simply means breath. So what does a physical fire need to burn? It needs air, right? And if the fire isn’t going real well you get down and blow on it – to get the thing going again - it needs air – it needs that infusion of air to be able to combust and burn.
Now, translate that into spiritual life. We need God’s spirit – God’s breath – that same breath that blew across the chaos of the waters before creation came into being as the psalmist talked about how the breath of God gave life to creation. That same breath is what we need to be alive in God. To let our spirit burn if you will. To be caught up in the life of faith.
So, think back, I just want you to think back for a moment to sometime when your heart burned within you, when you felt very much alive in God, when you knew that God was very present to you. Can you think of sometime in your life when you just felt that and knew it so strongly? That’s what it was like for the disciples on that first Pentecost. That’s what it was like to be alive and be born into the Christian church. And so if it happens for us as individuals – then the whole point of Pentecost is that it happens for us in community. When people gather together and when we invite God’s spirit into our midst – God’s breath if you will is simply that creative element that we have to have to be alive. When God’s breath is with us, then we are alive spiritually, in a way that we cannot control or even define, simply celebrate. And that’s what we do when we come together for weekly worship and certainly what we do here on Pentecost Sunday. And so, I’m proposing two words that really don’t go together this morning – summer fires. But the kind of summer fires I’m talking about need not be feared, for they are a spiritual concept. So, I hope we’ll have lots of summer fires. Amen!
