Being Pentecostal

Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17

          The world’s fastest growing religion is not Islam.  It’s second.  The fastest growing religion in the world is Pentecostal Christianity.  One recently published book claims Pentecostalism is “taking over the world” (Elle Hardy, Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity is Taking Over the World).  While it is strong and growing in the United States in denominations like the Assemblies of God and the Church of God, its explosive growth is on other continents.  It is like a wildfire spreading across Africa.  Mega-churches in Nigeria seat 100,000 people.  For comparison, Bryant-Denny Stadium at the University of Alabama holds about 102,000.  Tens of millions of Latin Americans have left the Roman Catholic Church in recent decades and to join Pentecostal churches.  The largest church in the world—the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, South Korea—is Pentecostal.  Its membership is approaching one million.  It has a weekly attendance of 250,000 people.  By some estimates, Pentecostal Christianity totals 600 million members worldwide and comprises 26% of all Christians.  Their numbers are expected to grow to 1 billion by the year 2050.

          Pentecostals, sometimes called the Charismatic Movement, emphasize the work of the Holy Spirit.  They believe true Christians experience a conversion to Christian faith and then two baptisms.  The first baptism is in water. The second they call baptism by the Holy Spirit, where they are given gifts to speak in tongues, prophesy, or heal people who are sick.  Some claim to be able to raise the dead.  In rare instances, some even handle poisonous snakes or drink poison, trusting that God will protect them.  Their worship services would probably seem like chaos to us, with people spontaneously shouting out, others speaking in tongues at the same time, some running down the isles or falling and writhing on the floor, what they call being “slain in the Spirit.”

          They claim that their identity and practices go back to this day long ago, the day of Pentecost.  They say that they are simply being Pentecostal.

          But, we celebrate Pentecost too, and in the nearly twenty-three years I have been pastor here, I have yet to hear anyone speak in tongues or see anyone spontaneously healed or raised from the dead.  You wouldn’t dare bring a poisonous snake in here!  Would you?  Pease run that by me first, okay?  You don’t shout out during worship or run down the isles or fall on the floor writhing.  So, what gives?  Can we be Pentecostal too?

          I don’t cast stones are other people’s religious beliefs or practices, including people who are Pentecostal.  I am willing to argue that there are other ways of experiencing the Holy Spirit, other ways of being Pentecostal.  I resonate with what happened to Phillip in our text from John 14, where Jesus promised to give the Holy Spirit, whom he called the Advocate. 

          Let me remind you of the setting of John 14.  This is part of an address we call the Farewell Discourse, Jesus’ final instructions to his disciples.  It was Thursday night before he was crucified on Friday.  He has washed the disciples’ feet.  He has given them the new commandment to love one another.  Then he tells the disciples that he is going away and that where he is going they cannot come.  As you can imagine, this generates a lot of anxiety.  Going away?  After all they’ve been through.  And why can’t they come?  They’ve been everywhere together.  Sensing their anxiety, Jesus tells them not to be troubled, to believe in him, to trust that he will prepare a place for them and come again to get them.  It’s all so confusing.  They have questions.  They don’t understand.

          Enter Phillip.  We don’t hear a lot from him in the gospels.  But I connect with Phillip and his way of being Pentecostal.  “Lord, show us the Father,” he said to Jesus, “and we will be satisfied.”  Just show us, Lord.  No more confusing talk.  Just show us the Father, and that will satisfy us.  In other words, give us some proof.

            Jesus doesn’t show Phillip the Father, but he does promise to give “another Advocate.”  The Holy Spirit.  The Spirit of truth, Jesus says, who will abide with you and in you.  Phillip’s experience of the Holy Spirit was different from what happened in Acts 2.  The Spirit was an Advocate, a Helper, a Companion.  There was no speaking in tongues.  No healings.  No snakes.  There was an Advocate.

          I find in this exchange between Jesus and Phillip another way of experiencing the Holy Spirit, another way of being Pentecostal.  It’s not as dramatic as some, but in my experience it is every bit as real.  Let me point out a couple of things I connect with.

          First, Phillip had a need to understand.  He wanted to be “satisfied.”  Just show me the Father, and I will be satisfied.  He had spiritual curiosity.  He was driven by a need to understand. 

          It’s a bit of an irony how the Christian faith unfolds for some of us.    You might expect to move from uncertainty to certainty.  In youth, we don’t understand as much, and as we age we understand more and more.  But for some of us, it’s just the opposite.  We move from certainty to uncertainty.  All those things we had nailed down in youth have sprung loose with aged.  What was black and white is now some muted shade of gray.  It’s not that we don’t believe.  We believe with more humility, accepting more mystery, allowing more commas and fewer periods.  Like Phillip, we are driven by a need to understand.

          I have a dog named Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick.  I thank Laura Lemley for allowing us to re-home Dr. Fosdick.  He’s named after my favorite preacher from a previous era.  He was pastor of the famed Riverside Church in New York City.  He once told of flying a kite in a city park.  The kite flew so high he couldn’t see it.  A little boy walked by and looked up.  He saw the kite string rising into the clouds.  But he couldn’t find the kite.  He said, “Mister, are you sure it’s still up there?”

          Fosdick said, “Yes, I’m sure.”

          “But if you can’t see it, how do you know it’s there.”

          “Because I still feel the tug of it.”

          I do too.  It’s unmistakable.  An invisible tug.  Something I don’t fully understand.  A spiritual awareness I have no words to explain.  I am left unsatisfied, but I know for certain it is there.  I feel the tug of it in my life.  And I am driven by a need to understand.  That is being Pentecostal.

          Notice what happened next.  Jesus asked Phillip to believe.  Phillip asked to see the Father.  He wanted proof.  That would satisfy him. But he didn’t get proof.  Instead, Jesus asked him to believe.  “I am in the Father,” Jesus told him, “and the Father is in me.” 

“Believe me,” Jesus told Phillip.

          Did you know that in Greek the words “believe” and “faith” are the same word?  One is a noun and the other a verb.  To believe means to have faith.  To have faith is to believe.

          “Believe me,” Jesus said.  Have faith, Phillip.  Not proof.

          Here’s why.  That’s when religion is its richest.  When we’re not relying on proof.  When we have proof, we have no need for faith.  Religion, at its deepest, reaches beyond proof.  It takes a leap into that “cloud of unknowing,” as one of the ancient mystics wrote, that place where we experience rather than know.  It’s in that cloud of unknowing that the deep within us connects with the Deep outside of us.  That is being Pentecostal.

          You see, Pentecost is not one-dimensional.  I accept that some people have a greater spiritual frenzy than I.  That’s okay.  I accept that some people have a spiritual gift that allows them to speak in a devotional, spiritual language.  I’m okay with that. I also have strong reservations about some of their other claims: healing people, raising the dead, and especially taking up venomous snakes.  But I’m not here to cast stones.  Today I affirm Phillip’s experience with the Advocate.  He needed to understand.  I get that.  He struggled to believe what he couldn’t understand.  I get that too.  But he remained a faithful disciple of Jesus.  Tradition says he died by crucifixion as a martyr and that he preached the gospel from his cross.  That’s the kind of Pentecostal I want to be.

          A Prayer of Confession is printed in your worship guide.  Before we come to the Lord’s Table, let us confess our sins.