Obviously, our charter member didn’t catch the wink in the eye of our new member. He explained to her that he meant Peter—Simon Peter. And no, she hasn’t been around that long.

Wilshire Baptist Church will be just 54 years old on June 14 of this year, but when we celebrate the birth of the Church—that’s Church with a capital “C,” Church before there was a Roman Catholic Church or a Greek Orthodox Church or a Protestant Church or a Baptist Church, just Church—well, then you have to count back a bit further than that. The church was born on Pentecost some 1,976 years ago. We figure Jesus was crucified in the year AD 29, give or take a year or two. They kept calendars back then about the way I do today.

Anyway, 50 days after Passover, Jewish pilgrims were streaming into Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks, known to Jews as Shavuot, and to Christians following the Greek for 50 days, Pentecost. Ten days earlier, Jesus had ascended to God in the midst of a cloud. He had told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father, the presence of the Holy Spirit. Jesus would be with them through his Spirit, which could fill each of them and all of them, once he was free of the confines of the flesh. And so it came to pass…

The sound of a mighty rushing wind. The tongues of fire alighting over the heads of the disciples. The passion. The preaching. The mass of people from all over the world understanding Peter’s sermon, spoken in his native Aramaic language, as if he were speaking only in their own native language. Three thousand being added to the church in one day! The marvel of it all. The marveling at it all. It must have been a marvelous thing, don’t you know?! You’d think we’d have a major motion picture of this. The special effects would be, well, marvelous. Maybe that’s what George Lucas will do next, now that he’s got that last Star Wars thing in the can.

What significance can we attach to this today? How does the birth of the Church—capital “C”—impact the character of the small “c” church today? More specifically still, what about Wilshire? Our mission statement says—well, say it with me—The Wilshire mission is to build a community of faith shaped by the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Although the church should in no wise try to be today only what it was 1,976 years ago, we can assume that the Spirit of Christ today is consistent with the Spirit of Christ at Pentecost. So, what marks of that church appear in this one, or should?

First, the Spirit must be present for the church to be the church of Jesus Christ. Think about it. If the disciples had run right out and called a meeting to start a church, they could have organized themselves, filed with the state to become a nonprofit corporation, elected officers, and agreed on a secret handshake. They could have had all the marks of a church on the outside and not been the church of Jesus Christ if they had not been animated by the Pentecostal Spirit of Jesus Christ.

In fact, it’s kind of a funny anecdote in connection to our church’s mission statement that it took awhile before we all got to where we were capitalizing the “S” in Spirit. When we adopted it, it had the capital “S,” of course, which designates the person of the Holy Spirit. But along the way, when it would show up in this document or that, it would sometimes be written with the small “s” for spirit. The difference is one of agency. If it’s a small “s” spirit, we are in control. We determine what the spirit of Jesus Christ is. We decide what would Jesus do? We could say that we know what the spirit of Jesus would be on this matter or that. But if you capitalize the “S,” you are saying that the church lives in and by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of Jesus Christ is a vitalizing power that convicts us of sin, communicates the forgiveness of God, fills us with resurrection life, interprets the gospel to us and through us to the world, teaches us things Jesus couldn’t get to in his earthly life, and makes us one with the Triune God and one with one another.

Now, some churches that live by Pentecostal power believe you have to see signs of the Spirit in tongues- speaking and in miracles like unexpected healings if you really are a Spirit-filled church. But that doesn’t seem to be the norm from one church to another in the New Testament or thereafter. As long as the Spirit of Jesus Christ is worshiped and honored and prayed to and prayed from, and as long as we see evidence of faith and mission in the fellowship, we are good to go, so to speak. We do not need to get hung up on the marks of the Spirit; we can focus on Jesus, which is exactly what the Spirit teaches us to do anyway.

But second, notice that the church will be filled with people who are themselves surprisingly empowered by the Spirit for mission. It wasn’t Peter’s church just because he was the preacher on the day the church was born. He was one human agent of God, but notice that he himself pointed to the new reality of God’s Spirit being poured out on all flesh—sons AND daughters prophesying, young men seeing visions, old men dreaming dreams; slaves as well as free men, and men and women of every station in life were equally empowered by the indwelling Spirit and called to speak and act as witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection and the new life now possible for all.

Between his election and inauguration as president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln resisted the temptation from some in his own party who had called on the people to yield to the authority of the elected government. Lincoln instead said: In all the trying position in which I shall be placed, and doubtless I shall be placed in many trying ones, my reliance will be placed upon you and the people of the United States—and I wish you to remember now and forever, that it is your business, and not mine; that if the union of these States, and the liberties of this people, shall be lost, it is but little to any one man of fifty-two years of age, but a great deal to the thirty millions of people who inhabit these United States, and to their posterity in all coming time.

According to Ronald White, in his book The Eloquent President, Lincoln’s goal was to increase the expectations ordinary citizens must have of one another. Lincoln believed deeply in the opening lines of the Constitution, which say, We the people. … In his Gettysburg Address he expressed his deepest prayer that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people,and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

I am moved by similar aspirations today. This is not my church; it is Christ’s church. But after that, it is our church. We the people! I am privileged to be your pastor, but I am keenly aware that the success or failure of our church does not depend so much upon my success or failure but upon whether we the people can continue to increase our expectations of one another.

Some of our leadership are more anxious than I about my being gone on vacation and then sabbatical for ten weeks. I have done this twice before, and the church hasn’t fallen apart in my absence, because it doesn’t hold together by my presence. It holds together because the Spirit of Jesus Christ inhabits the ordinary citizens of these pews—and there are none other that inhabit these pews or this pulpit than ordinary citizens of the kingdom of God.

And yet, if you really want to prove the truth of this, there are some things you can do in my absence. Show up as often or more often while I am gone. Take personal responsibility for this being our church. Support the rest of the staff, and don’t make them feel as if they are somehow incapable of being pastoral. Call on them. Don’t save up all your questions or needs for me to return. Give generously. We have a double whammy of summer and sabbatical at the same time. Does that mean the church ought to cut back its programming for lack of funds? No, no. We will be faithful in season and out of season, as the Bible says.

Listen, we say we believe in the priesthood of all believers. Well, let’s prove it. Let’s practice what we preach. Let’s behave the way we believe. What will your ministry be this summer and beyond?

The best way to consider that is to ask what your gifts are. How has the Holy Spirit uniquely gifted you to serve? There are many gifts, one Spirit; many services, one Lord; many activities, but the same God that gives them all to each of us for the common good. If you have the Spirit of Pentecost, you will not be able to say you are too old or too young, the wrong gender or nationality or class. All those divisions have been taken away by the Spirit of Pentecost. You can serve. You must serve. You yourself are a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, a priest unto God. The question is not whether you will be, but how effective you will be.

This is a good time to think about that and begin to act upon it. Let’s have some of that Pentecostal power during this season of Pentecost.

Lincoln was concerned with two things: the preservation of the Union and the extension of liberty to all—unity and mission. Peter ends his Pentecost sermon with the same kind of concern. Pentecost means, he says, that now everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Shall be, not may be. Salvation. Liberty before God. True freedom. Release from the bondage of sin and the fear of judgment. This is our mission. And who may come to such liberty? Everyone. No distinctions. And each of us and all of us together may not only receive it but declare it. This is true unity, the new inclusive community of the Spirit.

It’s enoughto make you proud. It’s enough to make you shout. Amen? It ought to be at least enough to sing. Let’s…