The euphoria of Pentecost is hard for us to imagine.

Those of us who plan worship love Sundays like Pentecost, when we know mere words cannot convey the full impact of the message. Such days call for creativity beyond the norm. We might read Scripture in multiple languages or use the improvisational sounds of jazz to simulate the Spirit’s sweeping across the sanctuary. And every year we break out this elaborate banner of tinkling bells and flaming tongues – the Tintinnabulum. We at least try to emulate the euphoria of the occasion.

And yet – look at you. You are still sitting there in your pew. Listening politely. None of you daring to stand up and start speaking because of the Spirit. (pause) Like I said, the euphoria of Pentecost is hard for us to imagine … let alone experience.

Maybe that’s because deep down we know that if we truly open ourselves to receive the Spirit, we will have to experience it as more than just a warm and fuzzy feeling … we’ll have to change how we live and act and think and work.

Pentecost is not a euphoric moment that inspires one gathered nation in history as much as it is a life force as vital to us as oxygen. The experience of the Spirit is more than a feeling – it is a rush of hope and the source of Christ’s church. Pentecost is about internal transformation that leads to communal works of proclamation.

I was in Boston the night the Red Sox triumphed over the St. Louis Cardinals to break the great 86-year “Curse of the Bambino.” Plagued by years of unrelenting losses, the Red Sox came to blame their lack of World Series wins on the 1920 betrayal of Babe Ruth. According to legend, when the great “Bambino” left the Sox for the Yankees, he also left a losing, and lasting, curse on the Sox. True Red Sox fans share a hatred for the Yankees and an unyielding passion for the Sox.

And that passion knows no bounds. Literally. On that October night in 2004, when the Red Sox’s four-game World Series sweep over the Cardinals “reversed the curse,” a unifying euphoria swept the city instantaneously. People poured out of houses, apartments, storefronts, and bars screaming “Red Sox! Red Sox!” Strangers embraced strangers, and the streets all across Boston were flooded with mobs of ecstatic fans – people were crying, laughing, hugging, and grown men dropped to their knees in stunned silence, having waited for this moment since they were 8-year-old boys. Blue collar, white collar, young, old, die-hard fan and bandwagon fan, poor and rich, children and grandparents, tourists and natives … all embracing and cheering in chaos. Police officers forgot about enforcing the law; fire fighters abandoned their engines to the mounds of people climbing atop their ladders and roofs. Students flooded out of dorms and climbed atop the Harvard Subway Station with crazy clothes, or no clothes. Bodies hung out of windows waving banners, taxicabs laid on their horns, and children, up way past their bedtime, waved flags atop their parents’ shoulders. My Hebrew teacher even cancelled our test the next day because of the sacredness of that night. I mean really, who could sleep or study on the night the Red Sox won the World Series???

That win was a unifying, chaotic, and life-changing experience for Red Sox fans. People felt euphoria that night, yes. But even more, they reclaimed hope and acted as if their team could and would win again – and indeed they did – just last year. History has been rewritten.

I imagine that what transpired on that October evening in Boston must have felt like the euphoria and miracle of Pentecost. Scriptures tell us the Pentecostal event was so much more than a fleeting feeling. It was a radical change in the history of what was to become Christianity. It was more than chills and thrills; it was conviction of some that led to the conversion of thousands.

Faithful Jews from all different nations were gathered in Jerusalem for the harvest festival, the “Feast of Weeks.” This annual pilgrimage that came 50 days after Passover celebrated God’s providential care. Parthians and Medes (and everybody in between) gathered in mass to celebrate God’s goodness to each of them and all of them. Perhaps the closest we get to such an international gathering these days is the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic Games.

It is, of course, the unexpected and unbelievable rush of the Holy Spirit that causes Galileans to speak clearly and fluently in languages unknown to them, but familiar to the multitude of Jewish onlookers. Given my poor language skills, this feat is beyond miraculous to me. Where was the Pentecostal Spirit when I needed it for my Hebrew exam? Well, the Jews can’t believe what they are seeing or hearing either – and yet instead of seeking the source of this miraculous Spirit, they just stand around – feeling amazed, looking confused, or jumping to conclusions to find a cause for this chaos by dismissing them as drunk.

Their reaction is familiar. When we witness something unbelievable, we are likely to stand and gawk, like commuters at a five-car pile-up; we may gasp in amazement; and we reason our way into a logical explanation for why what we’re seeing is possible. We feel the intensity of that moment; it takes our breath away. But then we go on our way and forget or ignore its impact.

Peter stops the Jews from this predictable pattern by proclaiming, “These people are not drunk – they are infused with the Holy Spirit. They are inspired with the very Spirit that the prophet Joel spoke of: Remember? God declared, “I will pour out my spirit among 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 my slaves, both men and women, in those last days I will pour out my Spirit and they shall prophesy.” Don’t you remember? This is Scriptural. This is God’s work.

All those gathered in Jerusalem that day learned that the coming of the Holy Spirit was more than an ecstatic and charismatic feeling – it was the inaugural sign (the “Opening Ceremony,” if you will) of the fulfillment of God’s Kingdom on earth, when “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

The coming of the Holy Spirit upon all of God’s people is the bridge between the resurrected and ascended Messiah and the fulfillment of God’s Kingdom. Jesus is gone and there is work to be done. But how in the world can we carry out this mission that is so foreign to us? How can we spread the gospel without our leader among us?

We can do it with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit at Pentecost was the impetus for believers to form communities to proclaim the gospel, and it is the very living source behind every attempt to do so – even today. The Holy Spirit lives in and among the people of God for the sole purpose of empowering and blessing us to proclaim and live out the love of God in Christ Jesus. It is not a substitute for Christ – it is Christ, the living Christ.

It is popular these days to speak of the Spirit in “warm and fuzzy” terms, to speak of God’s Spirit as that stirring feeling inside each of us that we attribute to moments like those mountaintop “highs” after retreats or revivals. These feelings may very well be the Holy Spirit. But they are to be more than just a feeling. These are nudges and signs of the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. Notice the word work. The Holy Spirit is constantly alive and working in each one of us so that we might have the ability to effectively accomplish the mission of Christ. It works in us so that we might work for Christ. With Jesus no longer walking the earth, his living presence in the Holy Spirit is precisely what enables us to be the “hands and feet of Christ.” We are a post-Pentecostal people. We have no excuse. We have all we need to serve Christ and build the Church.

For Pentecost teaches us that the Holy Spirit does not come to us privately – the Holy Spirit is the gift of Christ to the Church … to all its hopeful fans, if you will … to the gathered body of believers. Without one another – without the synergy of our lives and faiths, without the person in the pew next to you – the Holy Spirit has no momentum to live and work and be the fully resurrected and re-membered Body of Christ. It takes all of us acting on the Spirit’s impulse to do the work of the Church.

Each one of us could speak of times when we “felt the Spirit” in worship. Maybe through a question in the sermon, or the harmonies of an anthem. Maybe in one line of a hymn, or in a pause during prayer.

But what happens after that “feeling”?

Most of us, myself included, are want to ignore what that “feeling” may be leading us to do. We push it to the side and keep it to ourselves. We decide that we’ll walk down the aisle next week – or go on that mission trip next year. We’ll work on our tithing when the economy gets better – and we’ll be more involved in the church when the kids get older. Why do we ignore the prompting of the Spirit?

We all would do well to look to our mothers to learn about following through on feelings instead of ignoring them. A mother can sense in her gut when something is wrong. Something tells you that you shouldn’t let your teenager go to that party tonight … you suspect you don’t know the whole truth. Sure enough – the parents are out of town. Some indescribable and indefinable feeling makes you question the doctor’s diagnosis – and you keep getting second opinions until you indeed discover that your daughter’s deep chest cough is not from a bad cold, but from cancerous tumors in her lungs.

Mothers do not ignore their gut feelings about their kids and say, “I’ll deal with that later.” Because she loves her child more than life itself, a mother will not stop at anything until she figures out what that “uneasy feeling” is trying to tell her.

We Christians could learn a lot from our moms about how to follow through on feelings with commitment and determination, with actual actions that produce results … results for the ones we love, results for the God we love.

Why do we dismiss experiences of the Holy Spirit as mere emotion instead of as Christ’s call, as a conviction to proclaim God’s love to others through works and words of love? We know why. At least I do.

It takes work and sacrifice to respond to the movement of the Holy Spirit.

Why does the “spiritual high” of youth camp fade when band camp and football practice start up in the fall? Because it’s too hard to be a Christian in high school with so much peer pressure, and I don’t have time for church with all this homework anyway.

Why do we let the heavy heart we experience on a mission trip at the sight of unfathomable poverty gradually lighten when we return to the States and get back to our routines? Because it’s not “reasonable” to have to change my lifestyle to give more money to the poor. Surely God doesn’t really expect me to change my life that radically.

Do you feel the rush of the Spirit in your heart? If you do, then do something about it. The Kingdom of God cannot afford to lose your unique proclamation. This worshiping body of Wilshire cannot afford to lose your contribution to our community. And most of all, you can’t afford to lose the blessing of salvation that comes when you turn one spiritual moment into a lifetime of work with the living Christ.

Amen.