TEXT: Acts 2: 1-21

Perhaps you have seen them in tourist traps. Those cutely labeled cans of genuine North Carolina Sea Breeze, or pure Vermont Mountain Air, or canned Essense of Aspen. To think that somehow one could catch the wind and put in into a can for public consumption. Innovative, perhaps! Ludicrous, most definitely!

Of course, you know what an enclosed space is like which has not had an ounce of fresh air intrude upon it, much less a breeze of any kind, for a long period of time. Stagnant, petrid, choking, deadly.

Jesus once told the lawyer who had slipped into his camp one night under the cover of darkness, that the Spirit is like the wind. You know its presence by the power it exerts on everything in its path. You feel it. You here it. You can tell the direction it is coming from and the direction in which it is moving, but you cannot see it, nor can you decipher where it is from and where it will end up. Yes, the Spirit of God is like that--the wind. One Sunday in my first pastorate, I waxed long and hard on that familiar passage in the Gospel of John. After the benediction, I stood at the door to greet the worshippers and a young farmer boy took my hand in his big milking hands, looked me straight in the eyes, and said, "Yep, preacher, there was a lot of wind in here today, mostly hot, and you are wrong, I know where it was coming from." On that occasion he was perhaps correct in his assessment, but the image of the Wind for the
Spirit was very appropriate.

When Luke set out to describe what occurred on that first Pentecost Sunday, the only description appropriate for the outpouring of the Spirit of God on the church was this image of the wind. "And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting." The shutters to the room where they had been in secreted seclusion were blown open, and "whoosh" the wind came pouring in. However, rather than running to close the windows to keep the Spirit in the room, the small band of followers of the Way rushed outside with the wind and just as a wind storm can blow the leaves off the trees changing the landscape, the wind blew across them and their city transforming the landscape of faith forever.

The problem, however, is that during the days, weeks, months, years and centuries which have followed, would be disciples of Christ, persons transformed by the Wind of the Spirit have tried to capture the wind, to put it into cutsey cans of doctrine, peddle it from the shelves of our religious tourist shops, and make a profit out of a gift. The trouble is, once wind is caught in a bottle or can, it is no longer wind, and it no longer has any power to transform those who possess it.

Perhaps at some point in your life you have desired to experience anew the power of the Spirit at work in your life.
- you have gone from one packager of the spirit to another in a futile attempt to gain the lacking power.
- your church has hit a period of ------ and you have brought in one specialist in the doctrine of the spirit after another to revive you
- as you have sought to describe your condition you have been almost like the condition my mother found herself in last week when I was with her in NC. Her car had been running fine, until that afternoon when she went out to start it. Nothing! She called me and I tried--finally got a few coughs and a shot of backfire flaming into my face. So I called a mechanic, described the symptoms and asked him if he could do anything to get it running. "Sure," he said, "just drive it on in and I'll get to it immediately." "Duh," I thought, "Is anybody home?" Isn't that the trouble with a lot of our religion? You get good advice, but you don't get the power or strength to carry it our. Friends, good advice without the power to back it up is bad news.

However, the precepts of Jesus plus the power to carry them out is good news, and that's the wondrous good news of Pentecost. Jesus had given those who would follow him a wondrous gospel--the promise of the Kingdom of God. A Kingdom with a promise of future fulfillment, but also a Kingdom which had, and has, a present reality. They, and we, were to be about living in its reality, establishing beach heads in a world captured by Evil, but in the process of being liberated by the Redeemer. Yet, the Redeemer was no longer physically present with them, and the disciples pondered how they, and those who were to follow them, could ever even begin to accomplish the mission which they had been given.
Then came Pentecost. The wind rushed over them. An annointing like tongues of fire fell upon them. Suddenly they had the power to move the precepts from teaching to life transforming action. It was crazy. In fact, the crowds in the street thought that they were crazy, or if not crazy then at least a little bit drunk on Thunderbird--or whatever the cheat wine of their day was. Something extraordinary happened. Something transformed their lives. Something thrust the church from her shelter to engage the world in the effective communication of the gospel of Christ which called all persons to reconciliation with God their Creator, and to one another, regardless of ethnic origin. That something was the Spirit--indwelling and outworking in every believer's liife.

Not many years ago I listened to a distinquished newspaper correspondant explain to a church leader why he was no longer active in church life. He said, "There ought to be something going on in a church that can only be explained on the basis of God's action and nothing like that was going on in the church's which I have attended." Sad, but often true. Why isn't the church as alive and power filled as those early Christians seemed to be? As Baptists we affirm that at the point of one's conversion, the believer--every believer--receives the indwelling presence of the Spirit of God. That's scripture--read John chapters 15 thru 20 or Romans 8.

Perhaps one reason is that we have not given her (the Spirit is femine gender in Greek) the liberty to make us effective. Or perhaps we have been ignorant of the Spirit's in the life of the believer. Or perhaps we have poured cold water on the tongues of fire to quench the Spirit's power. Or perhaps we have shut her out.

Now while I don't believe the events of Pentecost are to be recreated, the pattern of Pentecost -- our openness and obedience to the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit giving us the power to effectively serve our Lord in the ministry of the Kingdom of God should be ever present.

So, how do you catch the wind? As I stated earlier, you can't package it. Wind that is contained is just air. It can sustain life for a short period of time, but it can't lift the soaring wings of an eagle to greater heights or turn the great blades of a windmill. We try to catch the wind that way when we seek to box it into our neat theological systems -- be they built on personal experience or great systematic theologies.
"But if you can't catch the wind, at least the wind can catch you if you have your sails unfurled and are ready for the adventure of obedience, if the blades of the windmill are unlocked to turn the great turbines, if the wings of your soul are spread to be lifted by its currents." (B. Clayton Bell) O dear freinds, you can't catch the wind, but you can let the wind catch you. You can't take the Spirit and make her fit your mold, but can turn your life over to the power of the Spirit and let the Spirit remold and reshape you. You can allow the Spirit to propell you out of your neat systems and world views into the crowded streets to bring the gospel of hope, the message of reconciliation, to a world living under seige.

Has Pentecost happened in your life? The precepts of Jesus offer you a new way of living, but it takes the power of the Spirit to live them. You cannot catch the wind, but the wind can catch you. Unfurl your wings and soar.