Tuning up to God's Spirit
a sermon based on Acts 2:1-20
by Rev. Frank Schaefer
 

Pentecost. What a glorious day.  The first Pentecost was marked by 3000 men and who knows how many women and children finding Christ and joining the band of disciples to form…the church.

Pentecost is also hard to understand.  We read of strange signs and happenings:  a sound like a mighty wind, tongues of fire appearing on people's heads, disciples speaking in other tongues they had never learned to speak.

Whatever else happened that day, to me the most significant and remarkable event was the transformation of the disciples.  On Pentecost Day, the disciples were transformed from frightened believers into bold ambassadors for Jesus. On Pentecost, the disciples finally stepped into Jesus' footsteps.  They got up from behind closed doors to boldly preach Jesus in the streets of Jerusalem.

From that day onward, the disciples seemed to resonate with the concepts and the love of heaven. Of course, Jesus had promised ahead of time that the disciples would experience this kind of transformation.  And there was a part that they had to do to experience it.  There always is.  Jesus had asked them to prepare themselves for the promise.  In other words, they were supposed to expect something from God.  And they did. The Scriptures tell us that on the day of Pentecost the disciples were all gathered in one place (Acts 2:1). The disciples were doing their part.  We don't know exactly what they did to prepare, but they probably prayed or studied the Scriptures; they were trying to figure out what God would have them do next.

In a sense you could say that the disciples tuned themselves up for God's purposes.  As a musician I know a little something about tuning.  I don't really like to tune my guitar; I would much rather just take it up and play. However, there is one thing that is worse than tuning a guitar and that is to play a guitar which is not in tune.  So pretty soon, guitarists learn that tuning, while a pain to go through, is very necessary and rewarding in the end.

This is how it is with our spiritual lives as well.  As I said before, there always seems to be a part that God expects us to do.  In order to receive God's blessings we need to get in tune with God somehow; we need to open ourselves for a divine experience.

There is another important aspect about the tuning process.  It is entirely possible to tune my guitar internally without paying attention to the natural C of the standard scale.  My guitar will--by itself--sound good.  However, when I try to play together with other musicians, it will soon become obvious that I am out of tune.  Not internally, but in relation to the standard scale.  And it is only when I am playing together with others that I will actually notice I'm playing to my own tune.

Let's hear again what Acts 2:1 says: "When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place."  There is an emphasis on togetherness in the "tuning process" the disciples went through.  We need each other in that process in order to make sure that we get in tune with God's "natural C"--with God's Spirit.  No man is an island (and neither is any woman). We need the fellowship of believers in order to get in tune with God, or else we may think that we are in tune with God and really just play to our own tune.

Now, if my guitar was tuned to the standard scale, I could play a key, let's say the key of E, on a piano which is located in the same room and the E string on my guitar would actually resonate with the E played on the piano.  Even though the instruments are several feet apart, the E string on my guitar would start to resonate and produce a sound if the instruments are in tune with each other.

That's how I like to think of what happened at Pentecost.  The disciples started to resonate with the spirit of God.  After getting in tune with God and each other, the disciples started to get with God’s program; and they finally became the kind of followers Jesus had envisioned.

When talking about the arrival of the Holy Spirit right before he ascended, Jesus said something to the disciples that is significant for us as well:

John 16:12"I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. 13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.

Listen to what Jesus is saying here: he is promising to continue to communicate with his disciples via the “channel” of the Holy Spirit. Interesting that Jesus could not teach everything he wanted to teach his disciples; they simply couldn’t understand it all at that time. On the day of Pentecost it became clear that Jesus included all of the new disciples, including us, in this communication process.  And that’s why we, like the original disciples, need to get in tune with God. Christ has continued to teach his disciples throughout the ages and he is continuing to teach us today.

The promise of Pentecost, the promise of the Spirit is for us too.  We are called to learn from the Master himself.  Let's tune up to God’s “musical scale” and grow in the wisdom and power of Christ. Amen.