Imagine if you will, a lovely sunny Sunday morning in late July.  My mother wakes up saying “it’s time.”  She makes my father breakfast and while he eats she puts a suitcase together.  Because it’s such a lovely day they take a leisurely ride through the park in their new Studebaker.  Arriving at the hospital my father begins to listen to the White Sox game in the waiting room.  Before it concludes the nurse steps out to say he has a beautiful 7 lb. 6 ounce baby girl.  That’s my birthday.  I don’t remember it but I’ve certainly heard the story enough that the events of that day have permanently embedded themselves in my memory. 

Now there are those who will split hairs and say that while that is the day you are born your birthday is not until a year later when you celebrate the first anniversary of your birth.  Birthdays are not so much a recounting of the day of birth but a current celebration of the year you have just completed and the one you will begin.  The birthday is the occasion in and of itself.  So at a year Dad stands with the camera and records junior smearing chocolate cake all over himself.  At sixteen the sweet daughter unwraps a small package with a key chain inside.  At 21 our burgeoning adult modestly takes their first sip of alcohol.  And at 65 one, cheerfully or not, acknowledges the passing of another year by signing up for Medicare.  Oh perhaps we give a nod to the day of our birth, remember how city slickers begins with Billy Crystal waiting in bed awake in the wee hours of the morning for his mother to make her annual call reminding him that this is the actual time he was born.  So we might give a nod to the day we were born but we celebrate what this day, in this year means as we look ahead. 

Pentecost.  We talk about it as the birthday of the church.  Imagine if you will, the believers all 12 or 120 of them gathered together in an upper room when they hear the sound of a violent wind.  And suddenly there are flames shaped like tongues resting on them.  And they begin to speak in languages they have never learned.  They must have been quite noisy because a crowd gathers and wonder of wonders people from all over hear these believers speaking in their native tongue about the mighty acts of God.  And when some in the crowd dismiss the event suggesting it is just early morning drunkenness Peter stands before them to explain.  People of Jerusalem he says, we are not drunk.  No don’t you remember what the prophet Joel said, “God declares I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, Your sons and your daughters will prophecy, your young men shall see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.  Even upon my slaves, both men and women I will pour out my spirit and they will prophesy.” 

“Prophecy” is a challenging word for us to wrap our heads around in this day and age.  The word in our day has come to be understood as “future prediction.”  We get it all mixed up with crystal balls and Nostradomus and predictions of the end of the world.  Biblical prophecy is more about taking stock of the signs of the times and understanding them in light of God’s word.  A better word for prophecy might well be “interpretation”—How do we interpret the present time in light of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. 

Peter not only talks about prophecy he does it.  Peter makes sense of all the languages by understanding them in the light of God’s activity which seeks to bring all people of all times and places to himself.  Peter says this is not limited to a few select individuals—no all your sons and daughters, your young men and your old, all your men and women slaves—all all of them will be part of the Spirit’s work of sharing the good news.  No age boundaries, no gender boundaries, no social boundaries will stand in the way of the spirit working to bring the message of God’s love to the world. 

And we are told that three thousand people were baptized that day.  The day the church was born. But we are not celebrating that today.  We are not asked to re-enact those events—We are here to celebrate the one thousand and seventy seventh birthday of the church.  We are here to feel the refreshing winds of the spirit airing out the closed up rooms of our lives and to burn with the vigor and power of fire on this very day. 

We are called to prophecy, to interpret, to read the signs of the times and to address them with God’s word.  If we step back we may be tempted to be discouraged because We see how the world around us is filled with fear and defensiveness, greed and violence. But we have a call, what the biblical scholar Walter Brueggeman calls a “stunning vocation”, a stunning vocation to stand free and hope-filled in a world gone fearful…and to think, imagine, dream, vision a future that God will yet enact.” Mind you, we are not in charge, God is in charge, but we are called to imagine this future, to trust in it, and to live into it, participate in it, and to share it with all of God’s children. We might be tempted at times to give in to those same impulses we see around us – to build up our defenses, look out for ourselves, find security in our “stuff” and in our sure knowledge that we know best, but this wind of the Spirit – it blows through our lives and it turns things upside down. We may want a comfortable faith that consoles us and keeps us happy, but instead, God challenges our assumptions, blows them over, and opens up our eyes to see things in a new way, opens our hearts to a new creation of possibility and hope. That’s who we are as the church, you know – people of hope.  Our faith is not nostalgic, looking back to those good old days when the spirit ran rampant in the world.  There is truth to the aphorism “the greatest obstacle to future success is past success.”When we get caught up seeing “those times” as God’s times we will never see “these times” as God’s times.  One writer says we are charged to be “detectives of divinity”, sleuthing out where God is at work here and now and where God is not at work.  You don’t have to be much of a detective you can just flip through the bulletin.  God is at work when people have the basic needs of life met with food and shelter, when children have the opportunity to grow up safe and secure in the knowledge that they are loved and cared about, when people know they are not alone in having to face the trials and tribulations of life but have friends who will be with them and pray for them.

God is at work right here and right now.   Today the spirit is blowing and ten young people will affirm their desire to be part of this great work.  We remember back years ago when they were born in the waters of baptism.  You, the gathered body of Christ, welcomed them and promised to pray for them, teach and guide them.  Today these sons and daughters stand before you to prophecy, to commit themselves to imagine the future as God would have us live it, to trust in it, to live into it, to participate and to share it with all God’s children.  Today we celebrate their special birthday.

And so I have only one thing more to say to you—welcome to the party.

Amen