The Old South Church in Boston

The Old South Church in Boston

"Filled With New Wine"

Sermon by Lael P. Murphy

June 11, 2000

Acts 2: 1-13

Back at the close of the last century there was a man named Billy Sunday. Born into poverty in farmland Iowa, he made it out of his family's hard life by way of major league baseball. Playing for the Chicago White Sox Billy became known as a great athlete and fierce competitor, often telling the story of how his life was changed one night on the streets of the windy city. Published in an article in the Boston Herald in 1916, this one William Ashley Sunday shared how God broke through his strong, willful ways and turned his life around.

He wrote, "Twenty-nine years ago I walked down a street in Chicago in company with some ball players who were famous in this world...and we went into a saloon." Then he continued:

It was a Sunday afternoon and we got tanked up and then went and sat down on a corner. I never go by that street without thanking God...it was a vacant lot at that time.

We sat down on a curbing. Across the street a company of men and women were playing on instruments ? horns, flutes and slide trombones ? and the others were singing the gospel hymns that I used to hear my mother sing back in the old church, where I used to go to Sunday School.

And God painted on the canvas of my recollection and memory a vivid picture of the scenes of other days and other faces...I sobbed and sobbed, and a young man stepped out and said:

"We are going to the Pacific Garden Mission; won't you come down to the mission? I am sure you will enjoy it. You can hear drunkards tell how they have been saved and girls tell how they have been saved from the red light district."

I arose and said to the boys:

"I'm through. I am going to Jesus Christ. We've come to the parting of the ways," and I turned my back on them. Some of them laughed and some of them mocked me; one of them gave me encouragement, others never said a word.

Twenty-nine years ago I turned and left that little group on the corner of State and Madison streets and walked to the little mission and fell on my knees and staggered out of sin and into the arms of the Savior.

That's the story of Billy Sunday. He was a man saved from a fast, empty life and given to God, going on after his athletic career to become a spirited Presbyterian minister serving the YMCA for decades. Some people thought he should have stuck to baseball or joined the circus. But others ? close to a hundred million others ? were touched by the power of his words and his animated preaching style for years. Here was someone emptied of the despair caused by addiction to alcohol and filled with a new wine, the wine of God's Spirit, the wine offered by Christ's life and teachings, by his death and resurrection.

Conversions like this one paint such a clear picture the transforming power God provides. While ours may be a tradition that focuses on more gradual spiritual change, other denominations get their strength and inspiration from "born again" experiences, the type that offer immediate, startling renewal. Stories like Billy Sunday's are on the one hand shockingly stark and on the other astoundingly inspirational. They show us in a dramatic way that change is possible; that God's grace is able to break through the most hardened, distracted hearts and offer restoration. Like the simple statement caught on those somewhat new-age bumper stickers, these stories prove that "Grace Happens."

Celebrating Pentecost today we're offered testimony to this truth in one of the most powerful scriptural accounts. Hearing the story of the Spirit filling the disciples in the Upper Room we witness the birth of the Church. We also receive the assurance that even now, centuries later, God's Spirit is present with us, offering reconciliation and renewal. Just as the disciples and innocent bystanders were moved to new levels of faith on that very first Pentecost, so, too, are we provided the hope that as the living Body of Christ we can be inspired, strengthened and directed by God. We remember on this sacred day that, yes, grace happens, sometimes with dramatic and ecstatic change as with Billy Sunday, other times with patient persistence and transformation. No matter how it unfolds, the Christian story is always one of renewed life and faith.

Sitting here today some of us may be thinking, "Well, maybe for other people grace happens. Maybe for the guy behind me or the woman up there God's been transforming. But for me? Things never seem to change." Pointing to the miracle stories in the Bible or types like Billy Sunday or even someone like me, it may be easy to say, "Those people have it. Their faith is strong. But mine? I'll probably never experience God the way they do."

No matter how appropriate it may seem to think that way, it's days like Pentecost that tell us God wants to change our perceptions. Behind the hopelessness and indifference of such self-degrading thoughts is the truth of our Christian faith: God is present with us. Christ offers new life, new hope, the strength and courage to be renewed. The Holy Spirit lives.

Reinhold Niebuhr talks about the many ways we undermine God's presence in his work, "Justice and Mercy". Offering both compassion and challenge to our spiritual insecurities he writes, "Don't be so morbid about the fact that you're selfish; don't deny that you are self-regarding, but work in life and hope that by grace ? this perhaps is the door to the real answer ? you will be redeemed. By grace."

Similar to the ways those first disciples waited for Christ's return to their community, so we're given the chance to anticipate the enlivening, restoring power of God's presence. We're invited to hope, as stated by Niebuhr, that by grace we will be redeemed. Like those men and women in the Upper Room we realize it's not a passive process. We wait as active and ready participants, crying out for compassion, confessing our need ? our deep and dire need ? to be filled with God's mercy. We wait, even though there are others in the world mocking our hopeful anticipation, as they in exist in the scripture reading today.

This kind of faithful perseverance was embodied this morning through the Sacrament of Baptism. Lifting up sweet little Kristi Lee we acknowledged as individuals and as a community that God is our foundation, providing the hope and guidance not for only our spiritual lives but for all that we are and all that we do. By its very nature infant baptism is a sign that we are recipients of God's abounding and eternal love by no action of our own. Karen and David coming forward with this helpless, beautiful child demonstrated the fact that it's through the benevolent mercy of God that we find meaning and purpose, and that living in accordance with Christ's teachings we bring our hope to others in this world. Today this little girl is a living sign of our trust in the sustaining Spirit of God. She and her parents are faith in action, giving life to the Body of Christ this very day.

Author Peter Marshall once wrote, "Take Jesus out of the perfumed cloisters of pious sentiment, and let him walk the streets of the city." That is what we're called to do this Pentecost season. Like the Upper Room filled powerful winds and tongues of fire we trust that our lives are infused with transforming grace bringing to life God's holy presence. As the disciples were moved to speak in foreign languages so we recall that through our Christian faith barriers of race and gender, culture and economic class are broken down, bringing us into a new realm of peace and reconciliation. As expressed by Thomas Merton, we know that God leads us on to greater acts of kindness and compassion, for, "Grace is not a strange, magic substance which is subtly filtered into our souls to act as a kind of spiritual penicillin. Grace is unity, oneness within ourselves, oneness with God."

In a moment we'll hear Jason McStoots sing our own David Sisco's spirited arrangement of E'vry Time I Feel the Spirit. While it's text and tempo may seem more appropriate for Billy Sunday's revival tents back in the late eighteen hundreds than for our more formal sanctuary here we can listen with joy, remembering that on this day we're united with our brothers and sisters of faith around the world. Feeling the Spirit this morning we're brought into harmony with God and one another, giving witness to the truth that we are filled with new wine: the living Spirit of Jesus Christ.

Let us pray.

Holy God, Powerful Creator, we give you thanks for your life among us. We give you praise for breaking through the barriers of this world to set us free. Have mercy upon us, we pray, that as we are filled by your Spirit, so we may grow in peace and unity. Grant that our life together may be a sign, a living symbol of Jesus Christ, of you.

Amen.

SCRIPTURE READING

Acts 2: 1-13

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all t0gether in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among the, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language f each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parhians, Medes, Elamits, and residents f Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretals and Arabs -- in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."