One of probably many bad habits that I have, is that I love to channel surf.  I think Kati would put this at the top of her “top ten most annoying things Tim does”.  I am getting better, though.  At least when Kati is at my apartment.  She was not on Thursday night, so as I was watching Grey’s Anatomy and then Lost, I was constantly flipping through the rest of the channels.  That was until I came across a movie I had not seen in ten years.  The Thin Red Line.  It would have been one of the last movies I saw before I became a Christian, so as I watched it now I watched it with different eyes. The Thin Red Line is the story of a group of soldiers as they fought during World War II at Guadalcanal.  A very bloody battle.  The movie is a constant contrast between the bloodiness and ugliness of war and the beauty of God’s creation.  Actually, Guadalcanal is in a beautiful little corner of the world in the South Pacific and the movie was filmed on a lush island off Queensland, Australia. About as close to paradise as you could get, except for the war.  The movie begins in that lush island paradise as one of the soldiers is found AWOL, absent without official leave, on another island.  He hears the American boat coming and goes to hide.  As he goes the camera surveys the scene.  Palm trees loaded with coconuts.   Blossoming flowers.  Vibrantly colored birds perched in the trees.  The natives singing a melodic song.  The blue, blue waves lapping up against the shores.  There is a innocence there, almost like revisiting the Garden of Eden, and just when you buy into the illusion the American boat lands and takes the AWOL soldier back to the war. Back on the troop transport the guilty soldier is questioned by his sergeant.  Apparently, this was not the first time he had gone AWOL.  His commanding officer asks him “when are you going smarten up and be a team player?  There is no world but this world.”  At the moment the soldier tells him something profound, “You are wrong there, Top. I seen another world. Sometimes I think it is just my imagination.”

          We have been talking about another world since Christmas and before.  As Christians we believe that the world was fundamentally change when Jesus Christ was born, but more importantly when he died and was resurrected.  The world is changed by these events.  As we read through the gospels we got a glimpse, a sense of that change.  Jesus gave the disciples moments where they were able to see the new world that was coming into being.  “The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.” (Pause)  “Blessed are the poor.” (Pause) “I am the way the truth and the light.” (Pause) Moments that disappeared before the disciples could even grasp them, but these moments built upon themselves.  One moment after another, the disciples could see the other world.  They could see the kingdom of God.  And then Christ died and surrounded by that devastating reality the other world, the next world was lost.  The disciples shut themselves up in the upper room to mourn. It was not until Jesus appeared to them again in that upper room that the vision of that next world, the kingdom of God became oh so clear again.  Of course, Christ had to die to rescue us from sin and death.  And now, he is risen.  He is risen indeed.  The Kingdom of God has come.

          For the last fifty days, seven weeks, we have read and lived in that in between time with the disciples.  That time between Jesus’ resurrection, his ascension into heaven, and the coming of the Holy Spirit.  During that time, through their interaction with Jesus Christ, prayer, and learning, the disciples grew more and more in faith and touched just a little more closely that kingdom of God that Jesus had brought into being.  They saw it and lived into it, but there was a whole world more of people out there, who knew nothing of that new reality.  That changed on Pentecost.

          The coming of the Holy Spirit meant the expanding of the mission in this world.  Jesus was the first missionary sent to show and to bring into existence a new world here.  The disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit were meant to take that mission out into the world.  The Holy Spirit descended upon them, like the scripture says, like tongues of fire and they were able to speak in other tongues or languages.  This is a marvelous and miraculous moment. This most fundamental of all divisions, language, is overcome.  If you remember back, when the Tower of Babel was destroyed in the early chapters of Genesis, language was the second dividing force in creation, right after sin.  So as Jesus Christ has just conquered the first division, sin, the Holy Spirit comes to conquer the second division, language or maybe on a grander scale culture.  The reality to which the disciples speak is on a grander scale.  And perhaps that is the reason their message is so easily or least readily understood.  They spoke to the deep longing of our souls that tells us that there is something more out there.  They spoke to something that says we really are little less divided than we appear.  I caught a glimpse of that yesterday as I drove down the Broadway extension.  A family of immigrants in a new van with a flat tire on the side of the road.  And right behind them, two white men in ties changing their tire.

          In the movie The Thin Red Line I referred to earlier, the same distraught soldier said, “Everyone lookin' for salvation by himself. Each like a coal thrown from the fire.” At Pentecost, everyone of the coals that had been scattered around began to be gathered back in.  The disciples who had seen so much and experienced so much and had been changed by it so much began to do something about.  They began to participate.  Up to that point they were either observers or preparing for that next day, but at Pentecost their mission really began.  The world they had seen, the Christ that they had known began to be preached to all nations.

          I love what happens next.  One group after hearing the message asks, “What does this mean?” A statement that is so wonderfully paralleled over and over by the disciples as Jesus told them parables.  All those times when Jesus was giving the disciples a glimpse of the kingdom of God, they too wondered about the meaning.  But then there was another group, the group that thought they were filled with new wine, which sounds like a first century euphemism for being drunk.  They did not see what the disciples were speaking about.  They did not see a new world.  They judged what they saw by eyes of the old world, the status qou.  So much so that Peter has to come in and defend the disciples and tell that group that it is only 9am and they could not be drunk already.  One of the commentaries I read said this statement must have been more convincing in the first century then it would be today.

          Peter’s next statement makes it clear that something significant had changed.    He furthers his defense in Acts 2:16 and 17 saying “this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel:  ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” Peter defuses the situation not by reiterating what the others had said and pointing to something new, but by pointing to the past.  Peter points to Joel’s vision of the kingdom of God coming and says the fulfillment of that vision is today.

          This scripture had a profound impact on me as a new Christian.  I could see and feel the change that this new thing made in my life.  It was something profound.  I did not have horrible life before I was Christian, but my life was empty or at least missing something very big.  I began to see the world differently.  I could see the goodness of creation in a different way.  I could see and feel grace and forgiveness.  I could witness the hand of God working not only in my life, but the life of friends and family and the people I went to church with.  There were moments where the kingdom of God did get close enough to touch. Seconds or minutes or even longer, where the Holy Spirit was almost tangible.  I could look upon the world with new eyes.  The soldier from the movie touches a piece of that feeling in one of his last statements in the movie.  He says, “One man looks at a dying bird and thinks there's nothing but unanswered pain. That death's got the final word, it's laughing at him. Another man sees that same bird, feels the glory, feels something smiling through it.”  The disciples saw that ‘something smiling through it’ that day on Pentecost.  They saw the world changed and saw themselves participating in it.  They saw a new future and did not listen to voices who thought they were drunk or at least crazy.  They believed.

            We too need to believe.  We need to believe that God is doing something marvelous here with us and within our community.  That the Holy Spirit is being poured out upon us.  We need to grab a hold of the fire and speak to the changes that we see today in us and that we see in the future.  We need to proclaim the coming of the kingdom of God, the good news that we are freed from sin.  We as a church need to continue to move forward.  I know we are coming up on summer and a low time in the year.  And I know I am going to be gone soon for a conference and mine and Kati’s wedding. But we cannot loose these months.  The intensity and focus and effort needs to stay high.  We need to long to reach out to this community even more in these moments where we would like to take a break.  We need to continue to grow ourselves.  To live lives on fire.  And proclaim to a hurting world that the new world, the Kingdom of God has come.