More than ten years have now passed, but you will still on occasion hear about our daughter Naomi’s 15 minutes of fame.  The story ended up in the more whimsical corners of mission publications around the world.  It was her first year at Luther College, freshman philosophy 101.  The professor was engaging the students in a spirited debate about determin­ism and free will, nature vs nurture, and all that kind of stuff.  Are we really free to make decisions in life, or isn’t everything we do already predetermined by the experiences we have had?  The professor was a determinist, but Naomi was taking the opposite view.  “I think we are free to decide a fair amount of what we do in life,” she said.  “OK, Naomi,” the professor responded, “come up here and let’s try out your theory.”  Now what you need to know, but what the professor didn’t know, was that Naomi had been raised as a missionary kid in Tanzania, East Africa.  But he thought she was just one more blonde, blue-eyed freshman of Scandinavian descent.

 So Naomi went forward, and the professor said, “OK, Naomi, you are saying that we are basically free in life to decide to do what we are going to do.  That means you should just be able to decide to ... oh ... speak Swahili, for instance.”  Naomi looked at him and blinked and said, “OK, I can do that.”  Whereupon she did.  You can imagine what followed.  The professor was still telling that story five years later when our youngest daughter, Sharon, took that class.

 Language.  It can be such a wall – either of inclusion or of exclusion.  There are even parts of San Jose where you won’t be able to do much of anything unless you know Spanish.  Or Vietnamese or Hindi.  How might the world be different if the same language were spoken in America, Russia and Iran?

 Genesis 11, this morning’s first lesson, tells us that the whole language thing came about when people decided to exceed their design specs and try to become like God.  They set out to build a tower.  “To make a name for ourselves,” they said, but their plan to set its top “in the heavens” does seem to speak of more grandiose intentions.  The first 11 chapters of Genesis show people again and again trying to become like God.  Way beyond our design specs, like I said.  Leggo blocks saying let’s make ourselves into the Bay Bridge.  Only disaster could follow.  And so God finally put an end to the dangerous pipe dream by confusing their language and thus scattering them across the face of the earth.

 That story of the Tower of Babel is the first of two bookends in the Bible.  Genesis 11.  God uses language to scatter humanity because of our pride and arrogance and our attempts to become what we are not.  Attempts to play God; attempts which harm us as well as those around us.  The story of Babel comes near the beginning of the Bible, and as we keep reading we see how God then moves, throughout the Old Testament, toward resolution of the whole mess.

 That resolution finally comes in the form of a cross and an empty tomb.  Through Jesus Christ, sin and death are no longer the final word; their grip on us is overcome. And then, after all is said and done, after Easter and the Ascension, we come to the Bible’s other bookend, where the effect of the first one is reversed.  The first bookend was the tower; the second is Pentecost.  Again God uses language, but this time not to scatter but rather to gather.  To gather people from all over the world to hear the glad news that in Christ God forgives our sin, makes us his children, and works to temper our tower-building tendencies so that we might instead live for him and for those around us.

 Pentecost – a day when devout Jews from around the world were gathered in Jerusalem; a day when God used a miracle of language to get the Gospel going ... into the ears of all who were present, whether they were Parthians, Medes, Elamites or residents of Mesopotamia.  The text mentions speaking in tongues and also a miracle of people hearing the good news in their own languages.  Whether the miracle was speaking or hearing, it was still an amazing event sent by God.

 It was also at Pentecost that the disciples, so often clueless when Jesus spoke to them, finally connected the dots.  Finally understood the words of the prophets.  Finally caught the vision, and the Church was born.  Yes, Pentecost Sunday, is the birthday of the Church.

 But what has happened since?  The Church has grown throughout the world, to be sure.  But so have misunderstandings – misunderstandings of Pentecost and of the Holy Spirit.

 I remember Mom and Pop Kincaid.  They ran the Saigon Christian Serviceman’s Center in Viet Nam, an oasis for Christian soldiers like me who were able to get away from the war for a few days.  Mom Kincaid was a tough Scrabble player, a master of short words with Xs and Js.  The Kincaids were also Pentecostals, and were absolutely convinced that my Christian life would be improved by – and perhaps depended upon – my receiving the gift of tongues.  Well, they gave it their best effort but it never took; not even one evening when they had a gathering of folks stand in a circle around me with their hands on my head.  Yes, I was mighty uncomfor­table.  But I knew Mom and Pop Kincaid to be good and caring people, and the evening finally ended well – even though I’m sure they were disappointed at the apparent lack of results.

 My friends, the Holy Spirit, the third partner in the Trinity, is real and wants to work in your life as well as mine.  But we want to be clear about just what that means and what it doesn’t mean.  And it doesn’t mean sensationalism.  If you are put off by the strangeness you sometimes hear about, let me say that I join you in that.  The Holy Spirit’s gifts to the Church are certainly real, but we as people often misuse God’s gifts.  Even the Apostle Paul had to write a letter to a congregation that was getting lost in the sensationalism.  You can read what he says in 1 Corinthians 12-14, and I encourage you to come to the 9:45 am adult education class today and next Sunday where we’ll be talking about Pentecost and the Holy Spirit.

 When the focus is on the sensational, worship too easily crosses the line to strangeness or just entertainment.  It becomes about us, rather than about God.  You can see it on television, you can hear it on the radio.  But Pentecost and the Holy Spirit are not about entertainment or sensa­tion­alism.  Pentecost and the Holy Spirit are about God continuing to build and strengthen his Church.  Whether you have been a Christian since childhood or whether you have recently come to faith, God is not yet finished with you or with me.  And it is the Holy Spirit who continues to teach you and guide you, to comfort you when needed, and to show you where God would have you be.

 Jesus gives us our first clues.  In Mark 13, he tells the disciples that days lie ahead when they would be taken to task for their faith.  But, Jesus says in verse 11,

do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.

 Shortly before his death and resurrection, and his departure from his disciples, he again encourages them.  They can’t imagine going on with­out his daily physical presence in their midst, guiding them and teaching them.  So, as we heard in our Gospel lesson, he tells them that God will continue to counsel them in the person of the Holy Spirit.  He says,

the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.  ... When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. [John 14:26; 15:26].

 That’s what the Holy Spirit does, my friends.  The Holy Spirit points to Jesus.  The Holy Spirit teaches and reminds followers of Jesus.  The Holy Spirit helps you when you read the Bible, when you witness to a friend, when you seek God’s will in your life.  And the Holy Spirit comforts in times of fear or loss.

 But the Holy Spirit does not point to himself and say “Look at me.”  God’s  Spirit may at times use remarkable means to draw people to faith, as he did on the day of Pentecost; but note the result.  In Acts chapter 2, people didn't clap their hands and say Wow!  Rather, they clasped their hands and cried, "What must we do to be saved?"  It’s the results produced that tell whether God’s Spirit is at work or whether it’s merely our human desire for sensation or attention.

 Last week was Confirmation Sunday, so I know we have a group out there who could tell us what Luther wrote about the Holy Spirit in his explanation of Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed.  He says something rather startling at first.  He says, “I believe that I cannot ... believe.”  Well, that’s an abbreviated version.  What it actually says is that, on our own, we simply won’t come to faith.  Because of the power of sin, we’re simply wired to turn our backs on God.  Faith only happens when the Holy Spirit patiently works in your life and mine.  How do the words in the catechism go?  The way I learned it was

I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith; just as he calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith....This is most certainly true.

 My friend, God cares enough for you to not only to die for you but also to send his Spirit to call you, to work within you, to create and nourish the very faith you need.  It may not be an ecstatic or sensa­tional experience – though occasionally it is.  It may not be something that causes you to jump up and say “Wow!” – though sometimes that can happen even to a Lutheran.  Our God is indeed a God of miracles.

 Last weekend, we got our first look at what we are calling our “2020 Vision” – the clearest vision the leaders of our congregation have at this point of where God would lead us in the next decade or so.  Here, too, we are talking about the work and leading of the Holy Spirit, and what Pentecost is all about.  If that first Pentecost were merely a group of folks saying, “Jesus has gone, and now it’s up to us to get this operation back on track; let’s go out and do some street corner preaching,” – if that’s all it had been, the Church would have died on its first weekend.  But it wasn’t that.  Rather, it was the Holy Spirit working in their midst – surprising even them – especially them – so that we later read in v. 41:

Those who accepted [the] message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.

 And it is the same Holy Spirit of God, still active today, who gives us the confidence as a congregation to think in terms of this 13 year ­2020 Vision.  At present, that vision is still only in broad outline.  Some things like worship space, or ideas for the Carter property, or parking lot size, are easy to grasp and talk about.  But the vision before us is much greater than these particular details. As we pray and God’s Spirit leads, the larger details will start to unfold and develop, and the vision will start to gain legs in ways that will surprise us and even those who first laid it out.

As it is with the congregation,  so it is in your life, too, my friend.  You can pray with confidence that God the Holy Spirit

would lead you in making the major decisions of life

       would guide you in your reading and understanding of God’s Word

                      would help you share that life-changing Word with friends

                      would persuade those same friends that they, too, might come to know God in Jesus Christ.

And there is more.  The Bible speaks of the Holy Spirit not only as Counselor but also as “Comforter,” as that powerful presence of God who meets you where you are and gets you through the stress or the grief or the fear.  That can happen when we are alone, but God’s Spirit works most frequently through his gathered community – here as we worship together, or through the support of groups like Stephen Ministry or ChristCare.  Again, the reason God sends his Holy Spirit is to build and strengthen his Church, people like you and me.

Pentecost, the Bible’s second bookend; the birthday of the Church; the day when the Holy Spirit came to give power and understanding and direction to the Church.  When Jesus returned to heaven, he didn’t abandon us or leave us to our own devices.  He sent the Holy Spirit as Counselor, as Comforter.  The Holy Spirit probably won’t help you to speak Swahili in a philosophy class, but he’ll help you speak to your neighbor, or comfort a co-worker, or share Christ with a friend or fellow student.  Because the Holy Spirit always points to Jesus and helps us do the same.  Amen.