Voices In My Head Podcast Episode 321: Pentecost

Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. And by the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay. Where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head. Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James, and I'm so glad you could be here with me this week. We're gonna be talking about Pentecost this week, and I wanna tell you that We have some exciting episodes coming up, at least they're exciting for me. We will be back with guests, should all go according to plan, for at least the next 2 weeks. Next week the plan is to have Eli Williams on. Eli Williams has a great new book about fatherhood, and we're going to have a special Father's Day episode. He is a great leader here in our community in Springfield, Ohio, but a nationally known radio host and a really, really interesting fella. So I am really looking forward to being able to talk him about some of his good work and the book that he's authored. And also in the next couple of weeks, the plan is to have another episode live from Temple Shalom here in Springfield, Ohio, with our friend Rabbi Cary Kosberg. Cary reached out and wanted to do another episode, and he specifically wants to talk about the Jewish view of creation. And I think that is going to be a fascinating episode. So we've got great things ahead, and we've got a great episode today about Pentecost. I hope you're really going to enjoy it. I know that many of us are thinking ahead because I'm I am recording this on the 4th of June, and this coming Sunday in 2019 will be Pentecost Sunday. So it felt like a good time to talk about that. Just before we do, a couple of quick words from sponsors for those of you who might be considering starting a podcast for yourself. I can't tell you how many times during a month I get contacted from people, whether by phone or a text message or an email or even just a conversation sometimes with a friend who is wondering about how to start a podcast. And I I gotta tell you that Podbean is one of the great tools for you to use in order to get your podcast out. 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Podbean is the great way for you to meet all of your podcasting needs at home, at your business, at your church— church, can't talk very well— at your church, whatever it is you do and whatever your interests are, you can find Podbean as a great resource. All right, one other thing I wanted to tell you all about. Most of you know if you've been listening for a while, of course, I am a musician. If you listen to the intro of the show, you know that, but I have an album out that released just a few months ago. Called Thunder. It features a never-before-released song by the late Rich Mullins called Thunder. That's why we called the album that. But there's a lot of other tracks on there as well. I've already released 3 music videos from that album, which you can find online if you go to youtube.com/rickleejames, or if you just go to my website, rickleejames.com, and under the tabs, just click the video link tab, you'll be able to see them there. But what I really want to tell you about is a deal that we have going on right now. We only have a few of these left. We started out with 10, and we're offering $10 off of the clear vinyl. We have released the album not only on iTunes and Spotify and Amazon and all the digital ways that you get it, but we also released it on CD and on vinyl. And it's a special edition clear vinyl. It looks really cool, it sounds even better, and it really is a great piece of art not only to listen to but to see. That's one thing I love about vinyl is you're able to go back back to the days when you had some really cool artwork. You just can't see the beautiful design in the way that, that, uh, that Jessica Valle intended for you to see it on just that little tiny Spotify window. If you actually get the vinyl, you can see the beauty of her design and the concepts there. And the clear vinyl looks really cool. So what we're doing is if you use the code SPRINGSALE, uh, that's just like it sounds, SPRINGSALE. If you type that in when you check out through rickleejames.myshopify.com or at rickleejames.com if you, if you buy the album through there, use the spring sale code and you'll get $10 off your purchase of the vinyl while supplies last. We only have a limited number of codes. I don't know how many are left. We sold 2 just this morning, so you might want to move quickly if you're gonna get one of those. And we need to move it. It helps the distributor know that I am worth working with, the more albums that they move. And it really helps me out in my ministry. Those vinyls are not cheap to to make. So go to rickleejames.com or rickleejames.myshopify.com and use the code SPRINGSALE and get $10 off your purchase of Thunder on Vinyl. And the bonus is that when you buy that, you actually get the album digitally and it'll be sent to you immediately once you make your purchase. So there you go, end of the advertisements for today. Let's talk about Pentecost. All right, so the passage that we're going to use this week, this coming Sunday, if you're listening at least during the first week of June when I'm recording this, it's going to be Acts chapter 2, verses 1 through 21. And I'm just going to read the text for you and give you some thoughts on that this morning. And because I know that as pastors, worship leaders, Sunday school teachers, different people who do different functions throughout the church, maybe you're even leading a Bible study, Pentecost is a big, big holiday, and it's, it's a great day for for the church to celebrate. So here is the scripture where it comes from. Acts chapter 2, verses 1 through 21. When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place. By the way, speaking of the disciples, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound from heaven, like the howling of a fierce wind, filled the entire house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak. There were pious Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. When they heard this sound, a crowd gathered. They were mystified because everyone heard them speaking in their native language. They were surprised and amazed, saying, "Look, aren't all the people who are speaking Galileans, every one of them? How can each of us be hearing them speaking in our own native language?" Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, as well as residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and the regions of Libya bordering on Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the mighty works of God in our own languages. They were all surprised and bewildered Some asked each other, "What does this mean?" Others jeered at them, saying, "They're full of new wine!" Peter stood up with the other 11 apostles. He raised his voice and declared, "Judeans and everyone living in Jerusalem, know this! Listen carefully to my words. These people aren't drunk as you suspect. After all, it's only 9 o'clock in the morning!" Rather, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your young will see visions, your elders will dream dreams. Even upon my servants, men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. I will cause wonders to occur. In the heavens above and signs on the earth below— blood and fire and a cloud of smoke. The sun will be changed into darkness and the moon will be changed into blood before the great and spectacular day of the Lord comes. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. This is the word of the Lord, and we are thankful for it. And I pray that the Spirit will speak to us in these few thoughts that I have to add to the reading today. I have to tell you that in planning for Pentecost every year, at least in the Church of the Nazarene, I'm always a little bit disappointed at how few songs about Pentecost there are. There are a few songs about the Holy Spirit, but I really want to tell the story again because I don't feel like it is a story that is super well known, maybe even in the church. Oftentimes it's one of our three big holidays, and yet it's probably the only big Christian holiday that we have that I can think of. We have Easter, we have Christian, uh, Christmas, But it's the big one for Christians that really doesn't have like a secular counterpart to it. Like, you know, at Christmas we have Santa Claus and we have all these Christmas shows and things, and you could technically get through Christmas without ever even hearing about Jesus. You could technically get through Easter with nothing but bunnies and eggs and chocolates and candies and things like that, and you could miss Jesus. Easily in this. But Pentecost, we don't have the Easter Bunny, we don't have Santa, we don't have the Pentecost puppy, or, you know, whatever the animal might be that would be the equivalent. Maybe we should though. I sure do like puppies, and puppies seem to love everybody. They're very inclusive. But, but this is very interesting in that it doesn't really have sort of that secular equivalent out there. And so when I come to a hymnal or to songs about the Holy Spirit, I really want to be able to tell the story again. And it's so hard to find those really strong songs about Pentecost. You know, we have a lot about the cross. I have a similar frustration oftentimes with Easter because we have so much about the cross, and often we don't sing about the resurrection, which is the true miracle and the true power of the Easter story. The cross is defeated. The resurrection is the power of the story. But we have so many songs that just dwell on the cross only. So we come to Pentecost, and you know, I've come again this week. I've I planned music for this coming Sunday, and as I often seem to have to do, I take a familiar hymn tune and I have to put new lyrics to it, or find someone else's poetry like Charles Wesley or somebody who did a good job, which we're doing this week, one of Wesley's hymns, one of Wesley's poems, and we've put it to the tune of a familiar hymn, and we're singing a song of Pentecost this week. So on the music end of things, I find it a little difficult and frustrating But there's so much, as you just heard in that passage, there's so much that we need to be dealing with and so much that we need to be covering. And so these are just a few of the things that I'll be thinking about as we head into Pentecost this week. Pentecost is something that requires us to go out into the world and proclaim the good news. It's something that the Holy Spirit empowers us to do. It takes place 50 days, or 7 weeks, after Pentecost. It's not a season like the season of Advent, or the season of Christmas, or the season of Lent, or the season of Easter. It is one day, but it's one day where something big happens, but then it happens again and again and again. We see the Holy Spirit and the gift of the Spirit being given and breaking out. Now it's interesting that in Judaism, Pentecost is a celebration that is still to this day celebrated. We don't often hear about that, but the And the reason this happened at Pentecost is it's the time when people were coming together to celebrate the giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai. That's what Pentecost is in Judaism. That's why they were all there together. And if you notice in the story, the story does not include everyone on the day of Pentecost that Jesus talks about it including. He tells the disciples to go and wait for the promised gift of the Holy Spirit, and when they receive it, they will become witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. But on the day of Pentecost, only observant Jews are there. They come from different parts of the world, but everybody there, they are all Jews. It's a bit like preaching to the choir. Now, yes, they do all hear themselves. There's this gift that's happening, and they all are hearing in their own language,. And there's a lot of different views on that, whether it's something the Holy Spirit did and was interpreting the words, or whether people chose to speak in a hospitable way to people outside of their own nationality. You know, Jewish people were coming from all over. They weren't just from Jerusalem. If you look in the scripture passage that we read, there were Jews there from many different places. They were there from Parthians, and there were Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, and Egypt, regions of Libya and Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, Jews and converts to Judaism. But they were all Jews. This was a message that was being given to the Jewish people. The message starts with the people of God, and God wants it to spread out into all the world. That's what the day of Pentecost is about. It's about bringing the good news out into the world, but allowing the Holy Spirit to be the one to bring the good news, allowing the Holy Spirit to work and to flow through the people of God who have been waiting and praying and watching and listening. And it is the birth of the church. So the giving of the Law of Moses at Sinai becomes this date where all of them were there together to celebrate when God is doing a new thing through the Holy Spirit, that God is beginning to speak in a new way to his people. It's not the church yet. They don't have the New Testament written. Even the passage we read today was not written yet. And they start to interpret what's going on by using what, what we now call the Old Testament. Joel, it's inclusive of, of everyone. You know, when, when you have the giving of the law at Sinai It is for everyone, especially for widows and orphans and immigrants and everybody all around. But in this story of Acts, it's starting with the Jews, and that's where the news begins to spread. People are coming from all different places, and they receive the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, and we see it happen again and again throughout the book of Acts, and we still see a moving of the Holy Spirit throughout the world. I'm being told by people who travel around the world that we are seeing things happen around the world in ways that are even bigger than we saw in Scripture. The converts are being made, that the Holy Spirit is moving upon the church everywhere in the world, but we see it less in America than we see it anywhere else because we are one of the least godly nations, probably, in my opinion. But that's a whole other story. It's interesting to see how the Holy Spirit is moving, and even though we may feel one way about the place we live and there may be reasons where we don't see the Spirit moving as strongly as we like, it's the same God here and it's the same Holy Spirit. And the same Holy Spirit is still reaching out and still looking for those who would be carried along by the Spirit and will bring the message of the good news. And so we are a part of this story, the continuation of the Holy Spirit. We are a part of this revealing of the Holy Spirit to the world. It's not just something that happens in the Bible. They are interpreting it using the prophet Joel. When Peter stands up and he begins his sermon from Joel, and he blends judgment and deliverance and the Spirit coming and anticipation of the end of the world, which happens in the prophet Joel. The proclamation is that the last days have come to an end and the new days are beginning. They are expecting the coming of Jesus like next Tuesday, like right now, like he's coming. And it's a ramp-up to the end of days. Jesus will come again. The new world is coming, and that's what we are proclaiming on Pentecost. The apocalypse is near. But it's not a fearful Walking Dead type apocalypse. It is a glorious healing of the nations. It is a glorious time when Jesus will come back and judgment will fall upon us, and a new heaven and a new earth— and the new heaven and the new earth will come down and be remade. And the interesting thing about the story is the Holy Spirit's fire, it is coming to purify us. Often churches will wear red on Pentecost Sunday to signify that, but we get to be a part part of this invitation. Our task is to carry this message in the world that Jesus is coming, and that the Holy Spirit is here, and the Holy Spirit will show up. The Holy Spirit has shown up, but will we allow ourselves to be carried along by that Holy Spirit? There's a beautiful picture at the end of the Book of Revelation, and I just finished a book— I can't remember, maybe it was a couple of weeks ago now— by Brad Jurczak called Her Gates Will Never Be Shut. Um, I believe that's the title. I hope I didn't mess it up. Uh, it's something to that effect, but it's about Revelation— I think it's chapter 22, it's the next to the last chapter in the book— when it talks about the new heaven and that only those whose names are written in the Book of Life will be there, but that the gates of heaven will never be shut. And it's interesting to me that we are a part of— this movement— Christians are part of a movement to proclaim to the world that Jesus is returning, that heaven is going to come down, that resurrection that we saw in Jesus when God raised Jesus from the grave, that's going to happen again, and it's going to happen to all of us. And whether or not we are then going to enter into the kingdom whether we are going to be in a place where we face our judgment is going to be up to us. It's going to probably be a painful time for all of us in some way or another, but we are invited into this Kingdom Feast, but only those whose names are written in the Book of Life will be able to come in, but the gates are never shut. I don't know exactly what to do with that. I don't know how things are all gonna play out and how things are gonna end, but this is the message that we carry into the world. It's the message that we bring at Pentecost. Because Jesus is returning, and we want to be as ready as we possibly can be. We want to live as people carried along by the Spirit, not people who fight against the move of the Spirit. We want to stop resisting and be carried along. Bob Dylan had a song years ago that said, "The times, they are a-changin'." And on Pentecost, man, I almost feel like that would be an appropriate song to sing on that day, maybe with a few modifications. The times, they are a-changin'. The times have changed. We are living in the last days when we expect Jesus to return. A few years ago, and I'll close with this story, a few years ago I was invited to go up in a hot air balloon with my pastor as part of a pastor appreciation gift. And we were a little worried when we set out that morning to meet up with the hot air balloon and, um, I guess the hot air balloon pilot. I guess that's what you call an air balloon pilot. Call it, a balloonist, a balloonatic, I don't know what you call them. But it was windy and it was kind of rainy, and we were a bit concerned that we're going to be blown all over the place in the sky in this air balloon. And yet when we got in, once we got off the ground and got up into the stream of the wind, we didn't feel wind anymore, and we really weren't blown and tossed around even though it was a pretty windy day. But we were just carried along. And while we were on the ground, it was rough. It was blowing because we were against gravity. We were resisting, and as the wind blew, we were resisting against it. We were standing against the wind, and it's a hard thing to do. When the wind is blowing, you have to kind of plant yourself and work against it. But when we were in that air balloon, we were carried along. It was peaceful. It was calm. It was quiet. And honestly, it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen as we looked over the farmland and we traveled and we just looked down at this site. And I'm a person who has quite a bit of problem with heights, and yet even I was overcome by the beauty that we were seeing. Farmland that we've probably seen hundreds of times. We've driven through it before, but from this new perspective, as we were carried along in the wind to wherever it would take us, and we weren't resisting, we saw the beauty of the creation all around us. And we saw a new heaven and a new earth. We saw the heavens differently. We saw the earth differently. We saw them in new ways, and it was a beautiful spectacle for us. Now the interesting thing was to me, as sort of this living parable was lived out in my life, as we got back closer to the ground, and closer and closer we got, and as the ground seemed to get bigger and bigger as we moved closer to it, the wind kept blowing. And we could tell that it was a windy time, and we couldn't find a good spot to land in. Again, when you're in a hot air balloon, you're just being carried along wherever the wind wants to take you. And we came down in a less than ideal spot, and the basket hit in the middle of this cornfield, and it was a landing that hurt. When we once again got back in the grip of gravity, we were drug along. We, we hit pretty hard. We had corn stalks that were going up in our clothes. It kind of busted up the basket a little bit where we were, because when we hit the ground Once again, we were resisting again. We stopped being people who were just carried along by the wind. And one thing that I find very interesting is that wind is the word that is used for Spirit time and time again throughout Scripture. There's a point where it even talks about the disciples being carried along by the Spirit wherever He would guide. And if Pentecost signifies anything to me, when I think about Pentecost Sunday, it's a time when the apostles availed themselves through prayer and through waiting and through watching by the Holy Spirit, that they waited until they were no longer afraid, and the Spirit overcame them and overwhelmed them, and they just stopped resisting, and they started being moved along by the Spirit. And that's when we saw the church begin to grow and to move and to become something new. We saw a new work being enacted that is still going on to this day. As we boldly proclaim that Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not, that Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again. Well, I hope you have a wonderful Pentecost Sunday this week. I hope that the Spirit moves you, that you are carried along by the wind this week, and that you will not resist, and that as Jesus empowers you with his words that you'll be able to tell the story once again. And maybe if you even have a hard time sharing, sometimes our tongues get tied, maybe we could just say a prayer and say, Jesus, will you, through the Holy Spirit, will you just tell them the good news in their hearts? Because it doesn't matter what I say anyway. What is important is the message that you bring. We will stay and we will wait, but Lord, would you please do the speaking? And will you please do the ministering? And we will allow ourselves to be carried along in you. Well, that's all I have for you this week. Thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. I look forward to sharing with you next week as hopefully, if all goes according to plan, we have our guest Eli Williams in our special Father's Day episode. God bless you and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head this week. Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at RickLeeJames.com, where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at RickLeeJames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. This is Rick Lee James, and the music you are hearing is from my new album, Thunder. The title track, Thunder, is a never-before-released song by the late Rich Mullins. There are also 12 other tracks made up of original music, hymns, and readings to guide the listener on a journey. You can buy Thunder today on Clear Vinyl and CD, or stream it on Spotify, Apple Music, and almost every other music streaming service. Thunder, hear it today at rickleejames.com.