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Fred Craddock once told the story of driving over to Anderson County to find a little church he’d served decades ago when he was a student pastor. It was a church that had been particularly difficult to deal with. As I recall the story, Fred went into a Deacon’s meeting where he proposed a new idea. The Oak Ridge National Labs was expanding and many new people were moving into the area. They were being housed in trailers not far from the church. Fred proposed that the church people call on the newcomers and invite them into the church.  The Deacons didn’t think that was such a great idea. “They wouldn’t fit in here,” was the common reply.

Well, a week later there was a congregational meeting to vote on Fred’s suggestion to invite these new folks in the trailers into the church. One long-time member of the church stood up and said, “I move that in order to be a member of this church, you must own property in this county.” It was seconded and voted on. Fred voted “No.” Everybody else voted, “Yes.”

And now, many years later, Fred and his wife Nettie were exploring the twisting roads of Anderson County in search of that church he’d served as a young student. Suddenly, coming around a curve, there it was – a tall, white clapboard building with a steeple on top.

And in the parking lot was a huge mass of people – young and old – black and white – well-heeled and not well-heeled. And they were milling about dozens of motor vehicles – brand new luxury cars, old beat-up clunkers – even some Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

What a change had taken place!

But then Fred noticed something. The sign out front indicated the church wasn’t a church anymore.

It was an all-you-can-eat barbecue restaurant!

After a few moments of stunned silence, Fred said to Nettie, “You know, I think it’s a good thing that church became an all-you-can-eat barbecue restaurant because if it was still a church, most of these people wouldn’t be allowed in.”

And Fred and Nettie marveled at all those people filling up the restaurant – Parthians and Medes, Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia…

Welcome to Pentecost Sunday!

It is the birthday of the Christian Church – the day the followers of Jesus became the Church, despite their best efforts to NOT be the Church! If I were to ask you what the difference was among the Jesus followers BEFORE the Day of Pentecost and AFTER the Day of Pentecost, what would you say? My answer would be: before Pentecost, they were a little bunch of scared people hiding together in a locked upper room that gave them some sense of comfort and security; and after Pentecost, they were out in the community, among the Parthians, Medes and Elamites, sharing the story of Jesus Christ and inviting everyone they could to come and join the faith. And the book of Acts tells us that, at the end of that day of Pentecost, about 3,000 people were baptized into the faith and family of Jesus Christ. And Acts goes on to demonstrate that as those 3,000 people brought their new faith OUT to the community, even more people came to know Christ. And as they reached out, still others joined until – many, many, many generations later – some faithful members of Christ’s Church reached out to…YOU.

We would not be here today were it not for the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came and cracked open the hard shell of an inwardly-turned group of Christians. And the Holy Spirit pushed them OUT of that comfortable locked upper room to the world God was calling them to evangelize – that is to share the Good News about Jesus and his love, and invite them all to come and join the party.

Now Jesus had told them about this soon-to-come movement from the inside to the outside – from a me-centered religion to an others-centered religion. He had said, “When the Spirit comes, you will receive POWER to become my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH.”

Jesus calls us to an “inside-out” kind of faith.

But it takes the power of the Holy Spirit to make that happen.

Why? Because we are by nature self-centered people. And self-centered people have a self-centered faith where it’s mostly “all about me” and getting my own needs met. And self-centered Christians build self-centered churches. And self-centered churches get really nervous when student pastors propose that they reach out to people in trailer parks…or even to people just beyond their walls in their own communities.

Now, I’m not saying that self-centeredness makes us bad people. It’s just the way people are! Erik Erikson, a pioneer in the field of Child Development, once remarked that babies are born self-centered – they are the center of their own little universe and when they get hungry, or wet, somebody better take care of it or nobody’s going to get any sleep that night!  And as babies grow into children, there develops this powerful tension between themselves and everybody else in the world. One of the first words my children mastered was, “MINE!”

But it’s not just little kids! One Sunday, in a church I once served, we decided to change the Lord’s Prayer – using the actual words of the prayer as recorded in the Gospel of Luke in place of the smoothed over version we usually recite. Afterwards, an 80-something year old woman came up to me and said “What have you done to MY Lord’s Prayer?”

MINE!

Thank God we hadn’t messed with anybody’s hymns that day!

All our lives, we struggle with this inner need to make ourselves the center of everything.

But here comes the Holy Spirit.

I suppose you can describe the Holy Spirit in a lot of fancy theological ways, but I think it’s most helpful to think of the Holy Spirit as the power God gives you to get outside yourself and into the will of God.

When the Spirit came on Pentecost, the locked doors were flung open and out popped the followers of Jesus to start the job he’d given them – “Go and make disciples of all people, baptizing them into the family of faith, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you – to love God and to love their neighbors as themselves.”

Studies show that “other-centered” people are happier than “self-centered” people. This is the reason it is so important when newly retired people move into a new community like our beautiful Tellico Village to find a church home. Retirement can delude us into thinking that true happiness can be attained by sitting back now and letting life entertain us. And life CAN be entertaining, but it quickly loses its MEANING when life centers on simply serving ourselves. When you become active in a church, you are constantly challenged to find purpose in life. This is particularly true in this church because our orientation is outwardly directed toward the community. That’s what we are – a COMMUNITY church! We are here to serve – we send volunteers out to spread Christ’s love through all sorts of agencies and ministries – we open our buildings for the use of community groups that do good work that benefits others – we raise money for good causes – we provide scholarships for kids and you’ve never seen a happier group of people than Fred Q. and his Missions Team when they award those scholarships at high school graduation ceremonies, and later when they welcome the college kids we support here on Scholarship Sunday. Just this week I was noticing that Larry and Betsy K. are going out to serve food to the hungry today at the Knox Area Rescue Ministry. What struck me about this is that Larry and Betsy went out and did the same thing just two or three weeks ago! In fact, I ran into this amazing couple at a local restaurant that night. They had just finished serving the hungry and were now sitting down to enjoy dinner themselves. They were laughing and having a great time, and I’m sure they were experiencing what people often do when they serve others. As many people have so often said, “I think I get more out of it than they do!”

OF COURSE! That’s the Gospel of Jesus! When you give, you receive! When you lay down your life you find life! When you reach OUTSIDE yourself, God takes care of the INSIDE yourself – and you find wholeness, and joy.

Everybody needs a church. Everybody needs the opportunity to get outside themselves.

Do you know some people who don’t have a church home? Maybe you need to reach out to them in loving ways. Do you know some people who spend their lives taking care only of themselves? Maybe you can figure out some way to lead them toward a higher purpose.

Some time ago, a mom and dad were concerned about their son and his family. They were all about money. Career. Success. Living the good life. They were much too busy doing other self-pleasing things to be a part of a church anymore. But I think this mother and father had the Holy Spirit in them. At one time, they had been where their son and his family were now, but somewhere along the line, the Spirit came to them and changed their lives forever. They wished their son and his family could know the joy of living outside themselves.

Then they got an idea. It must have been the Holy Spirit! They decided to ask their son and his wife if they’d let them take their grandchildren – ages 12 and 14 – on a summer mission trip to Central America. That seemed like a good idea, and so Amy and Michael went off with their grandparents to work on an orphanage in Guatemala. When they came home, they were different kids. They had seen life from a completely different perspective than their affluent suburban experience. They had met children who had no parents, and often had no food. They had experienced life in a community where it would be a miracle just to get clean water. And now, back home, they saved their money, and took odd jobs,  and held modest fundraisers to help construct a new water well for this orphanage.

When their parents saw this in their children, they were moved. And when the next summer came, they joined the mission trip to Guatemala, too. And as they sweated under the heat of the day digging the well and constructing a dormitory and making friends with little orphaned children, their lives began to change.

As the mother of these children later said, “One night, I was lying in the tent, swatting mosquitoes away, and suddenly realized I had never been so happy in my life.”

The Holy Spirit was at work.

And the Holy Spirit is at work in you, too.

And the Holy Spirit is at work in our church.

Reaching out – giving – sharing – loving – inviting everybody to the love and life of Jesus Christ.

I wish I could close this sermon by asking you to make a commitment to move your faith from the inside to the outside. But I can’t. We don’t have the power to do that – to overcome our natural tendency to make it all about ourselves.

That’s why Jesus told his followers they had to wait until the Spirit came to them. Then – and only then – would they receive POWER to become Christ’s witnesses in Jerusalem, and Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

But what the disciples COULD do was pray for the Holy Spirit to come upon them. Acts tells us they devoted themselves to prayer.

And then, one day – this day – the day of Pentecost – the Holy Spirit came.

And they found the inside-out faith that makes a church the Church of Jesus Christ.

So today I invite you to pray.

Pray that the Holy Spirit will come to you.

Amen.