362 Clean Water

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Clean Air”, originally shared on June 4, 2025. It was the 362^nd  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Fire season in Southern California means bad air. Christians celebrate a day when fire began a season of clean air. Today, we’re going to find out what that day is.

   Fire “season” is pretty much a year ‘round thing in Southern California. We’re starting to get into the worst of it now, and that means bad air.

   Not that bad air is anything new here.

   Native Americans, particularly the Tongva and Chumash peoples, called what is now the Los Angeles area “the valley of smoke”. The mountains surrounding our low basins trapped smoke from cooking fires, hunting fires, and possibly even wildfires. Occasional high pressure atmospheric conditions made the air even worse.

   I served a church in Compton, California for 9 years before serving a church in San Dimas, California for almost 32 years. I hadn’t been in San Dimas for very long when I was at a synod assembly and a friend from the city asked me what the biggest difference I had found was.

   I said that, if I heard a helicopter in the city my first thought was, “Where’s the crime?”. But if I hear a helicopter in the suburb, my first thought is, “Where’s the fire?”

   Smog in Southern California has gotten much better in recent decades, but we still get bad air from internal combustion engines, and high pressure atmospheric conditions, and climate change related wildfires which make our air quality bad for everybody.

   But this coming Sunday, the vast majority of churches in the world will hear a description read from the Bible of a day when fire brought clean air, in Acts 2:1-21.

   And it happened in weirdness. 😊

   When someone says that he’s going to die and then rise from the dead to live forever, and he says that no one will take his life but that he will give it and then he will take it back again, and then that happens, you’d think that nothing in this weird world could ever approach that for weirdness. But you’d be wrong. Today, we’re going to find out how 50 days after Jesus rose and changed the world, the world was changed. Again.

   The Day of Pentecost is the last Sunday in the Easter season. It’s coming up this Sunday. It’s the birthday of the Church. It’s a festival, a holiday, a holy day.

   The word “Pentecost” is based on the Greek word for “fiftieth”.

   The Day of Pentecost described in the Bible was on the Jewish festival of Shavuot, held on the fiftieth day from the first day of Passover. It celebrated the offering of the first fruits of the winter wheat harvest at the Temple in Jerusalem.

   This was Herod’s Temple and the massive Temple complex covered 35 acres. People from all over the world came for celebration and to see the building, a wonder of the world at that time. The numbers were massive, with some estimating crowds of 250,000 people!

   The disciples were hiding in a house in Jerusalem. They were afraid that what had happened to Jesus could happen to them. They didn’t know what to do. And then this happened in Acts 2:1-4,

2 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ² 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. ³ Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

   Fun fact: in both the Hebrew language in which what we call the Old Testament was written and in the Koine Greek language in which the New Testament was written, there are two words, “ruach” in Hebrew and “pneuma” (from which we get our words “pneumonia” and “pneumatic”) in Greek, that have the same three meanings for both words: wind, breath, and spirit.

   This sound of the wind came and the breath of God that brought life from clay to make human beings was present, and the Holy Spirit, “filled the entire house where they were sitting.”

   That wind, that breath, that Holy Spirit, was clean air. It made them new. It was the wind, the breath, and the Spirit of God.

   Tongues of fire rested on each of the disciples.

   “Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.” (Acts 2:3)

   Here’s a question: Why didn’t their hair catch on fire?

   I remember when one of the member families of a church I served lived in a house on the edge of open country when a wildfire came to their neighborhood one howling windy night. The fire department arrived to fight the fire and recommended that everyone on their cul-de-sac leave. They decided to stay and fight the fire with their garden hoses for as long as they could.

   Some were on the roof and some were on the ground, watching for embers and extinguishing them with their garden hoses.

   At some point, the fire ran up the side of a palm tree and when it reached the dry top the tree exploded. Embers blew everywhere around the area and one of them landed on the head of a neighbor who was also on the roof of his house.

   He apparently used a significant amount of hair spray and had a lot of blown-dried hair on the top of his head because when his hair started burning, he didn’t feel it right away.

   So, our member and his sons yelled at him, “Your hair is on fire!” but it was so windy he couldn’t hear them. So they continued yelling, “Your hair’s on fire!” and he didn’t hear them. But a firefighter standing on the ground heard them, saw the guy with his hair on fire, and turned his fire hose on the guy and knocked him off the roof!

   Why weren’t the disciples running around in a panic when they saw tongues of fire on each other?

   Because it was holy fire. God was present in that holy fire.

   Remember when Moses encountered the burning bush in the wilderness, in Exodus 3:2-6?

² There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. ³ Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up.” ⁴ When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” ⁵ Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” ⁶ He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

   The tongues of fire that didn’t consume the disciples was the presence of God. It cleansed them and they were filled with the Holy Spirit.

   You may have seen or read in the news about the other kind of fire this week. A man in Boulder, Colorado approached a group of people who were peacefully demonstrating for the release of the remaining hostages held privately and by Hamas in Palestine. The man threw two of the 18 Molotov cocktails he had prepared along with a backpack flame thrower. Twelve people were injured, and three remain in the hospital as of this writing. That was the fire that destroys.

   The tongues of fire, the holy fire, the Holy Spirit that came to give birth to the Christian Church, the Body of Christ on the Day of Pentecost, came to bring life.

   Jesus said, in John 10:10,

¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

   Look what happened next, in Acts 2:4,

 “⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”

   The disciples left their refuge and went out to where the people were. And what happened? We’re going to see in a minute. 😊

   It’s been said that the church isn’t a museum for saints, it’s a hospital for sinners, but I think that’s wrong. I think that we’re more like paramedics. We go to where the broken people are.

   That’s where the disciples went. And then things got even weirder.

   What’s going on here?

   Remember the Tower of Babel?

   After the Flood, people began to repopulate the earth, but they didn’t spread out. The all had the same language, and they were all concentrated in one place. This homogeneity and concentration led them to be full of themselves. The same hubris that does us in again and again lifted its head.

   They decided that, since they knew how to make strong bricks and mortar, they could build a tower tall enough to let people get into heaven without God. And how did that work out? We see in Genesis 11:8-9,

 ⁸ So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. ⁹ Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

   So, what does that have to do with the Day of Pentecost? That story continues in Acts 2:6-8,

⁶ And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷ Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸ And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?

   The consequence of the attempted building of the Tower of Babel is now reversed. People from all over the world hear the same Gospel message being proclaimed in their own language.

   This isn’t speaking in tongues. That’s something totally different. This is more like the Star Trek simultaneous translator, where the disciples spoke in their language, but God made it so that every other person present heard the same message about the good news of Jesus Christ in their language.

   Last Sunday, we heard about how Christ prayed that all his faithful people might be one. And we heard about how we are like spokes on a wheel with Christ as the hub of the wheel. The farther away we get from Christ, the farther we get from one another. The closer we get to Christ the closer we get to one another until, at the center, we are all one in Jesus Christ.

   We will see, on this last Sunday in the Easter season, another example of oneness under God’s grace and by God’s doing, in Jesus Christ!

   Our message today, the message of the Day of Pentecost, is that in our broken world, filled with economic uncertainty, the war in Ukraine, gun violence, and global uncertainty, God’s answer is Jesus. In a culture that is fragmented, where we often find it impossible to speak about how to resolve these issues without soon shouting at each other, God’s answer is Jesus.

   The closer we get to Jesus, the closer we get to one another, until we are all one in Jesus.

   How does the Day of Pentecost story end? With Jesus. Peter speaks to the gathered crowd and shares the good news of Jesus, and this happens in Acts 2:37-42,

³⁷ Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” ³⁸ Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹ For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” ⁴⁰ And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” ⁴¹ So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. ⁴² They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

   That’s what happened! About 3,000 persons became Christians. And what did those Christians do? “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

   The way we number our years in the Western world is built around the coming of Jesus. We live in the year 2025 A.D., “Anno Domini” in Latin, “the Year of Our Lord” in English. Jesus was born, fully God and fully human being.

   The Day of Pentecost, the Birthday of the Christian Church through the coming of the Holy Spirit, that we will celebrate this Sunday, comes on the fiftieth day after Easter in the Christian Church.

   The same Holy Spirit continues to call, gather, and enlighten the whole Christian Church on earth. We are equipped and sent into the world with everything we need to be the church. All the Church needs to be the Church is the Holy Spirit.

   We measure the Day of Pentecost from the resurrection of Jesus, the most important day in human history because human beings had rejected God and brought evil into the world.

   We broke the relationship with God that we had been given by God.

   Jesus paid the price on the cross to restore that relationship for all who repent and believe and are baptized. The resurrection showed that Jesus is God and that he could reconcile human beings to God by his death, and his resurrection means that we too will rise. Our eternal life began in our baptism through the faith that came as God’s gift.

   Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:17-20,

¹⁷ If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. ¹⁸ Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. ¹⁹ If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

²⁰ But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.

   He is risen! He is risen indeed! And because he is risen, we too shall rise to newness of life now and to life everlasting!

   Sally and I have found that having a certain kind of noise helps us sleep better. It is the kind of noise that comes from a clean air machine. Though the main purpose of a clean air machine is to clean the air, it also blocks out noises to help you sleep. 😊

   The Holy Spirit does not block out the noises of this world, it calls us, empowers us, and sends us to fix them. It comes as fire, but as holy fire. It comes as fire that cleanses us. As holy air, as clean air. It is clean air: wind and breath and spirit! As the wind, and the breath, and the spirit of God.

   Come, Holy Spirit!

   May this coming Sunday, the Day of Pentecost in the year of Our Lord 2025, be a celebration of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit and a recommittal of your Christian Community to the sharing of the good news of Jesus Christ.

   May we once again open our hearts to the same Holy Spirit that brought us into being as the Church and be formed and guided by it.

   And may it be a day of renewal, to clean the air, in the transformational presence and power of the Holy Spirit.