SERMON

WAITING FOR THE DAY!

By

Eldridge E. Fleming, Ph.D.

New Hope Presbyterian Church

June 11, 2000

The Day of Pentecost

Readings: Acts:2:1-21; Romans 8:22-27; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

The Call to Worship: (Psalm 104:24-34).

The Children's Sermon:

Today is Pentecost Sunday. Why do we wear red on Pentecost Sunday? See, I have on a red stole and the choir has those red things around their necks that I can't even remember the name of. Represents blood. All right. That's one possibility. What is another possibility? What is red that you know? What color is fire? Red. It's what? Red. Red. That's true.

So on Pentecost Sunday something happened in Jerusalem. Right after Jesus had gone back to heaven, he told his disciples to go back to the place where they had been staying. A lot of times it was called the Upper Room, and it was that place or one similar. They went back and Jesus told them to do something special, to go back and remain in prayer. He told them that when the Spirit comes upon them, they would be filled with power. So they went back and they were praying and staying together, eating and drinking and enjoying living. Then on this day that was Pentecost Day -- the Feast of Pentecost -- on this particular day, all of a sudden the wind sounded funny. You've never been in a tornado, have you? No. You've never been in a hurricane? No. Have you ever been in a bad storm? Yes. Uh huh. What did the wind do? Make lots of noise. Right. Howling noises we hear often in the wintertime when the winter winds are coming and the fronts are moving through. Well, this was a terrible sound. A mighty sound of rushing wind. It came so powerfully that the place was disturbed.

It says that the Spirit came upon those disciples who were there as a tongue. Now when you stick your tongue out at one another -- oh, you don't do that. But when you stick your tongue out in the mirror when you're inspecting your tongue, does it split? Have you ever looked at your tongue? Does it have a fork in it? What has a fork in its tongue? You don't know? You've never watched a snake? Oh. A snake has a forked tongue. That's right.

Anyway, this Spirit came and it came like tongues of fire and those tongues flamed. When you watch flames, do you see those tongues of fire that shoot up? Well, it was as though those tongues of fire lighted on each of those people and each one had a tongue and they were filled with the Spirit. As they were filled with the Spirit, they did something they never had done before. They could speak in a foreign language. What would happen one morning if you came to the breakfast table and you started speaking in a language that was different than the house language? Can you imagine asking someone to pass something in a foreign language and they don't understand you?

Well in this case, people had that power to speak in a foreign language so they could be understood because there were people from all over the world that were there, and whenever the sound came like that wind, people came out to see what was going on. They saw all this commotion. The wind was coming and the Spirit was in them and tongues were on those people and they began to speak. You'll hear me reading about that in a few moments. The people thought these disciples were drunk. They'd been eating and drinking and having a good time, but the people thought they had carried it too far. But it wasn't what they thought, they were speaking so that everyone could understand them. Today we wear red because it represents the flame, the fire of the Spirit. Those people who received that flame and spoke in those tongues were never the same again.

So whenever God's Spirit comes into us, we're never the same again. We're different. We do things we didn't think we could do. We may be able to talk to people we never thought we could talk to. That is what Pentecost is about. It is about God's Spirit coming upon the disciples so that they were able to speak with the crowd and the crowds were huge -- three thousand folks that day believed in God and were baptized.

Pentecost is a day, some people say, when the church was born. The disciples up to that point were Jesus' followers, but at this point, they became witnesses to the whole world. For the first time they had the power within them from God to be witnesses to the whole world and they did it with all that were there. All those people who heard them that day, all those people who believed that day, all those people who were baptized that day, went back wherever they came from and they told the story of what had happened. That is where the church was inspired and empowered so it could go and do its work in the world.

Today we still have people who have that sense of call, that sense of inspiration, that sense of empowering from the Spirit and they go do things in the world -- and you can do the same. Let's pray.

Father, we give you thanks for today and what it means, for its power. Help us -- each one -- to be your witnesses. In the name of Christ we pray. Amen.

The Scripture Reading:

I do want to take a point of privilege now and get the embarrassment over with. It always embarrasses your guests when you introduce them, but it is necessary that we do that. It is necessary because of my pride. I have to humor it every once in a while.

There is a person present this morning who looks so much like me that I could not deny him were I to try, and that is my oldest son, Dr. Timothy Fleming. He has one of those funny things on his face, but I don't know what they call that. Anyway, this is Tim that I keep referring to from time to time, and his lovely wife, Millie. Next to Millie is Bailey. Next to Bailey is Ashley. Bailey Fleming and Ashley White were with us two or three weeks ago and I introduced them at that time. I want to tell you something about these two granddaughters. We have three granddaughters and three grandsons -- Martha and I, our families together. There are two boys in Texas and one newborn in Meridian. The two boys and these two granddaughters are very special because, you see, I had the privilege of being at all of their baptisms when they were very small. Ashley was at First Methodist Church in Tupelo and Bailey was at Kingston Avenue in Laurel and of course, the two boys were also at First Methodist. Now the boys are Presbyterian and Bailey is now at Calvary Baptist in Tupelo and Ashley is at Aldersgate Methodist in Huntsville, but at the time of their baptism they were all at those two places I mentioned. They are with me this morning and I want to do something very special in that sense.

Then behind them, of course, are three people who have been here before that you know: Liz and Clyde Hampton and Joe Hall. They are the contingent that give us friendship and support from over in Hamilton, Alabama. You'll have a chance to meet all of these as I think they are planning to go with us to lunch. Now don't tell them anything that they ought not to know, just tell them the good stuff and leave the other off, if you would, please. And vice-versa, by the way.

Let's look now at our first reading of the Scripture for the morning. The first lesson comes from Acts 2:1-21.

The second reading comes from Romans 8:22-27.

The gospel reading for the day comes from John 15:26-27; 16:4-15. If you can and would, will you stand with me as we hear the gospel? By the way, this is Jesus is speaking to his disciples on that last evening.

Hear the Word of the Lord for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Thank you.

The Sermon:

It has been two weeks since we were here. Seems like it has been forever. For some of you, I'm sure, that's the way you feel. But it has been two weeks.

In that period of time we have engaged in some activities that I want to share with you. Some of them are funny and some are not so funny. One of the things that I forgot to tell the children this morning is about the red. When I went into the sanctuary at Booneville this morning, Kathy Dunaway came into the vestibule as I was coming out of the sanctuary before time to start and she said, "My, you look very Pentecostal today." And I checked my hairdo! Well, it is Pentecostal Sunday -- Pentecost Sunday -- and so it is a good day to do some laughing and I hope that you will before we have finished.

Two weeks is a long time because a lot happens and a lot did happen in these two weeks. On Friday -- a week ago this past Friday -- before we left Huntsville going to McComb, I checked in on my answering machine as I tried to do every day once or twice. I had two messages. One message was from Keith Shackelford saying that Una Hill, mother to Patsy Johnson and Grandmother to Mitzi, that some of you know from Northeast Community College, had a major stroke and was in the hospital. The other message was from DeJanira Morton telling me of a tragedy that had happened in this community and that Linton Rhodes had drowned. I had just returned from my walk and had dressed for the morning to get ready for the travel and we were waiting for events of the day to develop before we actually left Huntsville to drive to McComb, which was a five or six hour drive. With those two messages I followed up on the one from Mrs. Morton to find out what could be done here.

The reason we were going to McComb, of course, was because I had a niece who was wanting to be married and I had promised her months ago in January that I would do it. Now that event is something in and of itself and I'll share it in a moment. But when I heard the news of those two things, I made the phone calls to Mrs. Rhodes and others. It was about that time that I began to have a problem with my left eye.

So as we finally got out of town and headed to McComb, it began to get worse. Along the way I tried to make some contact with physicians in Meridian and McComb to have them check it, but that was to no avail. Finally I took my contact lens out, thinking that the oily-like view that I was looking through was from something underneath the lens, but it was inside the eye. We got to McComb with no way of getting a physician to check it and so, we went to our favorite shopping place where you have to have a fix that was used already as a reference point in Corinth. We went to Wal-Mart to get my glasses so that I could see how to read the script for the wedding, and there on the wall outside I saw, "Dr. Wendell L. Holmes, M. D., Ophthalmologist." Who would have ever thought that Wal-Mart would have in their vision center an Ophthalmologist? We went in, but he had just left, but I got an appointment for the next morning. So we went to the wedding rehearsal after we got the glasses from Wal-Mart and went through the rehearsal.

Some of you have been here to see me as I prepare people for marriage. The wedding ceremony, to me, is very, very important. It is that platform from which the whole family comes, and if the couple understands fully what they are doing and they still agree to do it, then things can work out -- usually -- pretty well. So I began, as I do when it became my turn to do the ceremony, by opening with a prayer and began to talk about what we were going to do.

I could look at that crowd and tell that it was not your "Sunday morning go to church crowd." There were about twenty-five to thirty of them there and you could just tell by looking at where they were coming from. So somehow or the other I was inspired to say to them, "How many of you are regular attenders at church?" I know that was something of a foolish thing to do with a young crowd, but I did it anyway. Three arms went up. I was flabbergasted! I thought surely out of that crowd more than that would know something about the church. I said to them, "I'm here for two reasons. One reason is that my niece asked us to be here, but the second reason I'm here is because I'm a Christian minister and my purpose is to see that this is a Christian wedding and that the ceremony will be thoroughly Christian. Now some of you here will not understand what this ceremony is about, because you have to be involved in the church to understand the meaning of the wedding ceremony."

So I began to go through it, piece by piece, and explained to them what this was all about and why we do what we do. I tried, then, to help all those males present to understand that nothing was final until the woman said it was okay. Sometimes men don't understand that. They live a miserable life. I wanted to honor the women by letting them know that we knew it and that nothing was final until the woman said "I do" or "All right." Well, once we got past that hurdle, things went along rather well. We did that, we went through the rehearsal piece by piece. It took us about an hour and a half because I had a lot of teaching to do. I saw that opportunity for evangelization and I just took it. Afterwards, after we had all stood in our places -- and by the way, the wedding is outside. It's a lawn wedding. Not a long, it's a lawn, l-a-w-n, wedding and the pine trees are, oh, about twenty-four inches in diameter, tall and straight. Pine trees in South Mississippi grow up there and they don't have a lot of leaves or needles on the end and so the sun can filter through and a three o'clock wedding on Saturday was not exactly cool and air-conditioned. But there was a gentle breeze and there was a little bit of a cloud that would pass now and then and it turned out beautifully.

But another thing about this wedding was that it was a Scottish wedding. Thanks to Dr. Frank Brooks who is with us this morning, he had shared with me the official Scottish wedding ceremony straight from Scotland, one that is the state church ceremony. We used it and it went beautifully, and I didn't trip over too many of those words in there either. It's a little different from the Episcopal ceremony we usually use, but it is beautiful. Now because of the groom's interest in things Scottish and his Scottish background, they wore kilts. They had on a tux top and kilts -- some people call them skirts -- that were beautifully done. They had to be hand made and they had that big gold or brass pin down on the side of the skirt because they didn't want too much under the skirt showing, so they were all done up nicely. They had six groomsmen and the groom who had these on and they were trying to get one of the groomsmen fixed up. The trouble was that his pin was on the left and they discovered that he had his kilt on wrong-side-out. We were outside on this lawn and it's time for them to go processing in and he has the thing on wrong-side-out, so they form a closet of human bodies around him and he changes his skirt -- maybe I should say kilt -- right in the middle of the lawn. With people around him, he just takes it off and turns it around, and works it out rather nicely.

The ladies in the party were barefoot. We had a saying down where I grew up, "Keep 'em barefoot and pregnant and you don't have to worry about them," but here these were all coming to the ceremony barefoot. This lawn had beautiful grass and they had swept the pine needles off where the ceremony was to take place, but the rest of the grass was covered with a bed of needles. It was beautiful. The wedding came along just right and everybody processed in and everything was in place and they rolled out the white satin runner for the bride to walk down. It was hot, but there was just a little breeze, and just as they rolled the runner out they made a little bend to go up where the bride was and the wind came up and caught it and tucked it and they had to redo it. That was the only hitch that came up and it was a beautiful outside wedding and it went along well. The next day we went to the family reunion and on Monday we came back to the Mississippi Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church of which I am a member.

But back to my eye. Dr. Holmes had seen me on Saturday and said, "You have a hemorrhage, but it's not bleeding now and you can go ahead and do what you're supposed to do." He dilated my eyes. Now I have dilated eyes at eleven o'clock in the morning and a wedding ceremony at three in the afternoon and he didn't use any reversing agent, so you can see that I had to be sure I wore big lens so I could see. I did and I made it with no errors. When I came back to Tupelo I got in to see my Optometrist, and while I was in his chair -- again with dilated eyes -- the Board of Clergy of the United Methodist Church was meeting in Executive Session, voting on whether I could retire. And they did. So when I got to the meeting after lunch after my eyes cleared a little, they were congratulating me on my retirement.

The next morning, Martha and I were called -- along with twenty-one others -- to the stage during the conference and recognized for fifteen years in the ministry in the Methodist Church and retirement. They gave me a little pin and when you see me afterwards in my coat, you'll see that little pin of retirement. That happened and there was some emotion with that and Martha got a certificate and I got a certificate and we received best wishes. She left for Huntsville and I went to the next day's session. On Wednesday afternoon, the last thing that they do is they give you your assignment for the next year. For fifteen years I've been assigned a place every year and they give it to you on a sheet with everybody in the state placed to work for the next year. It was as though I had evaporated. I wasn't on the sheet. When I looked at that, something happened. I could remember someone's comment in the afternoon in the hallway the day before, "This is what you've been waiting for. This is the day you've been waiting for," and I said, "I guess so." But then when I looked at that sheet and I wasn't there, was this the day I was waiting for? I'm not sure.

There is some emotion in separation and those emotions run deep and strong. We all have them at separation point. The thought came to me as I was putting down some notes to remember today, "Changes, they are a'coming."

I thought I had prepared and had been waiting for the day, but there are some thoughts that are not anticipated. We need power and strength to carry on and do what lies ahead of us, and those emotions of separation are strong and nudge us along our way.

A long time ago that journey started. I was twelve -- or somewhere thereabouts -- when it started. As you know, I was never active and my family was not active on a regular basis in any kind of church until I was in the summer of my twelfth year. In the place where we lived, the landowner and our landlord was active in the local Baptist church. They invited my brother and me to go with them. Since we were big enough that we could ride in the back of the pickup truck, we got to go and our younger brother, who was only five, didn't go. Oh, some tales I could tell about that adventure, that adventure of getting involved in the church, loving the people around me and being loved more in return. It was very special and as those days passed, I did like all the other adolescents that I guess that I know. I made that decision, though, early before I did my wandering, and I made that decision to join the church.

Presbyterians are pretty docile folks, they don't fuss and fight very much. Still water runs deep. But in some Baptist churches, and that one in particular, there were two factions and they were always doing things. The pastor was a Reverend Lane, a man I liked, but because of some pressures in the congregation, from somewhere, they brought in an evangelist for the revival that summer that didn't fit too well with him. Oh, he was a good preacher -- no problem about that -- and he could put the fire and brimstone on the right hearts, and mine was one. My stubbornness was that I was not going to make a confession of my faith until I could do it with the pastor -- and I didn't. So after the revival was over and at the next preaching Sunday which wasn't every Sunday, I made my profession of faith. The relationship with the Lord was the same, but the people I did it with were different. So I started my journey.

Oh, as most adolescents do, I soon wandered away from that profession of that faith. I learned all the languages. I worked with my father in the logging business, I learned all the vocabulary in as many ways as you want to say it -- and I used it, except in the presence of my father and my mother.

But then at age sixteen, in the summer of my sixteenth year, we had another revival at that church. On Sunday there was this huge crowd, the preacher was excellent, and this time there was harmony with the pastor and all the evangelical team, and he had a singer as well as a preaching evangelist, and that Sunday morning he preached on "Unpossessed possessions." He took his text from over in the Old Testament -- in I Kings 22:3 I believe -- where one of the king of Israel said unto his servants, "Know ye that Ra'moth in Gil'ead is ours, and we be still, and take it not out of the hand of the king of Syria?"

He talked about possessions that are ours that we weren't taking. They were rightfully ours but we weren't taking them. He talked about the possession that was ours of salvation. He talked about the possession that was ours of peace, the possession that was ours of forgiveness, the possession that was ours that was communion with God through the Holy Spirit and prayer. He talked about the possession of loving one another and the great sense of belonging that was ours to possess. Oh, he preached on it so eloquently. He walked all over me and I went away feeling that something had to be done, because I knew what it was like to have discomfort and be upset because of my sins, sins that in spite of myself I kept doing, and so on. Oh, I know I was a sixteen-year-old. Does a sixteen-year-old have sense enough to make decisions that affect his life? Well, after that sermon, on a Tuesday night and after another sermon or two I went to the pastor and I said, "Something is happening to me and I want you to pray with me. I want to do something. The Lord wants me to do something."

Well, Mel C. Craft, Jr. was about so wide and about five feet nine, a former football player, band player, and he was a great man. He had an office that was not much bigger than the men's bathroom here. He had a little desk in it and he could get around it and sit in the chair, but there wasn't enough room in his office for the two of us to kneel and pray. So we knelt outside his door. There on that night, we prayed. All I knew was that something had to be done about the way I was feeling and about my relationship with God.

So after we prayed, I went home and I went out and prayed by the chicken house. We lived on a farm and those of you who don't know what a chicken house is, it's a little building made out of one by two strips with a space between them, but the spacing is such that a fox can't get in or a 'possum or anything else that would eat the hen eggs or catch the chickens. At night we would close the door. Right next to it was a huge fig tree that produced lots of figs. And in the moonlight, I went out to pray. I came back in and went to sleep, but my sleep was disturbed. After I had been sleeping a while, I dreamed this dream and this dream was that I was walking onto a stage in this huge place that looked like an opera house with two or three tiers with horseshoe balconies. It was filled and I was walking on this stage. And as I walked on the stage, somebody that I did not see caught me by the arm or the left elbow and said to me, "Tell them about Jesus." I woke up. Puzzling over this for a while and knowing that I wanted to do whatever God wanted me to do, I went back to sleep -- and the same dream came again. Again I was awake and I went back to sleep and it happened again. I said, "Lord, what is it you want me to do?" Then I went to sleep and I slept.

The next night I went to the pastor and I told him what had happened. He said it sounded like the Lord wanted me to preach. And I said, "So be it." The next morning I told my father what I had decided and his comment was, "Oh, no." He said, "Son, it will be so hard." For you see, I was not a genius but I had possibilities and I had talked of being an attorney or of being a doctor and he had set his mind that one of those was where I was probably going. This upheaval turned the whole world upside down. So beginning at that stage, I went on -- even the day before when I went to work I didn't use any of my language and I haven't since -- and that is how I got started. From that day to this, that call has been there. That is my draw. That is my push. My reason for being in the Christian ministry is because of that spiritual movement that happened that day, and that night, and in those dreams. As a psychologist I know that all kinds of things occur in your mind and many write-off dreams as work on psychological conflicts of the day being resolved, and nothing more. But after three times it was a sign to me that God wanted me to do something special, the pastor confirmed my suspicions and it felt right to me.

Well, I knew that I had to have an education. That meant college and seminary. I pursued them and attained them. Got degrees from both and went into the work of the ministry. In my second year of college at 19 I was called to be pastor of a small Baptist church. Through the remainder of college and most of seminary I served as a pastor. But due to other things I could not stay with the pastoral work in the Southern Baptist Church. However, I did change to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and served First Christian Church, Kansas City, Kansas, with about 450 members. During the last six months we were there we adopted our daughter, Susan. Then we came to Tupelo, First Christian Church. It was in Tupelo that Tim and Patrick were born. Then due to further circumstances we changed from the pastorate and my marriage broke up. [Altogether I served over ten years in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ); almost three years in Kansas City, three and one half years at Tupelo, and four years at Mt. Vernon, near Tupelo, and Thomastown.] At that point I began work as a counselor and psychologist, continuing my education to the completion of the doctorate. Through the years, however, I never forgot the calling.

Fortunately, for now over six years we had the opportunity to serve here. This is the longest I have served any pastorate. When we began we did it with prayer and we came in the open door guided we thought my the Spirit of God. We hope we leave guided by that same spirit.

Through these years we have tried to stay true to that dream, vision or call. I have looked for the big stage and the great hall. I have not seen it yet, though I have been on some large stages and seen some magnificent halls. As you know, I have tried to speak the gospel as inspired from God and granted opportunity by the Holy Spirit.

Waiting for the day! Waiting for the day the Spirit fills us with God's spirit and we are able to do his will. We are waiting for the day.

I have not always lived in the preaching ministry. But the call and the answer have always been there. Amen .

Post Note:

Next Sunday will be our last Sunday and it will be Communion Sunday. Let's prepare for a great celebration.

We need to be equipped for any eventuality. Death is ever present. Two died at Oxford Thursday. It is all around us. But we must work for the night is coming.

Let us learn about waiting from the disciples of Jesus in the upper room. This is Pentecost Sunday. The day Pentecost is celebrated. Jesus told his disciples to wait for it. But they didn't wait in solitude or with idleness. Look at the scriptures.

First Lesson - The spirit of God bridges language barriers to begin the creation of one church for Jesus Christ. Acts 2:1-21.

Second Lesson - Paul places the new life of the people of God in the context of cosmic reconstruction. Romans 8:22-27.

Gospel - Jesus prepares the disciples for further teaching by the Spirit and ongoing guidance in the apostolic ministry. John 15:26-27 and 16:4-15.

Closing: I learned the last paragraph of Thanatopsis as a high school student. I asked at Booneville how many had to learn it in English class and none did. How many of you did? Oh, a few. Good! I don't feel so badly now. Anyway, Thanatopsis is about death and dying. I want to close by reading the first and last paragraphs of Thanatopsis* by William Cullen Bryant.Amen.