Dear friends in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.

One Pentecost Sunday, 30 years ago, I baptized a Chinese scientist who was dying from cancer.  Even though he hadn’t been baptized I had been serving him holy communion for months prior to that day. Mind you, that wasn’t the way things were to unfold in Lutheran circles in my early years of ministry.  I had been firmly taught that there was an orderliness to be observed. There was a pattern that had to be respected for growing in faith, and a correct sequence for the receiving of the sacraments.  Some churches were more rigid than others.  They taught that you must be baptized before the Holy Spirit could rest upon you, and that you could not partake of holy communion until you had been confirmed.  Of course, you could not be confirmed until, etc. etc. etc.  For that dying man, however, I decided to turn a blind eye to my sense of good church order. He finally chose a day to be baptized according to Chinese tradition.  It would be the closest Sunday to his birthday which happened to be Pentecost Sunday that year, the day we celebrate as the birthday of the church and the giving of the Holy Spirit.

He wasn’t strong enough to stand during the worship service that Pentecost morning, so he sat in a chair near the altar, but when it was time for the baptism, he stood up and boldly and proudly walked to the baptismal font where I poured water over his head, saying the words in Chinese that I learned for that day, “In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”  I then prayed with the traditional words of prayer seeking the seven-fold gifts of the Holy Spirit. With the assurance and strength of the Christian faith, and with the promises of Christ in baptism, he died peacefully a week later. That baptism taught me one of the most important lessons in pastoral ministry. Good order may be important, but making Jesus known is more important.  Indeed, if you trust in the words of Jesus, you should be prepared to be surprised.

The entire Book of Acts seems to be stories of the unpredictable Holy Spirit challenging the good order that the \apostles had set forth as the ground rules for the early Church. A deacon named Philip was sent by the spirit to a wilderness road in Gaza to encounter in the royal treasurer from Ethiopia riding in a chariot and reading scripture. The Ethiopian longed to know Jesus the Messiah.  When he saw water, he pleaded with Philip to baptize him and so he did. The Apostle Peter was invited to the home of a Gentile Roman soldier named Cornelius in Caesarea where he discovered that the Holy Spirit was already present in the Centurion’s household.  They simply longed to know Jesus. Peter then ordered that the entire Gentile family be baptized. Well, that was not how some of the church leaders in Jerusalem believed the Holy Spirit should work.  Individuals should be baptized first so that they can grow into faith by the nurturing of the Holy Spirit dwelling within them. And so the Church argued and debated about when and which baptism was to be practiced and which was truly binding- and it has done so ever since then.

Surprisingly the Apostle Paul wanted nothing to do with this. His task was to make Jesus known. When he arrived in Ephesus on his third missionary journey, he was eager, excited and rather amused by the Holy Spirt.  Two years earlier, he had been barred from entering the Roman territory of Asia by the Holy Spirt, but now he was being welcomed with open arms.  Ephesus was the largest city in the region and the fourth largest city in the Roman Empire with nearly a quarter million people. Its wealth and importance came from its location. It was situated on an inland harbor and was at the crossroads of major trade routes. It was such an extremely important commercial center, attracting people from all over the world, that the Greek philosopher, historian and geographer Strabo, called it “the greatest emporium in the province of Asia Minor.”  So when Paul chose to preach there, he was choosing the key city from which the Way of Christ would be known. He also knew there was an open door and welcoming spirit in Ephesus. There were even disciples waiting for him, but oddly they knew nothing about the Holy Spirit, and may not have known anything about Jesus. They practiced baptism, but only for the forgiveness of sins, as John the Baptist had taught.  .

The Jewish historian Josephus wrote of John and the new movement in Judaism that he unleashed, ” This good man, John the Baptist, who commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, righteousness towards one another and piety towards God. For only thus, in John’s opinion, would the baptism be acceptable to God.”  It was a dramatic change. The son of a Jewish priest, was promoting a means of receiving forgiveness apart from the temple’s sacrifices. According to the gospels, that movement spread throughout all Judea and one would assume into the greater Jewish diaspora as well.  People from all over the Jewish world ventured out into the Judean wilderness to hear John speak and to be baptized by him as a sign of their earnest desire to live new, pure lives forgiven of their sins. To this day there is an ethnic group in Iraq with roots tied to Jerusalem called the Mandeans who follow the teaching of John the Baptist. Once nearly 60,000 in number, they practice ritual baptism, but they are not Christian.

Paul encountered that understanding of baptism in Ephesus in the twelve disciples. They  knew that John the Baptist was pointing to a Messiah who was yet to come, but they did not know that Jesus was that Messiah.  They knew that John was unleashing a new trajectory of faith which the Messiah would embrace and carry forward to its meaningful end. Yes, they  knew that John’s baptism of repentance was the intentional human desire to be changed, but they didn’t know that the baptism the Messiah Jesus offered would be a be a force that would send men and women out to change the world.  No, they didn’t know the whole story of Jesus, and Paul was amused.

It is reminiscent of the innocent answer of children on the old Ark Linkletter Show, Kid’s Say the Darndest Things.  Little Ethan age 8 said, “God doesn’t have a house. He doesn’t need one except on Sundays ’cause that’s the day he likes to rest.  Jackson age 7 acknowledged, “I call God when I need help with things, but not my homework, because my mom says I have to do that by myself” Manny, age 6 wrote, “My mom talks to God when we need more money.”

Paul was struck with the earnestness of the 12 disciples, when he asked them “Into what then were you baptized?” and they answered, “Into John’s baptism.” Paul saw their confession as an opportunity to proclaim the good news of Jesus and to make his name known.  He could see that the Holy Spirit was already active in their lives. The twelve were not stating that they had never heard that the Holy Spirit existed. No, they were declaring that they did not know it had been given yet to them. So Paul began there and their knowledge of John, and he completed the story of the John’s mission in the world pointing point them to Jesus the Messiah, the Christ. “On hearing this they, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.”  What a Pentecost Day that became. When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.”  For the Apostle Paul making Jesus known was his most important goal. The Holy Spirit would take over from there.

As a missionary serving in Eastern Europe, it has been my pleasure to make the name of Jesus known in many places and to many people. After the fall of the Soviet Union, people who had not heard the name of Jesus, except in the hushed tones of their grandparents’ voices, curiously came to hear about this man we called Savior and Lord. The unpredictable Holy Spirit was moving in their lives. Some came later privately to be baptized, including diplomats and musicians. They wanted to know more about Jesus.  When we served in Slovakia, we worked with a refugee camp where many of the refugees came from the Middle East and Africa. Several had experienced a joyful hope in neighbors in their home countries who were Christian.  In spite of hours of waiting for busses and being harassed by angry nationals, they came to the church to learn to know Jesus.  Their families would have disowned them if they were known to be baptized, but they came to communion to be nourished with body and blood of Jesus Christ and to know him.  More and more as a missionary, I grew to know and accept the unpredictable nature of the Holy Spirit and that baptism might be beginning, the ending, or even the middle of the journey of faith.

My friends, we never know where the unpredictable Holy Spirit is in the lives of those we love, but we need to make sure that Jesus is known to them.  That is our task. You and I must do our best, to be people of integrity and faith who exercise virtue, righteousness towards one another and devotion to God. Regretfully, our Christian witness in the world often suffers because of the misdeeds of those who do not allow the Holy Spirit to play its role in their lives.  But let me assure you, the Holy Spirit can do its work through us.

Paul began his ministry in Ephesus empowered by the Holy Spirit with those twelve imperfect disciples.  They followed him from the synagogue to the lecture hall of Tyrannus, and they grew to know Jesus.  This work continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia both Jews and Greeks heard the word of the Lord.  So effective was this mission, that according to tradition all seven churches of the book of Revelation were established at the time. That is the wonder of knowing Jesus and the possibilities of being open to an unpredictable Holy Spirit.  Amen.

May the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  Amen.