"Old Folks Have Dreams, Too"
Acts 2:1-13, 14-21
May 15, 2005
Senior Adult Day, Pentecost
First Baptist Church, Wilson, NC

Imagine that you are the press secretary for the Apostle Peter and today is Pentecost Day, the day for the new church to go public. How would you announce the beginning of the church?

• "Stand by for an important announcement"?

• "We take great pride today in introducing the church of Jesus Christ to the world"?

Neither was what Peter said. On the first day of the church on its birth on Pentecost, the first public statement of the church to the world was this:

"We’re not drunk, it’s only nine o’clock in the morning!"

And the church has been misunderstood by the world ever since.

Why did bystanders think the believers were drunk? The believers had gathered in a house, and suddenly a sound like a mighty wind filled the house, and something like tongues of fire lit on each of them, and all of them were filled by the Spirit of God with the ability to speak other languages. All this noise had drawn a crowd. In that crowd were people from every language group in the Empire and even beyond. When the believers in the house came out and started talking, the crowd was amazed to hear them speaking in the native tongue of each language group. In every language the believers told about God’s deeds of power. It was like a multilingual tornado. Needless to say, this was very puzzling to the bystanders, some of whom said, "Awww, they’re just drunk." Hence Peter’s first public statement of the church to the world: "We’re not drunk, it’s too early in the morning."

To help the crowd understand, Peter reached back into the past and quoted a prophecy by Joel:

All this was Peter’s way of saying that today is such a new day that even visions and dreams are available to everybody now. That was a new idea. Before the birthday of the church, people thought that great dreams and visions from God did not come to just everybody. Great dreams and visions from God were reserved for prophets and seers and kings, and even they did not dream easily. Sometimes when kings were desperate for guidance from God, they would try to get a dream by incubation. The king would go to some holy place and lie down to sleep and hope that God would send a dream of guidance.

But Peter stood before the crowd on the streets of Jerusalem and declared "From now on, it will be different. The Spirit of God has just been poured out on us! From now on sons and daughters, young and old, slaves and free, will all see the visions of God and dream the dreams of God.

No one will be left out of the dreams of God, not the weak, not the children, not the poor, not the aged. Everyone who has ever been left out is now included by the gift of the Spirit of God. On this Senior Adult Day, we honor folks who are often left out and ridiculed and forgotten. But this Senior Adult Day comes on Pentecost Day, and on Pentecost Day the Spirit of God fell upon all and no one was left out, not even the old, for "your old men shall dream dreams." Or as someone told Rita at the Senior Adult Choir practice the other day, "Old folks have dreams too."

Do you wonder what kinds of dreams old folks have? Clement Moore once wrote that "visions of sugarplums" dance in the heads of children. But what visions dance in the heads of senior citizens? Visions of Social Security and Medicare? Visions of new restrooms by the Sanctuary? What dreams do old folks have? Listen to this story told by a college student who met an unforgettable friend on the campus:

Eddie Hammett tells the story of his grandparents’ dreams to any N. C. Baptist who would hear. On one side of his family was a grandfather with one kind of dream for his church. On the other side of his family was a grandmother with another kind of dream for her church.

Eddie’s grandfather’s dream was that his church would continue going on as it had been because that was the way that his grandfather liked it. To his grandfather, the purpose of the church was to take care of the needs of its members. He had no interest in any change that would inconvenience the members in order to reach out to anyone beyond the church. In fact, Eddie remembers visiting his beloved granddad on weekends, going with him to church, and then going back to the house and having lunch with his grandparents. He remembers his granddad sitting at the table, raring back in his chair and snapping his suspenders and saying, "Deacons’ meetin’ tonight. Wonder what I’ll get to vote against tonight." That was granddad’s mission, to vote against any change that might inconvenience him. His dream for the church was a church that comforted its members, not a church that adapted to reach others. If anyone new wanted to come, that was fine, but they had to come on the terms of those who were already there.

Years after his grandfather passed away, that church invited Eddie to come to preach at the last service of that church before it closed up. And Eddie was honest enough with them to say, "I loved my granddaddy, but I’m sorry for what his attitude did to this church."

On the other side of Eddie’s family was a grandmother. She taught her Sunday School class. The attendance wasn’t like it used to be. In fact, the room was huge compared to the number of ladies there. But they had made it a very, very nice room, with hand-made cushions and decorations and cross-stitched this and that. Eddie was a ministerial student in college, and this church hired Eddie part-time as its Educational Minister. The first job Eddie was given was this: "Our little nursery has got so many babies that we’re busting out of it. But your grandma’s Sunday School class would be just the right size for a new nursery. We want you to go talk to that class and ask them to give up their room for a small one.

And Eddie was naïve enough to do it! When he did, he saw a side of his grandma he had never seen before. It was not pretty. The sweet ladies of that class, including his grandma, ran him right out of there. Needless to say, it put a terrible strain on his relationship with grandma. But they covenanted to get together regularly to talk and pray and cry together. They had many painful meetings. But at least they stuck with each other.

One Sunday his grandma marched into her class and told her ladies how ridiculous this all was, and how they needed to put the mission of their church ahead of their own comfort. And then she picked up her chair with the handmade cushion, and headed out to another smaller room. And one by one, her class followed her. Then they all together worked to sew and stitch the decorations for a lovely new nursery in their old class.

Years later, Eddie’s grandma was in a nursing home when Eddie visited her. They talked about old times, and somehow she started talking about that hard time in their relationship when he had asked her to move her class. His grandma looked up at him and winked and said, "We got those old ladies off of maintenance and onto ministry, didn’t we Eddie?" He said, "Yes, ma’am, you did."

Two different grandparents with two different dreams. But one of them had the same dream as the prophet Joel and the apostle Peter, a dream of ministry over comfort, a dream of ministry over maintenance, a dream that "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."

-- Douglas E. Murray