I love a good story. This past summer, I picked up a book I had never heard of before and started to read it. It was such a sad story, but it was so well written, that I read a hundred pages before I refused to go further.

Even better than reading a good story, I love to be part of a good story. It is good fun to be part of a championship sports team. It is deeply satisfying to work with other people on a difficult task and succeed. It is icing on the cake, if someone tells the good story you have been part of.

The New Testament book of Acts satisfies both criteria. It tells a great story. In a nutshell the story goes like this. Time was when Christianity belonged exclusively to a small sect of Jews called by several names: the Nazarenes, the Way, and the Christians. Acts tells the story of how that small, exclusively Jewish sect broke out of its Jewish origins and became the faith of all mankind.

The story begins in Jerusalem and ends in Rome. In between its messengers find themselves in many of the Empire's major cities, on perilous roads and in hurricanes, jails, teaching halls, public squares, private homes, king's courts, sharp debates, and glorious successes.

I said the story ended in Rome. That is because all written stories must come to an end, and this one ended in Rome. But life can do what books cannot. The story Luke worte ended in Rome. But in life the story Luke told did not stop in first-century Rome.

It continues in fact to this day. We are still living the story of Acts. So, we can love this good story, and we can love being part of this same story that goes on and on. Our circumstances differ from those of Peter and Paul, but, as we shall see, some things never change. A mystical, divine union joins us with them across the ages.

A Bird's-Eye View of Chapter One
To see how that is so, we need to dip into the story Luke has told. The story of Acts begins with a surprise. Verses 1-2 say, In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. Wouldn't it be lovely to have a copy of his former book?

Actually, we do. Listen to this. Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. You can find those words in the opening four verese of the Gospel according to Luke.

Luke's story begins with the truth that forms the foundation of the book of Acts and in fact of all Christianity then and now and for ever and ever: the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Verse three says, After his suffering, (Jesus) showed himself to these men (His apostles) and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forthy days and spoke about the kingdome of God.

He spoke of a topic dear to the heart of every Jew, namely, the kingdom of God; and the apostles had a question in verse six. So when they met together, they asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" Understandable, but their vision was too small.

So, say verse 7-8, He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

This ist he program for the book of Acts. It will unfold exactly that way: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth. But they couldn't know that, and there is no explanation, and the one who might give an explanation immediately ascends into heaven beyond the reacho of ordinary conversation.

It was all very abrupt. So, what do you do, if you are Peter and the rest? We don't have to guess. They went back to Jerusalem and had prayer meetings and a business meeting. The constant prayer that verse 14 talks about may refer to their participation in the appointed hours of prayer in the Jerusalem temple. We know from Acts 3:1 that Peter and John went there at an appointed hour of prayer. But I suspect they needed more than that, because the resurrection of Christ had added something to their devotion that the temple prayers did not take into account.

The business meeting actually occupies twelve of the 26 verses of Acts 1. The meeting had one item on the agenda: electing a replacement for Judas, who had betrayed Jesus to the authorities. Verse 26 reveals the outcome of their most democratic procedure. Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles. We never hear about Matthias in the Gospels, although verse 22 makes it clear that he had been among Jesus' followers from the days of John the Baptist right through the resurrection of Jesus.

We never hear about him in the Gospels, and we never hear about him again in Acts. It is striking that we know little about most of the men, who were closest to Jesus during His earthly ministry. They just disappear from the story.

And there is something else that I have not yet mentioned. I said that the Apostles went back to Jerusalem and had prayer meetings and a business meeting. They also did something else, something that is as hard as anything we do and may have been just as hard for them.

Verses 4-5 get specific. On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit."

That's the same Holy Spirit who would empower the Apostles to be witnesses to Christ in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. It was very unclear what they were to expect, and their lack of clarity was complicated by those seven words at the end of verse four. "Wait for the gift my Father promised."

Wait! We don't want to wait. How long do we wait? What do we do while we wait? What exactly are we waiting for? These questions prepare us to consider where Acts 1 intersects our experience, and the story we love to read becomes the story we live.

Earthly Altar, Heavenly Fire
And, first, I need to paint in our imaginations a picture of what I am trying to say. Another story will help me pain this picture. You remember the First Commandment. You shall have no other gods before me.

In the days of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel they had instituted the worship of the Canaanite gods Baal and Asherah on an equal footing with the worship of the God of Israel. Elijah, the prophet of the God of Israel, confronted this idolatry. His message to the people of Israel was, "How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him." But the people said nothing. So, Elijah proposed a test.

He proposed that the 450 prophets of Baal build an altar to their god, and He would build an altar to the God of Israel. Both he and they would sacrifice an animal and lay its body on the altar, and both he and they would call on their gods to consume the sacrifice with fire. Elijah's challenge was, "The god who answers by fire - he is God."

The people agreed. The prophets of Baal agreed. They did it. For a full day the prophets of Baal did everything they knew to persuade lord Baal to consume their offering by fire. Elijah taunted them into ever more frenzied efforts, but nothing worked.

Then, it was Elijah's turn, and he did the unexpected. He asked people to douse the sacrifice with four large jars of water before he prayed for the God of Israel to consume the sacrifice by fire. Three times Elijah called for the water.

The altar is built. The sacrifice is on the altar. Prayer is made. Will God send the fire? That was the drama of Elijah's confrontation with the prophets of Baal. But that is also the drama of all dealings with the God of Israel and the Church. Will He send the fire? When will He send it?

We know His response to Elijah's was immediate. It is not always immediate. It was not immediate in Acts 1. The 120 followers of Jesus prayed and did church business, and for ten days nothing happened. Then, events on the Day of Pentecost exploded, and the Church began its journey to the ends of the earth.

Elijah didn't wait ten minutes. The Apostles waited ten days. What about people who wait ten years? In each case we build the altar. We are the living sacrifices. We pray. We wait for the fire to fall from heaven. We wait and wait, but no fire falls. We build, and we wait, and we vote on the budget, but no fire.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
I would encourage you to see the whole collective effort of this or any church as the building of an altar to our God. We give our time, our money, our energy, our children, our very selves. And all the while we wait for heaven's fire. We may wait for many years before the fire falls, and some of us may not see the fire at all.

The fire of God we wait for is the Holy Spirit. He is invisible like wind. He is unmanageable like wind. He is unmistakable like wind. And so we wait for Him, who makes the Church a witness to Jesus in every nook and cranny of earth. And this story we love to read has become the story we are living.

The fire has fallen upon the altar this congregation had built over many years. The story of this Spirit-visitation deserves to be told, and here before God I tell it to you, so that we may all know the divine drama in which we have been caught up.

The falling of the fire on this altar began with a dream. Eight or nine years ago, Do Simon sent me a short letter. She told me she had had a dream. It was so vivid, and it included so many people in our congregation, and she remembered it so clearly that she just had to write to tell me about the dream and ask me if I thought it meant anything. Little did either of us know how timely that dream was.

It was a dream about some men at BVBC. Dot told me their names. In her dream these men had become passionate about God and had led BVBC into a spiritual awakening. The dream was no more specific than that.

Now, when I hear of something like Dot's dream, I respond in two ways. First, I am deeply respectful of unusual spiritual and psychological experiences. That respect requires me to listen carefully and to suspend judgment until I know more about the meaning of the experience. And so, my second response is simply to wait. The real world would establish whether her dream was simply a pleasant, psychic experience or whether it contained a message from God.

Her dream, I believe, contained a message from God for our congregation. The confirmation began in May, 1995, when 120 men went to the Promis Keepers' stadium event in Washington, D.C. BVBC had been a good church since its inception in the late '60s. For a quarter century devout men and women built this altar to God. On Memorial Day weekend, 1995, the fire fell on that altar.

It did not take the form it took in Acts 2. It took the form of a deep love among men for each other and for Jesus Christ. Those men formed a new spiritual core of this congregation. I think most of us were rendered wordless at what we experienced in Washington. I remember Gene Ontjes saying on several occasions, "I keep wondering, What happened there? What did I just experience?"

It answers nothing, and it answers everything to say, "The fire of heaven fell on us." How is it that this congregation enjoys enormous intellectual and social liberty without that liberty deteriorating into indulgence? The fire of heaven fell on us.

How is it that we have gone through the expense and inconvenience and heartache of two building programs and changing the constitution and doubling our budget and adding two new worship hours with a different worship style and calling new staff and assimilating so many new people without losing sight of the fact that our mission is not buildings, budgets, staff, style, constitution or number of worship hours but people in relationship to Jesus Christ? The fire of heaven fell on us.

In truth we did nothing new, yet everything changed, even while it looked the same. A casual on-looker might see nothing out of the ordinary here. It has been a slow revolution, nearly imperceptible as it unfolded, nearly overwhleming when seen from a certain angle. Why? The fire of heaven fell on us.

I think it would be hard to live through the past eight years and not recognized that something has taken place that we just cannot explain by clever people and strategic planning and a good stock market. What happened might seem unclear. I suspect there were people in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, who could not quite put their finger on what had happened. But they knew something good had happened. They benefited from what they could not explain or were not there to see.

Personally, I feel like the captives returing to Zion, when they said, "We were like men who dreamed." I didn't expect this. I didn't make this happen. I don't deserve this. Hundreds of thousands of man-hours went into this place in the last thirty years. We were building the altar, waiting, scarcely knowing we were waiting, and the fire fell. The Spirit descended and renewed the Old Lady we call our congregation.

This is our story. We are living our own version of the Day of Pentecost, and if this story we love to be part of is anything like the story we love to read in the book of Acts, the greatest adventures still like ahead. Like Moses' bush we burn but we don't burn up.