Monday morning, I was exercising at 6:30 and watching a program on the History Channel about Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. I like history. Not everyone does. Charlotte came into the room, saw me watching a program about men in powdered wigs, and said, “How can you be watching history before seven o’clock in the morning?” I thought it was fascinating. She thought there was something wrong with me. I think we’re both right.

The disciples had to be thinking about their recent history as they gathered on the day of Pentecost. People from all over the world had come to Jerusalem for this Jewish festival to celebrate the wheat harvest. Seeing the crowds, listening to the babble of so many foreign tongues, the disciples had to be thinking, “You folks wouldn’t believe what’s happened here lately. We have lived through some amazing history.”

History is, after all, nothing but stories, and, man, do they have some stories! Jesus came to town in triumph; he rocked the boat big time; he was arrested and tried on trumped-up charges; they whipped and crucified him. He was dead, and then he rose again. They had seen him a number of times, but, then, he had left, gone back up into heaven. Ascended. Left.

Now he was gone. It was over. And they are left with nothing but stories. Powerful, fascinating stories. It’s amazing history, but it’s still just history, stories to be told around the campfire at night and, maybe, thousands of years later, to be watched on the History Channel along with stories about Hamilton and Burr, ancient Egypt, Hitler’s last days.

And then there was a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and divided tongues, as of fire, rested upon them, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages. And the babble-speaking crowd, the crowd from every place in the known world, was amazed because each person heard in his own tongue and understood these Galileans.

That, of course, changed everything. Not just for them, but for us. This was not just history to be told around the campfire, not just stories, profound and fascinating as they were, to watch on the History Channel. History is what happened a long time ago. However fascinating, however profound it is, it is over; it is done; it is to be looked back upon; it is dead.

Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, changes everything, because it said to them, and it says to us, that this is alive. God is alive and still at work in the world, and this story is still being written. Pentecost tells us that the Holy Spirit, like a violent wind, is blowing around — in us, around us, through us. So, as important as it is to study the history of what God did, that can never be enough. After Pentecost, it always has to be, “What is God doing?” It’s never just history.

If we didn’t’ have Pentecost, we’d still have one heck of a story. We could still spend our lives devoted to this amazing history. Just studying the history of the prophets and Jesus and how God acted in history could still be a powerful religious experience for us. We could draw moral guidelines from it; we could be better people. But we would always be looking back. It would always be a statement of what God did.

Let me tell you something: history, stating what God did, is a lot safer than asking what God is doing. The apostles found that out. When the Holy Spirit became alive in their lives, they couldn’t just look back, couldn’t just state what God did, as important as that was; they also had to look to the future. After Pentecost they knew that the story was not over, and that they were going to write the future with God.

So Pentecost puts to us a momentous question: what are you here for? If you’re here for our history, we’ve got some great stuff for you: wonderful, profound, stories, full of intrigue, and adventure, and action, and danger, and challenge, and insight, and meaning, and spiritual direction, and moral guidance. We’ve got some great history, and if you want to spend your life looking back, you can’t do better.

But if you want to spend your life looking forward, loving that past but living for the future, if you will allow this living God, this wild Holy Spirit, to live in your soul, to light a fire in your heart, to partner with you to write the rest of your story, then hang on. It’s the harder course to ask, “What is this wild Holy Spirit up to now?” It’s harder to look into the uncertain future and ask, “How are the Holy Spirit and I going to write the rest of my story?” It’s certainly easier to just look back and take comfort in the rules and conventions and safety of long ago history.

But I’ll tell you something — there are advantages to coming here for the Spirit. I’ll just tell you two that mean a lot to me. First of all, it is tremendously exciting. You start worshiping the wind and the fire of God, you start letting that into your life, and the rest of your story may be a lot of things, you many know heartache and distress and hardship, but, by God, it will never be dull!

And the second advantage to coming here for the Spirit is this: your God will not be a relic of history. You won’t know God just from the pages of the Bible, or from the Prayer Book, or the History Channel. You will know a living God, and you will feel that God blowing in, around, and through your life in countless ways as the two of you work together to write the rest of your story.

So, you decide. Are you here to study our history, embrace our history, even worship our history? Or are you here to be a part of the life of a blowing, burning — and very much living — God?

It’s an important choice. Choose carefully, but choose.