Scripture Acts 2:1-8, 12-18
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Judeans from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?
All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Fellow Judeans, and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the
Morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit,
and they shall prophesy.’
Sermon
We call Pentecost Sunday “the Birthday of the Church.” And so, it is! Following the resurrection, and Jesus’ fifty days with the disciples, something strange happens, and they can’t see him any more. He seems to be gone, vanished into heaven. This is a hard moment. So much trauma and loss, followed by such a startling and miraculous return to life, followed again by loss. He is gone. Where is he?
We find the disciples in this moment hunkered down in an upstairs room in Jerusalem—very likely the same room where they shared the last Supper with Jesus, and then where Jesus appeared to them on the night of the resurrection: a room filled with memories beautiful and painful. For years I thought the disciples were simply hiding, because they were paralyzed with indecision, didn’t know what to do. But they are most likely there marking the Jewish feast of Pentecost, or Shavu’ot in Hebrew. They’re probably reading scripture together! Perhaps this year’s study would get them out of this funk, point them in the direction they should go, inspire them.
At this moment, the moment before the Spirit comes down, the body of Christ is still in labor. The church hasn’t yet been born! And it has been a long labor—it started with Jesus’ baptism, and his time in the wilderness being tested by the forces of evil. It continued in Jesus’ return to Galilee, preaching a new way of life, the good news, what we know as the gospel! The reign of God is at hand—it is close—it is almost here!
The labor progressed as Jesus continued his ministry of teaching, healing, and feeding people. It was a story-telling ministry—stories about homely things, familiar things, like seeds, and sheep, and baking bread. It was a healing ministry—Jesus answered all who came to him in pain with God’s love and blessing, casting out demons, stopping hemorrhages, and bringing at least four people back from the dead. And it was a feeding ministry, a picnic ministry that took place in the great outdoors, on expanses of grass milling with all kinds of people who were hungry.
There’s a moment in labor when the pain intensifies—it’s called “transition,” and prospective biological mothers are warned about it, how hard the pain will get. Jesus’ transition was his betrayal, his arrest, his trial, and his death on a cross. And then, the one who was lost was found again—Jesus was raised from the dead, and the labor progressed with still more teaching and encouragement of the disciples—
Until ten days ago, when Jesus disappeared into the clouds. And now here the disciples sit, poring over the scriptures, searching for clues, looking for—
and the church is born in a swirl of fiery apparitions on the disciples’ heads, a swirl of wind seeming to blow through the entire house, and the gift of language, communication, connection. The church was born in a conflagration—not of actual fire, but of energy. The Spirit was released in a burst of energy that has continued to this very day, and those original gifts tell the story.
The church was born with tongues of flames on the disciples heads—which is to say, inspiration (a word whose roots mean, the Spirit entering). Jesus had an idea, a God-given, Spirit-empowered idea—of Good News that really was good and really was news. It was about people coming together, not simply because it was a certain day of the week, but because they felt the touch of God when they were in his presence. People came together for his teaching. But more than that, they came for his healing, and for his feeding their hunger (literal and spiritual) and quenching their thirst (literal and spiritual). This was all good, and it was all a new approach to what it meant to be in community. All were welcome. All were offered healing. The church was born with tongues of flame, the inspiration of the good news, passed from Jesus to his disciples to the world. To us.
The church was born with wind blowing through—a powerful wind. Wind, which does everything from tickle your face with your hair to creating storms that can blow windows out of skyscrapers. Wind is a reminder that things change. Nothing remains the same, not for long. The things that are our traditions now were brand new four years ago. Brand new. Wind is a reminder that the church is a living, breathing organism, in which we seek to find newer and better ways to love God and love one another every single day, and that means things don’t stay the same, because we’re always growing, always learning, the Spirit is always whispering in our ears (when it isn’t knocking us down). The church was born with a powerful wind.
And the church was born with a miracle of communication. Every disciple was suddenly speaking a language they didn’t know. Every person who had flocked to Jerusalem from all over the known world for the Pentecost celebration was hearing the Good News, whether or not they spoke Aramaic. If it cannot communicate its nature to the world, the church is stuck, it gets nowhere, and reaches no one.
We are working hard to communicate who we are to the world outside these doors, and we do that in many ways. We are using social media. We communicate with our friends and families by word of mouth. One of the most effective ways we communicate who we are is by our Food Pantry—we are a church going all out to show our love to our hungry neighbors.
I read an enlightening article this week, called, “Here is Why Your Church Will Die Within the Next Five Years.” Let me say up front, I don’t believe UPC falls in the demographic being described in the article, though we have our challenges. Among the many issues it covered, the article reported on young people’s perceptions of Christians based on a Barna Group study of those ages 16 through 29. The author writes,
…the most common perception of Christians among non-believers is that Christians are anti-gay, with 91% of non-Christians saying they believe that Christians show excessive contempt and unloving attitudes towards homosexuals and make homosexuality a bigger sin than anything else.[i]
That, of course, is not the position of every church. We all just witnessed the United Methodist Church laying undergoing a great change. It’s not the position of our denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), which offers full welcome to LGBTQIA+ folks. And it’s certainly not the position of this congregation. But I have a hunch that this is not known widely in our community. The church was born with a miracle of communication. It is our responsibility to communicate well with our neighbors all the ways we show the infinite, beautiful love of God in all we do.
In Paul’s letter to the Romans, we read that all creation has been groaning together in labor pains for what will be. This means that the church is still in labor. We are still becoming what God meant for us to be, a place where the good news that is shared is truly good; a place where we carry on the work of Jesus and those early disciples by loving our neighbors in body, mind, and spirit, by offering a healing space as well as a place where their hunger and thirsts are satisfied; a place where we sing joyfully to the world what that love looks like, and show that our welcome has no limitations on it.
We will get there. The Spirit, Paul tells us, is groaning with us, groanings too deep for words. That means the Spirit knows our struggles, our travails, but is still there, helping us to push, helping us to understand what’s happening when things feel overwhelming. The Spirit is still with us, this gift from Jesus, so that his presence can be more real in and for us than we’ve ever experienced before.
The Spirit is with us. The Spirit is for us. Come, Spirit, come!
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Dan Foster, “Here is Why Your Church Will Die Within the Next Five Years,” Backyard Church, Medium Website, May 2, 2024. https://medium.com/backyard-theology/here-is-why-your-church-will-die-within-the-next-five-years-cb7b25d007f4.