Sunday Sermon - May 24, 2026

Happy Pentecost! Today's reading (including in the episode) is Acts 2:1-24. 

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Scripture quotations from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

A reading from Acts. When the day of Pentecost had come, the apostles 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 Jews 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 tongues 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? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, and Asia, Pyrgia and Pamphlia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rhone, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, in our own languages, we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power. And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean? But others sneered and said, They are filled with the new wine. But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them. 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 prophecy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall see dream shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my spirit, and they shall prophecy. And I will show portons in the heavens above, and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Fellow Israelites, listen to what I have to say. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know, this man handed over to you according to the definite plan, and for knowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having released him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. The word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

So this week is Pentecost, right? Last week, pop quiz. Does anyone remember what festival was last week? Starts with an A. Ascension, right? And ascension, Jesus basically told the disciples, hey, guess what? You're gonna be doing a lot of stuff, but wait, hold on. And basically then left them with nothing else. He said, The Holy Spirit's gonna come, but there was no schedule, there was no timeline, there was just there was no signal of what the Holy Spirit would look like. It was just wait, the Holy Spirit's coming. So I always wonder, those disciples, what did they do while they were waiting? Because I know sometimes when I have to wait for something, when I know neither when or how it's going to happen, I get antsy. I might do like an obscene amount of research into things so that I can feel prepared for whatever might come, but I'm pretty sure they didn't have Google then, so I'm not sure what that research might have looked like. Um I I tend to babble a little bit when that kind of stuff happens. Uh and I will try to distract myself, like I will find other projects. Suddenly, those vents need to be cleaned with a toothbrush, you know? So I wonder what did those disciples do while they were waiting for an unknown length of time for an unknown thing to happen. I imagine, without Google or various other modern-day distractions, I imagine they told stories. I can see them hanging out over a dinner and kind of imagining maybe what this spirit thing might look like. And to imagine what the spirit might look like, they probably thought back to what they saw Jesus doing. And so I can imagine them looking at each other and be like, do you do you remember that time? That time when there was a massive storm and Jesus was just walking on the water? Or do you remember that time he slept through a storm? Or do you remember that time when we just had a couple loaves of bread and he fed thousands of people? Or do you remember that time when we were gleaning in the fields and picking all the grains and we got yelled at, and Jesus basically told them, mind your own business. I imagine they probably told a bunch of stories about ways that they had experienced Jesus and experienced the divine in Jesus. And so they probably had a decent amount of practice telling the story of Jesus by the time they got to ten days later. They had their stories rehearsed, and you know how old family stories go, where you can say just the first line and everyone knows the whole story. So my guess is they were good at telling the story of Jesus by the time they got to Pentecost. So they, with all the other Jewish people in Jerusalem, went to do the Pentecostal celebrations, because Pentecost uh is connected to a Jewish festival. And so they were going down to the temple to do all the things that a Jewish person does in Jerusalem at this festival. And then all of a sudden, things were very different. There was no missing that the Holy Spirit was in the room. Uh there was the sound of rushing wind. So I'm gonna challenge you all. Um, give me your best wind noise. Okay, now take that and multiply it by like a thousand. So if you want to go for it, go for it. I saw some people take a breath. No, we got scared. All right. Uh sounds of rushing wind, and then all of a sudden, fire on top of people's heads. And what else happened? They were speaking a whole bunch of languages. Like what? And then my favorite line, and I think the whole reading, people were like, they must be drunk. Clearly, this is just, I don't even know what to make of this, so they just must be drunk. But it wasn't that, because also, I don't know about you, but I have not heard of a story of a single person becoming inebriated and suddenly being able to fluently speak a whole new language. So, but we obviously have the Holy Spirit showing up in incredible ways. And then all of a sudden, these disciples, they were not just simply telling the story of Jesus, they were being the story of Jesus. They were being the story of Jesus as they sat in this crowd of people from all over and met the people wherever they were, speaking the language and the idiom that was comfortable for the hearer. They met them where they were and brought the good news of Jesus into that space. And this was this happened regardless of any distinctions and divisions that might have existed between two people. National differences, linguistic, economic, spiritual, theological, racial, whatever differences and divisions you can think of, the Holy Spirit said, Watch me, and went out through the disciples and met the people where they were and said, God's good news is for you. Speaking in the language and the idiom that was comfortable and familiar for them. So obviously, this is what Jesus had been talking about. When Jesus said, Don't do anything yet, wait for the Holy Spirit, this is what Jesus was talking about. When the Holy Spirit filled the people, reached out to every corner of the world through these people, and met them where they were and proclaimed God's news is for them. This is the activity of the Holy Spirit that Jesus prepared his disciples for. But wait, it's still not time to go out. Because all of this is still happening where? Jerusalem. So it's also happening in Jerusalem, and actually, when you read through the book of Acts, they stay in Jerusalem a while. Why? We are told that they're going to be sent out to the ends of the earth to proclaim the good news, to meet people where they are, to use the local culture and idiom and language to explain the good news to God's people all around the world. But for now, they're staying in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the center of everything. People would come from all over the world, as we heard in today's reading, to celebrate festivals in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the destination. This was the home base of the faith. And so there they kind of got to practice. They got to practice being the body of Christ at home base. They got to practice being the community of Christ at home base. Now, practice, as you all know, as much as we say it makes perfect, it doesn't make perfect, it makes better. And so after they dwelled in Jerusalem, practiced being the body of Christ, practiced being the story of Christ, then they go out. That's next week. We'll save that story for next week. And so as I read this story, as I think about the ways that we are celebrating Pentecost, this is not just something that happened 2,000 years ago that we remember because it's a really cool story with lots of drama. We celebrate Pentecost because each and every week we come into this space, this home base. We gather together, we meet the Holy Spirit, we are filled with the divine presence, we experience the holy as we eat at this table, as we feel the spirit in word and water. We gather in this space, this home base, to experience the holy and be filled with the divine. And to practice what it is to be the story of Christ, to be the body of Christ, to be the community of Christ. Because then ultimately, when we come here and are filled with the Holy Spirit and we practice being the story of Jesus, when we go out, we know that the Spirit goes with us. We know that the community of Christ surrounds us in a great cloud of witnesses that transcends time and space. And we know that we go out in God's grace to meet people wherever they are, to speak the language that is in their hearts, and to tell them God's love, God's good news is for you. To allow the Holy Spirit to fill our bodies, to go out, transcend any barriers or divisions or distinctions, and say, God's love is for you. Because did you notice? It didn't just say some people, it didn't just say these people, it said all people. God's spirit came upon all flesh, became down upon all humanity. Because God's love is not just for a select few. God's love is for all people. And in the Pentecost story, the Holy Spirit comes into us, fills our hearts, ignites our hearts with fire, and then will blow us out the door to continue our Holy Spirit metaphors. Will blow us out the door into the world so that we can proclaim in word and deed the good news that God's love is for you, that God's love is for all people. Pentecost. It's a dramatic story. It's got fire, it's got wind, it's got crazy languages, it's got jokes. But above all, it is the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit being revealed to the people. Because let's be honest, just like that flower is already out the door, the Holy Spirit has always been in creation and among the people. In the beginning, God breathed life into humanity. God danced over the nothingness. And all of that is the Spirit moving in and through this world. The Spirit comes here to meet us where we are, so that when we go out there, we can participate in what the Holy Spirit is already doing. Sharing God's love, spreading the good news, and bringing new life to all people, bringing new community to all people, regardless of where we find them. Amen. Amen.