Pentecost A
May 24, 2026
Acts 2:1-21; 1 Cor 12:3b-13; John 20:19-23
INTRODUCTION
Today, on Pentecost, we celebrate the Holy Spirit. I love all three persons of the Trinity, of course, but I do find the Holy Spirit particularly intriguing, because there are so many facets and expressions of the Spirit, so there is always some aspect of the Spirit that can speak to us just exactly where we are.
Our readings today reflect that variety. Our first reading from Acts is that dramatic first Pentecost, as Luke tells it. Jews from around the known world are staying in Jerusalem and celebrating the Jewish Festival of Weeks (aka Pentecost): a harvest festival where Jews also celebrate the giving of the law, the 10 Commandments. And the Holy Spirit makes a raucous entrance, complete with wind, noise and fire. Very exciting!
The Psalm shows us the creative nature of the Spirit, recalling how at creation, before God said anything, the Spirit hovered over the chaotic waters.
1st Corinthians addresses the unifying nature of the Spirit – though there are varieties of gifts, Paul writes, we are all one in the Spirit, “for in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.”
And finally in the Gospel reading, we will hear a story we always hear the week after Easter, about Jesus appearing to the fearful disciples who are locked in the upper room. Jesus breathes his Spirit onto them and tells them, twice, “Peace be with you.”
So… which expression of the Spirit do you need today? The disruptive and driving one of that first Pentecost, or the creative one of the Psalm? The unifying Spirit of 1st Corinthians, or the Spirit of peace breathed into a place of fear? As you listen, hear the promise that whatever you need this day, the Spirit is with you. Let’s listen.
[READ]
 |
| The Holy Spirit, window at Taize, France |
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
This coming week, Deacon Emily, Sue, Bryn, and I will be traveling to Syracuse for the annual Upstate NY Synod Assembly. The event will introduce our synod’s theme and focus for the year, which will be… “Experimentation.”
I’m curious: what feelings come up for you when I say that word, “experimentation”? Do you feel excited? Curious? Fearful? Tired?
I think I feel a mixture. When I’m feeling grounded and ready and secure, experimentation sounds exciting. Yeah, let’s bring on something new! Let’s try something! But then I start actually working on the thing, and the fear creeps in. What if this doesn’t work? What if we waste time and resources trying it? What if I look like a fool because this fails? What if people judge me for it, or think less of me, because I didn’t do a good enough job? What if they roll their eyes, and lose trust in my abilities? Or even, what if it does work, but then that means we have to let go of the former way, a way which may not have been working but which I did still like, and now the loss of it makes me sad?
And then from there, I easily move into tired: Man, this is a lot of work. I liked the old way, where we already had grooves in the road and systems in place and I didn’t have to think about it. Sigh. Maybe we should just keep things the same. The well-trodden road is a lot easier than experimenting with something new.
Sound familiar?
I serve on a board for a non-profit that is currently navigating a significant change in leadership. The person we are hoping will lead us may require some accommodations, in the form of significantly restructuring our routine and way of operating. At our board meeting this past week, we were wrestling with how this might look, and how it will be received by members of the organization, and someone observed, “Well, we were already considering a possible change in structure. Maybe this is the kick we needed.” Indeed – we are often so resistant to change and experimentation, that sometimes what is needed to make that leap for a necessary change is a major and unavoidable disruption that shakes us out of the status quo.
Sometimes, the Holy Spirit is such a disruption. It certainly was on that first Pentecost! The image we see of the Holy Spirit in this story from Acts portrays the Holy Spirit as empowering, enabling, dramatic, exciting, perplexing, giver of prophecy – all very strong, active, and dare I say, disruptive images. Though the Spirit can certainly be a comforter – an image we have seen in our readings for the past few weeks, the Spirit is also decidedly a mover and shaker!
Professor and preacher David Lose takes issue with thinking about the Spirit as one whose primary role is as the Comforter. “I think we’ve misnamed the Holy Spirit,” he writes. “The Holy Spirit is as much agitator as advocate, as much provocateur as comforter… [We mustn’t] reduce the work of the Holy Spirit to making us feel better… [The] one who comes alongside might also do so to strengthen you for work, or to muster your courage, or to prompt or even provoke you to action.” In other words, the Holy Spirit may come alongside you and take you by the hand… but then pull you somewhere you wouldn’t otherwise have gone, or drag you into something you don’t think you can do! Just look at Peter, the man who constantly puts his foot in his mouth, jumping up to preach a moving sermon that inspires 3000 people to be baptized that very day! Like, where has that Peter been hiding??
Of course, exciting as this is, such disruption and experimentation can get scary and dangerous for us in a hurry! To be comforted, to have our hand held, to be helped by the Holy Spirit all sounds very nice, but it also gives the impression that we don’t need to do anything differently. As if the Advocate is here to argue the case for me to stay just as I am! But sometimes our best advocates and helpers are that precisely because they don’t just hold our hand and let us stay put, but rather, they encourage and embolden and push us into new opportunities we would never have sought out on our own. In other words, the Holy Spirit drives or pulls or pushes or compels us into experimentation.
And yes, that word still does bring up all kinds of feelings, many of them connected to fear. And so to that end, the other images we see for the Spirit today can help us along our journey into new territory. In the Psalm, the Spirit is creative and renewing, calling things into existence that didn’t exist before. That’s what experimentation is all about – calling new things into existence! In Corinthians, we hear of a Spirit who equips us as individuals and as the body of Christ with a variety of gifts, the very gifts we need in order to fulfill our mission as the Church of Christ, even in new endeavors. And then finally in John we hear about the Holy Spirit as a bringer of peace, even and especially into times of anxiety and fear. All of these are images that support and encourage the Church to be a place of experimentation: a place where God brings about new things, where God equips us with the gifts we need, where God breathes the breath of peace into all the fear and anxiety we experience when things are changing, perhaps at times before we are fully ready for it.
Earlier this year, St. Paul’s, with the Spirit’s guidance, called Deacon Emily to serve among us, charging her with helping us figure out where and how God is calling us to serve in potentially new and different ways in our community. We asked her to get to know us and our passions, and get to know our community, and to figure out how the Spirit might be connecting our passions to the community’s needs in ways we haven’t yet discovered, and to keep us listening for God’s voice through it all. For our part, we committed to being open to how the Spirit is moving among us, to experiment, to step out in faith, so that we might become a church on fire with the love and passion of the Spirit and the desire to serve the world. My friends, this is something that Deacon Emily cannot do on her own – it is work for the whole Body of Christ, because as Paul writes, “the body does not exist of one member, but of many… You are the body of Christ, and individually members of it.” We are in this thing, together, called by the one Spirit, to serve the world in ever new and surprising ways.
We will have some opportunities for experimentation coming up, chances for you to do something perhaps out of your routine or comfort zone, so that we can see where the Spirit might be drawing us. There will be Cottage Meetings this summer, a chance to talk about your passions and needs with fellow members of St. Paul’s. We will be trying some things in worship – every 3rd Sunday this summer we will be incorporating some elements of contemporary worship into our Sunday gatherings. Deacon Emily and I will be inviting you into a time of weekly prayer together, either in person here with us, or at the same time from wherever you happen to be. In the fall, we’ll be exploring God’s Word together in a program called Story Matters. By this time next year, we will be coming to you to discuss a new mission statement, one that will aim to capture where we are right now as a congregation, and what particular gifts the Spirit has given us to serve in this time and place.
Yes, the Spirit is already busy at St. Paul’s, and will continue to be so! Through this time of exploration and experimentation – and yes, disruption – my prayer is that we will be willing participants in whatever God is up to in this place. That we will look at the ways the Spirit is disrupting our status quo, and be willing to go along for the ride, rather than clinging to our grooves. That we would be open to trying something new, even something that is out of our comfort zone. I know that this work can be scary and tiring; but I also know that it is life-giving, and that the Holy Spirit will be with us in every breath and every step.
Let us pray… Holy Spirit, you are always disrupting us and calling us places we wouldn’t have considered on our own. Open us up to new possibilities, and make us willing to experiment, to try, to sometimes fail, and always to trust that you are here for it. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment