As was indicated in my last blog, I find myself in a nostalgic place these days, reflecting on how blessed I have been in my life by so many “connections, gatherings and a sense of community,” all a part of a powerful, shared story. (Jean Houston) Today’s blog post reflects that sense of nostalgia. Its words and message were first offered on Pentecost, some twenty-five years ago, from the pulpit of First Church, Coventry, and then appeared in my book: Voices from Pulpit and Pew; A Memoir from Retirement. I am reprinting that sermon here in this blog, hoping to revisit the important themes of Pentecost, timeless in their import and relevance. Sunday, June 8, 2025, Pentecost Sunday awaits us with its gifts.
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Pentecost People, June 2003
On a Saturday afternoon in August of 2000, I presided at the wedding ceremony for Robert Brown and Cheri Turkington at the home of Cheri’s parents on Bolton Lake. It was a picture-perfect day. The sun was glistening off the lake. A light breeze cooled our faces, faces alive with joy. Yesterday, three years later, Rob and Cheri asked me to be with them again—this time on a Tuesday morning in June—to speak at the funeral mass for their son, Connor Francis Brown, who lived ten days after being born on May 27th at the University of Connecticut Health Center. Connor died hours after being baptized by the hospital chaplain. That day there was no sun. Tears fell both from heaven and heart; and they were not tears of joy but of a sorrow beyond words.
How different it is for us today. We gather here in joy for the baptisms of Sierra, Dylan, and Aiden--- thank God, not because death may claim them but because lives of promise lay before them. We want them to live with a sense of God’s guiding presence, the gift of God’s love and the friendship of Jesus for life.
So, this morning, I am reminded of words written by Paul to the church in Rome:
We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.
If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord:
So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end, Christ died and lived again…
(Romans 14: 7-9, NRSV)Baptism is all about affirming this truth: whether we live or whether die, we are the Lord’s.
And as grace would have it, we gather today as well on the day of Pentecost, fifty (50) days after Easter. The disciples are still hanging around Jerusalem, still trying to sort things out and set things up for what lay ahead of them. It is interesting to read what precedes this morning’s dramatic account of the rush of a mighty wind and tongues of fire and being ‘under the influence.’ (Some were saying that it was the Holy Spirit, but others insisted that such behavior was the result of too much new vino.) What we read is that the disciples were going about the task of filling a vacancy on the board of disciples. They needed twelve and Judas’ betrayal and untimely death had created a vacancy. There were two candidates—Joseph Justus and Matthias. Matthias was elected.
So, they were at full strength again, that is, of course, if strength is in numbers, which it isn’t. And they were to find that out.
In today’s lesson from Acts, everyone was together somewhere in Jerusalem when all heaven broke out. It must have been a wild scene with the wind howling flashes of fire and people talking all at once! Nothing was ever the same, not the disciples nor those with them or how they understood what was happening to them. God was pouring out the Spirit from a divine cup that was overflowing, as if to say, okay, stand back and listen and watch for what will happen next!
Then, Peter starts preaching, and people start worrying, wondering, and wanting to know what to do and how to respond to his message. In verse thirty-eight, something we didn’t read, he tells them: “Be baptized! And receive the Holy Spirit!”
It is passages like these that sometimes get me wondering and questioning who we are and what we are supposed to do in the life of our church, where pews almost seem assigned, and everything is scripted and even the sermon is somewhat researched and written. Believe me, sometimes I’m up here and I want to say: “someone -- check for a pulse.” Last Sunday, Confirmation Sunday, was not one of them but when the decision that was made by seven of our young people to confirm their own baptisms, something that Sierra, Dylan and Aiden will do in 14 or so years, we did communion at the end of a long service. I used the established words for the liturgy and sensed that it may have lacked energy and focus at that point. Then, when I turned to the worship aids for this morning, which provided a liturgy for communion, were we to be celebrating it today, listen to what was suggested:
Invitation to the Table:
Parthian, Mede, Elamite, and Judean.
Those from Cappadocia, Pontus, Phrygia and Pamphylia.
Peoples of Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, North America, Australia, New Zealand, The Pacific, the Atlantic, The Indian and Artic Oceans, First nations, last nations, Hartland, Hartford, Coventry, and Columbia
The Spirit calls you to gather, to come by this place and meet with heaven.
Come now and take your place at the front door of eternity.
This bread and wine lie silently on the table.
Harmless, still, gentle in the quiet of this place.
Yet voices of every language have cried aloud because of it.
Throats have been cleared in protests, inspired by their content.
Proclamations roared in response to its message.
Cries of anguish have been raised because of its consequences.
Pain and distress result from its politics.
We join these voices.The quietest of places now becomes the loudest message to the world. As we remember you breaking bread, spilling with destiny and light, by spirit, surrounded by promise, as you ask us to eat and drink and join all heaven.
Pentecost appears to have been one of the ‘loudest’ of experiences--- not just in terms of the wind and tongues of fire and all those people speaking but the kind of experience that is meant to awaken us to love’s claim and love’s power. And baptism is the act of the heart and mind and being, the open and public declaration--- “Here I am! --- fill me!” Or in the case of our children, we parents present them, “Here they are--- fill them!”
But that’s not the safe route to take, of course.
I am very fond of reading some of the reflections written by Barbara Brown Taylor. In her book, Bread of Angels, she writes of Peter and his preaching and those who heard and responded to him:
His world had just been turned upside down. He had just had his doors blown off their hinges and when the Israelites asked him, ‘What should we do?’ I do not believe he gave them a three-step prescription to fill. I believe he told them how to prepare for a holy hurricane.
‘Reorient your lives.’ That is the truth of what he told them, knowing full well that that was what would happen the moment Jesus came to live in them. Forget everything you ever thought you knew about who is in charge in this world. Get ready to revise all your notions about what makes someone great, or right, or worthy of your attention. If you think you know which way is up, think again. If you think you know how things should turn out in the end, get ready to be wrong.
This Jesus I have been telling you about is one surprise after another. You cannot second-guess him. All you can do is love him and let him love you back, any way he sees fit. Sometimes it is so strong it can scare you to death. You want to know what you should do? Repent, return, revise, and reinvent yourself.
Then go get born again, by water and the Spirit. Walk into the river of death with him, and while you are down there, let the current carry away everything that stands between you and him. Then, when all your own breath is gone, let him give you some of his. Take his breath inside of you. Let it save your life, and when he rises, rise with him, understand that your life is no longer your own. You died down there. You are borrowing life now. Let someone make the sign of the cross on your forehead to remind you of that and join the community of those who call themselves his body, because they believe his heart beats in every one of them.
Then, receive the Holy Spirit. That is, breathe. Deeply. Receive your life as a gift invisible as air and prepare to be astonished by all the forms that breath can take. Under the power of the Holy Spirit, shy people have been known to step up onto platforms and say audacious things. Cautious people have become daredevils; frugal people have become philanthropists and people who used to be as sour as dill pickles have become rich with friends. (Barbara Brown Taylor)
I guess that’s what it means to be a ‘Pentecost People’—a people who in baptism, consciously and willfully, open themselves and their children to the gift of the Holy Spirit and its gifts and the changes it makes in us and our lives..
And no gift is greater than knowing His heart beats in us, that His capacity for love has become our capacity and that joy abounds in the lives of those that know and believe that they belong to Him.
May God bless Sierra, Dylan, Aiden and Connor with this knowledge and joy.
Amen
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We are still a Pentecost people, in whom Jesus lives, a people that Jesus leads and a people that believes they belong to Jesus and show it by how they live.