Pentecost 2025

In the event of an emergency

That’s how most gatherings begin. You go to an event or a concert or the theatre and an announcement comes on telling you what to do in case of emergency. Do you hunker in place? Do you run? Do you freeze? Do you hope for the best? Do you find the nearest exit and get out?

This past week at Annual Conference, I was helping with Opening Worship. While considering how many candles I might want to use, I decided to do something I hadn’t done before. I went flameless.

When flames get involved, things are riskier. In case of the emergency of a fire in the building, you don’t usually hang around to see how things go, you get out. Fire consumes everything in its path.

While the disciples hadn’t had any “in case of emergency” speech, they had been told to wait. And so wait they did. We don’t know if they waited patiently or begrudgingly, but wait they did. And when the Holy Spirit came, it didn’t come in a manner they had witnessed before. It didn’t come as the Comforter or the Dove.

Instead, we are told it came as a rushing wind and tongues of fire. Wind and fire in the buildings. Seems like an emergency to me.

And then the tongues of fire resting on people’s heads? Have we now moved into the sci-fi category? This seems weird and scary and super uncomfortable. Everyone else is thinking “it must already be 5’o’clock somewhere” when Peter breaks in and begins preaching.

He speaks from Joel 2:28–29 “Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.”

Think about this passage from Joel and what it means now for all of those gathered. The rushing wind is barrier-breaking. Not just any wind, but a rushing wind. This isn’t some calm breeze gently blowing. This is like sitting in a room and having all the doors and windows blow open in the middle of a storm. How many of you ever used to stand in front of those giant fans as a kid? You would stand in front of them and try to not be moved. This isn’t the wind of a peaceful, easy feeling. This is the wind that moves you.

It breaks open the doors and breaks down the barriers between Jews and Gentiles. Wind and fire are in the room and are ushering people out.

The church isn’t laid upon the slab of our comfort zones. It isn’t man-made, but Spirit-made. And the Spirit of God seems to care more about covering all flesh than preserving our comfort.

Are there some barriers that you are praying for the Spirit of God to break through and break down? Are there some things that you are praying for the fire of the Holy Spirit to rush in and utterly consume and destroy?

This barrier-breaking and all consuming fire is a celestial fire. As Eleazar Ben Kaller says,

Now an angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a blazing fire –  a fire that devours fire; a fire that burns in things dry and moist; a fire that glows amid snow and ice; a fire that is like a crouching lion; a fire that reveals itself in many forms; a fire that is, and never expires; a fire that shines and roars; a fire that blazes and sparkles; a fire that flies in a storm wind; a fire that burns without wood; a fire that renews itself every day; a fire that is not fanned by fire; a fire that billows like palm branches; a fire whose sparks are flashes of lightning; a fire black as a raven; a fire, curled, like the colours of the rainbows!

When we say Come, Holy Spirit, we are praying for this kind of fire to come and break down the barriers between the haves and have nots, between the hungry and the starving, between the oppressor and the oppressed, between the lies and the truth, between sickness and health, between racism and holy love, between snap judgements and deep relationships, between immigrant and citizen. Consume our division, bigotry, selfishness, injustice, and ingratitude. O Lord break it down and step through. O Lord, we are in a state of emergency and need the interruption of your Spirit to break in and break down and push us forward.

This past week, there were some holy interruptions. And while sometimes it broke through in worship, it often occurred at other times none of us expected. It happened when we stopped everything to pray around a gentleman who passed out in the middle of a business session. It happened around late-night conversations of holy listening and laughter. And it happened one day when Rev. Marta Bolen stood up, went to a microphone, and called upon us all to join her in praying for our brothers and sisters in Christ who are in the midst of the current deportation crisis. She called on us to stand up and to speak out. And then her own tongue was set on fire as she broke into prayer. In that moment, the Holy Spirit began to connect us all. We all stood with her as she prayed, tears in our eyes and our hearts heavy.

Peter says “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh” On all flesh. What does all mean to you? Not some flesh. Not most flesh. Not 50%. All. Diana Butler Bass says there cannot be a distinction between God’s people and all people because all people are God’s people. She says “Literally, in Greek, “the whole of human nature” or “every physical body.” Pentecost is a story of the world’s baptism in holy fire....At Pentecost, the wind drives fire on the crowd, across the world, and through the cosmos. God’s breath remakes the universe, restores the oneness of all creation, and births a new humanity. All ground is scorched with holiness, all bodies soaked with the Spirit. All. All. All.”

Luke represents this vision of all flesh at the beginning of our passage today with all the people groups that can sometimes be difficult to pronounce. Although they are all Jewish, they are as different as we are across the state of MS. This would be like a gathering from Cleveland, Oxford, Starkville, Baldwyn, Pascagoula, and Gautier all rolled in together. But perhaps there is even more to what Luke is trying to tell us here with his mix of people.

Rev.Taylor Mertins proposes that what is interesting about Luke’s grouping isn’t just that it is a broad mix of people, but also that it is an impossible mix of people. He claims that the Medes were extinct long before the day of Pentecost, and that the little is known about the Elamites either. Thus, he notes that “Pentecost is more than a gathering of people from the north, the south, the east, and the west. Pentecost is about God’s power over the living and the dead.

In other words, this is Luke’s way of sharing a strange detail across the centuries - were were all there on Pentecost. Pentecost is God’s great way of re-membering us, putting us back together. And notice, God does so not with one language, we’re not going back to Babel, but God does so with the faith that binds and ties all languages together - the grammar of faith transcends language.”

The grammar of faith isn’t about uniformity. It’s about grace. As Jan Richardson says in her blessing Grace that Scorches Us:

Here’s one thing

you must understand

about this blessing:

it is not

for you alone.

It is stubborn

about this.

Do not even try

to lay hold of it

if you are by yourself,

thinking you can carry it

on your own.

To bear this blessing,

you must first take yourself

to a place where everyone

does not look like you

or think like you,

a place where they do not

believe precisely as you believe,

where their thoughts

and ideas and gestures

are not exact echoes

of your own.

Bring your sorrow.

Bring your grief.

Bring your fear.

Bring your weariness,

your pain,

your disgust at how broken

the world is,

how fractured,

how fragmented

by its fighting,

its wars,

its hungers,

its penchant for power,

its ceaseless repetition

of the history it refuses

to rise above.

I will not tell you

this blessing will fix all that.

But in the place

where you have gathered,

wait.

Watch.

Listen.

Lay aside your inability

to be surprised,

your resistance to what you

do not understand.

See then whether this blessing

turns to flame on your tongue,

sets you to speaking

what you cannot fathom

or opens your ear

to a language

beyond your imagining

that comes as a knowing

in your bones,

a clarity

in your heart

that tells you

this is the reason

we were made:

for this ache

that finally opens us,

for this struggle,

this grace

that scorches us

toward one another

and into

the blazing day.

Consume us O Lord with your Spirit. Purge us of any ways that go against the grain of your heart.

Consume us O Lord with your Spirit.

Until we have been utterly scorched by your grace.