Preached on May 24, 2026, Day of Pentecost, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Acts 2:1-21.
Happy birthday! Today we celebrate Pentecost, which is traditionally recognized as the birthday of the Christian church. It was the Big Bang, the singular moment when a new Creation began. Today’s reading is from Acts of the Apostles, which is best understood as volume 2 of a two-book set starting with the Gospel According to Luke. Acts 2 serves as the hinge point between the events of Jesus’s life and the events of the church’s post-resurrection life.
The Gospel of Luke starts with the birth of John the Baptist, the forerunner who will prepare the way for the Messiah, and then the birth of Jesus. At this point, there was no messianic movement, but a few shepherds were attracted to Jesus the Messiah. By the fourth chapter of Luke, John’s ministry was established, Jesus had been baptized and tested, and Jesus starts preaching. In his home synagogue, he declares his mission statement:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Now Jesus’s ministry starts in earnest. Soon enough, he has twelve disciples, who are sent out to spread the good news of God’s kingdom. A few chapters later, there are seventy-two followers who are sent out to spread the gospel. The movement grows and grows, but then tragedy strikes: Jesus is arrested and crucified. Is that the end?
No. As Luke narrates, Jesus is resurrected and ascends to heaven. Judas Iscariot dies, but the other Eleven choose a twelfth disciple to re-constitute the core. They lead a group of 120. On Pentecost, another 3000 Jews and proselytes join the movement, and then throughout Acts, the circle keeps growing bigger and bigger. They welcome an Ethiopian eunuch, a Roman centurion, and Gentiles throughout the known world.
The overarching theme of Acts is the explosive growth of the boundary of the Church. What was once a small group of Jews becomes a huge, multi-ethnic movement with new ideas, new ways to understand God’s message to humanity.
We see Jesus’s first followers, and then early converts, fulfilling the Great Commission and pursuing the first, foundational Great End of the Church: The Proclamation of the Gospel for the Salvation of Humankind. If there is no Gospel, there is no church. If there is no proclamation, the church will wither and die. As Paul wrote in Romans 10, “14 But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed?[e] And how are they to believe[f] in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? 15 And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!””
It all started on Pentecost. The Twelve were afraid. They had been promised an Advocate, a helper, but they didn’t really know what that meant. They had a reasonably-sized body of followers—I think we’d be happy with 120 members in our church! But they were not public with their faith.
Then woosh! In comes the Holy Spirit to dislodge them from their fear and empower them to preach boldly. The miracle is not so much that they could speak in different languages, but that the gathered crowd heard them, understood them, and listened to them. We get street preachers on campus from time to time. Hardly anyone really listens to them. Oh, some students will heckle them or argue with them, but I doubt anyone comes to believe in Jesus Christ because of someone preaching in front of the library. On Pentecost, though, the crowd did listen. They were so astonished by the power of the Holy Spirit that they were ready to receive the Word of God.
Really, that’s the only way evangelism works. Whatever we do or say, only the power of the Holy Spirit can change hearts. And yet, we have learned through thousands of years of people’s relationships with God that God works through people. Prophets who hear directly from God are rare. Usually, we learn about God’s desire for universal human flourishing and for our personal flourishing through other people, whether in personal relationships or through books and podcasts and other media. And then, the Holy Spirit kindles our hearts and turns us towards God so that we may flourish, individually and as a community and a society and a species.
Again, what made Pentecost special is that the gathered crowd heard, understood, and listened to Christ’s people. What does it mean to “understand” God’s message? Well, a big part of it is language. That’s the main focus of the story I read, and it’s reflected in our Bible and our congregation. The Bible was written primarily in Hebrew and Greek, so it needs to be translated into the language of the reader. In our congregation, we have at least three native languages: English, Spanish, and Mandarin. But beyond those macro differences, there are also subtleties.
For example, salvation. What does that word really mean? Obviously, it means being saved, but saved from what? The Greek word for it, soter, includes restoration to a state of safety, soundness, health, and well-being, as well as preservation from the danger of destruction. It can also mean deliverance or preservation.
To me, that sounds like a description of something that happens in this life. When Paul’s jailer asked, “What must I do to be saved?” he had in mind the fact that he was in trouble with his commander. He might be fired, jailed, or killed for what happened. Too often, Christians worry about salvation for the next life, and ignore the real dangers and struggles of this life. What good does it do to tell someone they will be saved in the next life when they are homeless, or abused, or unjustly imprisoned, or sick, or starving? They need to be saved now. And anyway, convincing someone that they need to be saved in the afterlife means first convincing them that there is an afterlife, and then that our actions in this life determine what happens when we get there, and then that one possibility is suffering at the hands of an angry God, and only then that Jesus offers a way out of that possibility. So “salvation” may not mean the same thing to someone outside the church as it does to us.
OK, but God sanctifies us, too. Sanctification is the act of becoming holy. But what does it mean to be holy? To the average non-Christian, it means becoming extra judgmental. It means being “holier than thou,” feeling closer to God so that you can look down on people who are farther from God. Maybe not such a good term to throw around.
In evangelical circles, they talk about “backsliding” a lot. The implication is that a person’s actions can make God love them less and can get them put out of the church. Totally fear-based. A lot of churches also talk about being “Bible-based.” Who cares? Again, to convince a non-Christian that being Bible-based is of value requires first convincing them that a book written two to three millennia ago by pre-modern men in a patriarchal society with a totally different material environment is still relevant in their lives today. YOU may believe that, and I do, but why should they?
See, what has happened over the past century is the unraveling of the Modern era and a transition to postmodernism. In the pre-modern era, knowledge about how a society should be organized, how God interacts with humanity, and so forth was determined entirely by your community and culture. People grew up Christian, not because they had studied the Bible deeply and believed in its truth, but because they were part of a community and culture that didn’t really give them any option but to be a Christian. The village priest was the most learnèd person around, so why not believe what he taught? Then in the early modern period, the printing press was invented, literacy spread to the middle and lower classes, the Bible was translated into the vernacular, and attitudes towards religion changed.
Some of the core concepts of modernity are the importance of the individual and the use of rationality. Basically, rather than receiving the wisdom of your forefathers or what was taught by church leaders, the individual had the authority to determine Truth and derive their own wisdom. All they needed were some basic axioms and rational logic, and all knowledge could be derived with absolute certainty. René Descartes’ famous dictum, “I think, therefore I am,” was one of those axioms from which he believed he could derive Christianity.
One problem with the modern approach is that there is so much in the universe that is fundamentally unknowable. We don’t have pictures of Jesus rising from the dead, for example. We cannot know with certainty what happened two thousand years ago. Also, the conclusions you reach depend on the axioms and values you choose. Utilitarians draw conclusions by pursuing the greatest good for the greatest number. Deontologists draw conclusions by acknowledging the infinite worth of each individual human and our duty to one another. Marxists and fascists both have highly logical, rational systems built on different principles.
And so now, we have postmodernism. World War II was the death-knell for what philosophers call Modernism. Everyone could see that the absolute certainty of belief systems that were created logically could lead to unfathomable atrocities. Once you have logically determined that Jews are subhuman, why not exterminate them all? The postwar period saw the birth of postmodernism, which is hard to define precisely but fundamentally refutes the idea of absolute, objective Truth, or at least our ability to ever find it. Objective Truth has been replaced by my truth, your truth, their truth, many subjective truths.
Along with postmodernism has come deconstruction. Again, deconstruction is hard to pin down, but it essentially means re-examining your belief system and removing the things that are broken within it. Deconstruction is common among ex-evangelicals. Much of evangelical Christianity is built on absolute certainty: the Bible is the literal Word of God, and all knowledge can be logically derived from it. There are many problems with that approach. First off, as I have said so often, the Bible is a thick book with lots of stuff in it that you can use to justify almost any position. Second, who does the analysis to determine how the self-contradictory writings of pre-modern men in a foreign culture apply to modern society?
So some evangelical Christians start asking questions. If Paul sent Phoebe, a woman, to read his letter to the Romans, why can’t women preach? If we’re supposed to follow all of the teachings in the Bible, why aren’t we welcoming foreigners or practicing Jubilee? The questions compound, and eventually, they are left with nothing to believe in.
Lest we think we’re any better, let me point out that much of evangelical theology is built on Calvinist thought, just like our doctrines are. Let me also say that I have real trouble with double predestination, the idea that God would choose ahead of time that some people would suffer eternal conscious torment. There are lots of historical beliefs that are in the Book of Confessions that I cannot accept, but that I’m sure some Presbyterians still do.
This process of deconstruction, within the stream of postmodern thought that rejects institutional authority, has been going on for longer than I have been alive. Therefore, many Americans are one or two or three generations removed from Christianity. I grew up in a church, and although I left it, I came back when I quit drinking. For many of my peers, and certainly many of my kids’ peers, there is no “back” because they never were a part of any church.
So we have some people who have rejected the language of the church because they have deconstructed their beliefs, and others who never learned to speak Christianese and would not be receptive to a message based on the Bible or on words like salvation and sanctification. What should we do?
Well, the best place to start, always, is with a relationship. Like I said, the street preachers who yell at students achieve nothing except perhaps to turn students away from the Gospel. Instead, get to know people. I consider my barber to be part of my ministry. I avoid religion in the classroom, but I do seek to foster students’ flourishing.
Part of getting to know people is learning what matters to them. Ask them how they find meaning in their lives. Ask them what they think about the future. Ask them what they think happens when they die. Be a caring presence when they are struggling.
I believe in universal reconciliation. That means there is nothing I can do to change our destination at the end of the age. Therefore, I believe the most important thing I can do is to help people flourish now, not to help them get to heaven when they die. I believe that flourishing requires that they satisfy all of their needs: physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual. I believe that flourishing requires participation in a community.
The challenge of Pentecost is to learn how to be a bridge between the people you meet and the God you know and love. The challenge of Pentecost is to speak in a way that you are heard, understood, and listened to. And yet the promise of Pentecost is that we have an Advocate, the Holy Spirit, flowing through us, empowering us, guiding us each step of the way. Amen.
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