Pentecost Sunday; May 24, 2026

speaker-0: Okay, the first reading is from the book of Numbers. So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord, ⁓ and he seventy of the elders of the people and placed them all around the tent. ⁓ Then the came down in the cloud and spoke to him, ⁓ and took of the spirit that was on him ⁓ and put on the seventy elders. ⁓ And when spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. ⁓ But they not do so again. ⁓ Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad and the other Medad, and the spirit rested on them. They were among those who registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, so they prophesied in the camp. And a young man ran and told Moses, Eldad and Medad are prophesying. In the camp. And Joshua, son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, My Lord, Moses, stop them. But Moses said to him, Are you jealous for my sake? With that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them? And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp. The word of the Lord.

speaker-1: ⁓ our passage you will have heard before. It's ⁓ it's a Pentecost Day ⁓ standard, and it comes from the book of Acts and the second chapter therein. Listen with me now ⁓ for word of the Lord. ⁓ When the day of Pentecost had come, they, the disciples and ⁓ a number of others, 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. And 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 language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it then that we hear each of us in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and the residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt, and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, as if somebody would say that as they're just listing off who's around. And Cretans and Arabs. Arabs, those in our own languages, we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power. And all of them were amazed, and they were perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean? But others sneered and said, They're filled with new wine. But Peter, standing with the eleven, Raised his voice and addressed them. Fellow Jews and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose. It's only nine o'clock in the morning. Though 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 prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams, even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven 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. And then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. The word of the Lord. Let us pray. Good and gracious God, pour out your Spirit upon us as we hear your word to us today. Let us be forever changed by you, that we might live in and see your world differently, and see your embrace of all people. And now, O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing and acceptable in your sight, O Christ, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. So I'm not an audiobook guy, but I am a novelty guy, so I'm listening to an audiobook right now. And it's called Black AF History, The Unwhitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriet. And it is an absolute banger. So many stories about so many people that I had never heard of before or knew very little about. I mean, I don't know about you, but I grew up with the impression that America's creation was the work of about three heroic, very hard-working white Christian men, and I don't want to spoil it for you. That is not true. This book has been a reminder to me of how history gets written, the history that most of us have taken for granted most of our lives, which is that history gets written by the people who are in charge. And it is preferenced thereafter by what the majority of people agree upon. It's like this with most dip disciplines, I imagine. It's certainly true for theology. That I remember This week, ⁓ growing up in undergrad, we read a book called Doing Theology from the Margins, and it did not strike me then at all that what we would call what we were calling a marginal reading of scripture was only marginal because of who was standing in the center. Right? I am not black, I am not living in the poorest parts of Central America, I'm not a woman, I'm not queer, I'm a white heterosexual guy. And people like me have gotten to create the agenda in Western society for like a while now. And so we have gotten to decide what is marginal and what is not. And following on that realization for me this week was another reminder of just how addicting such control is. And just how addicting control is in general. I mean, we talk about control all the time and we're frustrated with our lack of it pretty much constantly. We talk about controlling the narrative, controlling our spending, controlling our kids who are likely somewhere under these seats right now. We don't know. Controlling our own bodies, our health, right? Controlling our mouths, all wild, wildly difficult, if not impossible, things to control. And often, as I was just reminded this week, if you are a guy like me, a white heterosexual male, you get to play games that make you feel like you are, in fact, in control every once in a while. But today is Pentecost. And if you thought that a five-year-old was difficult to control, allow me to introduce to you the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit is completely out of our control. That's why the steadiest scriptural metaphors for the Spirit are wind and fire. If it was earth, wind, and fire, we'd have to move Pentecost to the 21st night of September. But as it is, as we see in our Acts 2 passage, it's just wind and fire. And you might convince yourself that fire is controllable. There are lots of firefires in West. Texas and California that would beg to differ with you right now. But best of luck controlling the wind, right? Or your own breath. Mary. you might convince ⁓ you might be convinced ⁓ that these things are controllable, but at the end of the day they are not. The Holy Spirit will no more submit to our control or to our narrative than I can tell a fire how to blaze. She has a will all her own. Our passage from Numbers is a great example of this. There, all is decent and orderly. Seventy elders chosen, I'm sure, by ranked choice voting and with equitable access to the polls, all in the service of helping Moses lead an unruly complaining people who are so heavy to Moses that he complains to God that he wants to. Die. True story. And God does ahead of this passage that we just read what God said God was going to do, and that is that they gather 70 elders, and God takes some of the spirit that is on Moses to lead, and he gives it to these other 70 elders so that they might be sufficiently gifted to share the weight of ministry. And by the way Nominations for our own officers here at the church, ⁓ elder and deacon, nominating committee and trustee. These nominations begin today. Thank you, Lynn Ray, for sharing ⁓ a devotional throughout the week to get us thinking about our own spiritual gifts. And we live into this same trust that we see in Numbers 11 every single year. That God will take some spirit and equip those who are called with the gifts of the Spirit for the work that they are. called to do in the church. Like Moses, Pastor Kim and I need your help or we might die. That we haven't yet is but a testament and a testimony to your own faithfulness. So all is going to plan here in Numbers. When they get word from some little snitch in the camp that God must have accidentally splashed some of the spirit that he was pouring out on the 70, like water into the font, because Eldad and Nedad are prophesying inside the camp. Which means that there weren't 70 prophesying, which is what God said God was gonna do. There are 72 prophesying now, which is not what anybody planned for. Not what Moses planned for, not what God said was God was gonna do. So I wonder what you would do in this situation. I bet you'd do what good boy Joshu Joshua did, because we are always uncomfortable with what happens outside our control and our plan. Joshua comes to Moses. Moses, make them stop. They don't have the proper prophesying permits. But Moses, God bless him for this, doesn't do this. Moses had seen enough in his life to know that God, while rarely predictable, can always be trusted. This is the same man who saw the plagues that loosened the grip of Israel's oppressors. The same man who led the charge through the Red Sea, a parting that happened because of a strong east wind. If you know, you know. So Moses waves Joshua off. And Moses declares that indeed he is not jealous. He doesn't want to claim all the authority for himself. He doesn't need to control the narrative. And he wishes instead that all God's people would be blessed with the Spirit and that all of God's people would prophesy because there is enough of the Spirit to go around. Indeed, at Pentecost. Moses' dream and Joel's dream that God would pour out God's Spirit upon all people, men and women, young and old, slave and free, a true, especially for the time, a true egalitarian vision comes true. Except now it isn't just a portion of Moses' spirit that gets placed upon these. It is the Holy Spirit herself who has poured out upon all those who are waiting. Dwelling now within them, not just on them, acting as the love bond, not only between the persons of the Trinity, as we understand the Spirit, but also the bond of love that reaches out to connect you to the community that is the Trinity. The Spirit reaches out to connect us to one another and make us family in Christ. The spirit will no longer be restricted to one single group of people or one single kind of expression. In fact, the very gift of Pentecost Day is that all who are gathered from all around the ancient world for the feast of Shabbat in Jerusalem, the miracle is that they can all understand in their own languages what these folks are saying about God's great deeds of power. And they can't believe it because so many of those who are declared. Declaring said good news, are Galileans, which is a backwater town. These folks can barely be expected to read, let alone speak in multiple languages, covering the entirety of the ancient Near East. But now not only is the spirit falling on the speakers, the spirit is falling on the hearers. So don't tell her what to do. We're gonna talk about all the gifts of the Spirit for the next two months. But one thing is abundantly clear. When the Spirit is at work, there is a call to unity. Moses sees the Spirit working in ways that he did not expect, ways that God did not tell him to expect. And instead of resisting and making God fit his mold, he rolls with it. May all God's people be blessed with the Spirit and prophesy. And then he walks everybody back into camp with Medad and Eldad instead of kicking Medad and Eldad out of it. Those gathered in the upper room at that day all experience God's Spirit. And though they sound different, they are sharing the same message, which is an invitation to experience the same joy and assurance of knowing the undying love. Of Jesus and the forgiveness of all your failures and faults. The Holy Spirit is always drawing us into the family, creating a movement pushed by wind and warmed by the fire of inspiration. She is wisdom's voice, according to the to Proverbs, and the power of community. Indeed, this very morning, the Spirit has drawn into our number three more. One, Karen, the wind pushed her the entire way from Africa into Trinity Presbyterian Church. Carol, back into this, the embrace of this congregation from Arlington and Zane about to be baptized, who has shared with me the appeal of Jesus to him, such that he is ready now to respond to that appeal. That appeal, that calling of God, that wooing of the spirit has gone out to Karen and to Carol and to Zane. And it's come to them as the voice of the very living Spirit of God. So the truth is this: the Spirit who hovered over the waters before anything existed. The spirit who rested on Moses and splashed over onto Eldad and Medad, who fell on sons and daughters, and slaves and free people and Galilean fishermen and a crowd from every corner of the ancient world. She is not finished. She'll never be finished. Which means she's pouring out on you right now because you are a part of all flesh. She's pouring herself out. On the young who see visions of a world yet to be? She's pouring herself out on old men who dream dreams of something better than they have already seen. She's pouring herself out on those inside the norm and those on the margin. She's pouring herself out on those who by grace have seen an egalitarian spirit breathed way forward that draws the boundaries so wide there is no longer a margin. And the spirit is being splashed on those who'd rather shut down new expressions of faithfulness. The spirit is splashing all over the place. And we cannot control that holy mess. You are not spectators to someone else's Pentecost. This is not an audiobook history lesson. You are the ones the spirit is landing on. So say yes. And buckle up. Thanks be to God. Amen.