Pentecost | Poured Out For All, May 23, 2021

Pentecost 2021
Acts 2:1-21

On that Pentecost we were all there. All of us. All of you. And that is how the church was formed and sent - all people, engulfed by God’s amazing grace, not because of their merit rather because of the faithfulness of the One the church proclaimed then and proclaims today.

At Pentecost, using every language known so that there would be no mistake, no mistranslation, no nuance missed, or nonverbal misconstrued the Holy Spirit descended so that those present, those in the past returned to dust, and us today might trust, we might believe, so that we will have faith grounded in the hard to believe, impossible and yet all too real promise made by God in Jesus Christ - the perfection demanded in the Law, obedience, and perfection, has been given to you, has been given to everyone, not by what we can do but rather by what has been done. What has been done, accomplished - resurrected and ascended - by Christ.

At Pentecost the Holy Spirit was once again set loose on creation, setting the church in motion, filling Peter with words to proclaim, setting us loose and filling us with the cosmic-breaking power of God not so that we would retreat back to the Upper Room. No, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit we, like Peter, point to the One who was present when that “wind from God swept across the face of the waters” and there was light. Proclaiming the Good News of Christ the church then and today proclaims - so much so that we may be confused for being drunk at nine o’clock in the morning - that we have been redeemed, we have been saved, regardless of time, location, or merit. The God who created and sustains has redeemed creation and continues to fill us, sending us out to proclaim it again and again.