Sermon for Pentecost

June 8, 2025

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott


Pentecost Sunday


First of all, a big thank you to the Confirmation students who made our streamer sticks, and a big thank you to those of you who were willing to wave them during our processional hymn. The first year I ever saw streamer sticks in use was at the Florida-Bahamas Synod Assembly in 2012. Those streamers were on much larger sticks, which was both wonderful, in terms of beauty and drama, but hazardous in terms of the chandeliers that hung from the ceiling in the meeting rooms where the Synod Assembly was held. One chandelier was shattered and Carl leaned over to whisper to me, “Rowdiest Lutheran worship ever!”

Lesson learned—you’ll notice that we’re not using sticks big enough to take out our chandeliers. But what a great metaphor for the inbreaking Holy Spirit. As we’ve been reading the stories from Acts today and these past weeks, I’ve been reflecting on how those first believers’ lives were shattered even more after Jesus leaves them than in the days when they were following Jesus.

In today’s reading from Acts, we see them in the early days of shattered lives—Jesus gone, they’ve been told to wait, and they have no idea what they wait for. My rabbi friend Rachel Barenblat notes that it is a festival time in Jerusalem, the Feast of Weeks, 50 days after the start of Passover, a feast that celebrates the revelation of the 10 commandments at Mt. Sinai.

By the time the story is done, the book of Acts written, those first believers are probably feeling more unified than shattered—the shards of their earlier lives have come together into a new shape. The festival day of Pentecost reminds us that great things can happen when the Holy Spirit takes hold of a community. If we need a reminder of that, all we need to do is to look at the state of the church on Pentecost morning, and then think about the spread of Christianity in the decade after Pentecost.

And Christianity was spread by word of mouth and regular people--sure, there were some superstars like Paul. But Paul came and went and then regular people had to keep the vision alive.

They did. Pentecost both celebrates that fact and invites us to think about what the Holy Spirit might be up to in our 21st century.

Pentecost reassures us with the mystical promise of the Spirit. We do not have to know what we are doing; we just need to be open to the movement of the Spirit. Pentecost promises daring visions; we don’t have to know how we’re going to accomplish them. God will take care of that.

John's Gospel reading for Pentecost has a different emphasis. Throughout the whole fourteenth chapter of John, Jesus promises that we're not going to be left alone. Jesus must know how hard it will be for his disciples; it's been somewhat easy for them as they sojourn with their Savior. But once he's gone, how will they carry on?

Once again, we have Jesus saying he will pray for the disciples. He tells the disciples that they will have everything they need as they go out into the world. He suggests that the new incarnation of himself/God/Spirit will dwell inside us.

I feel like this Gospel lesson peers straight into our souls, our tired, overstretched souls, as Jesus reminds us that we are not alone. Verse 18, the verse after this Gospel ends has Jesus promise, "I will not leave you orphaned; I will come to you" (John 14: 18). That's the Good News of this Gospel: we are not alone. We do not have to go about our Pentecostal mission alone. Jesus reminds us that it's a team effort: "Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it" (John 14: 13-14). Jesus reminds us of all that we can accomplish, if we work to discern the vision that God has for creation and our part to play.

I love the way the Gospel ends, with these images of all these incarnations of the Divine, swirling in the world around us, breathed into us, gathering within us. In our Gospel today, Jesus reminds us that we are enough because we're not all alone; the Holy Spirit comes, which helps us work collectively for the inbreaking Kingdom of God. It's a message that's so unlike the messages beamed to us from the larger culture in which so many of us live our daily lives. Our larger culture does not treasure teamwork—not teamwork with God, not teamwork with each other. Our popular culture likes the larger-than-life leader, the one who goes it alone. Don't believe me? watch T.V. for a week, watch politics, go to the movies, talk to friends about what’s going on in the workplace--it's rare to see a team working together for the greater good. These days it’s far more common to see teams working to dismantle the vision of the greater good that previous generations built.

Jesus reminds us again and again that we are more than adequate—humans transformed by the intervention of the Holy Spirit. We see disciples that are gloriously human in many of the ways that we are too, and Jesus takes a small band of these flawed humans and changes the world as he sends them out to work in small groups, groups committed to each other and to God. Jesus can take our overscheduled selves and transform us, so that we love each other, that we become one with each other and God, his ultimate dream for us.

Imagine for a moment that you are part of the crowd on that first day of Pentecost, that you hear these uneducated, Galilean disciples speaking to you in your home language. You might have been expecting once again to celebrate the revelation of the 10 commandments to Moses, but to hear of a new revelation about more recent deeds of power of God at work in the world? To hear these words in your own language, in a multitude of languages, spoken by Galilean men who couldn’t have known any other language but their own?

Now imagine your current self, alive in a time when all sorts of people use all sorts of resources to spew all sorts of nonsense masquerading as knowledge. We’re told that developments in artificial technology might save us, but so far, the machines hallucinate and spew slop.

Listen again to the words of the ancient 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,
 and your young men shall see visions,

and your old men shall dream dreams.
 18Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
  in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
   and they shall prophesy.


What might this look like in our current day, to have a prophetic imagination? In his classic text, The Prophetic Imagination, Walter Brueggemann, who died this week at the age of 92, tells us that the prophet shows us a world in which God can act and that God has a plan and a purpose (p. 218). We have the promise of the ancient prophets like Joel that if we can use our power to align ourselves and our societies to right relationship with God and with each other, we can turn ourselves and our societies in a new direction, one where we can discover a true path to flourishing.

Pentecost reminds us of our job description, to let the Holy Spirit blow into our midst and to fill us with the ability to see righteousness and the fire to bring God’s visions to life. Pentecost reminds us to be the ones who call to our communities in languages that they understand to tell them that a better world can be created. Jesus has not left us orphaned, living in the shattered remnants of a once beautiful and beaming light. The Triune God speaks to us in our home language, reminding us of past promises kept, calling us to new communities—all of us, gathered into one.

Jesus promised an advocate, and the Holy Spirit has come, wind and fire and power from on high. Get ready to dream new visions!