May 11, 2008
Rev. Patricia L. Liberty

Pentecost Sermon

I first fell in love with God as an adolescent. 

This odd love connection with the almighty was occasioned by an unlikely free fall into the unknown of childhood illness and the strain that on my family as we tried to cope. To put it mildly, we were somewhat unprepared for the journey.  And while there were no miraculous healings and burning bushes that announced God’s presence, there were some very real gifts that revealed to God to me in ways that changed my life.

It’s probably a more accurate statement to say that I fell in with God’s people…the people who gathered in a little congregational church just up the road a piece during the 60’s and 70’s when I was growing up, or trying to.

Though I don’t remember a single sermon, which I guess doesn’t bode well for us preacher types; I do remember that it was different there.  The best sermons aren’t the ones that come from preachers; they come from the lives of those who people the pews. 

And many of the good folk of that church gently wrapped themselves around me in ways that made God real.  A youth group where the questions of who was cool and who wasn’t were irrelevant, a junior choir where everyone was welcome and bushel baskets were distributed for those who couldn’t carry a tune and it didn’t matter whether the tune was in your mouth or in your basket.  They were a patient if not all together forbearing congregation that managed more often than not to put up with me and my contemporaries even as they shook their heads. 

I learned about God by watching God’s people.  And though I didn’t have much of a clue about who God was I knew that being with God’s people was a good thing and that there was something in them that I wanted to know about and something about them that I wanted to emulate. 

I first fell in love with God because I saw God at work in people.  The roots of my faith journey are deeply planted in the community that was my life line through the confusing seasons of adolescence. 

As a child I saw and felt and knew something of God at work in the tight knit community of the Somersville church; they bore witness to the truth of Pentecost, God enlivening ministry.

Some of them took on the unruly crew of teenagers in the youth group, others staffed the casserole brigade; still others took to visiting in the hospital. 

Aside from the occasional grace said before a meal at our house the only other time I saw someone pray was in church on Sunday when the minister said the pastoral prayer.  I never knew that anyone could pray until someone from the church visited me in the hospital and said a prayer for me.  I still have the little purple stuffed cow Mrs. C brought with her on that visit over 35 years ago, a reminder of one of my earliest lessons about prayer. 

When it came time for confirmation we were introduced to the mission of the church and asked to join in the summer ministry of the church to the girls who came up from South Carolina to work tobacco.  I learned that one of our members actually went to Africa to work on a relief project with the starving children I saw every night on television. 

And still others went to Washington to protest the Viet Nam war and they came back to tell us about it and introduce us to God’s desire for peace.

Mr. J Francis who had been the church’s treasurer for as long as most anyone could remember came to our confirmation class dressed in his dark suit, white shirt with cufflinks and signature bow tie. He introduced me to the joy of giving and challenged me and the rest of my class to know the blessing of tithing.  He said; “In all my 78 years God has never failed to be generous and gracious to me.  I choose to tithe as a reminder to be grateful and as a way of joining in God’s work in the world. God didn’t give me his leftovers so I’m not giving him mine.”  His witness of his life shapes my life to this day and joins the witness of countless other generous stewards who model profound faith in a generous God. 

It was an all together amazing place to me as a child and falling in love with God for the first time will always be inextricably bound with knowing the love of God’s people.

Fast forward 35 years and much of what I know and love about God still comes from the witness of God’s people in the church and in the world.   And I believe that is what lies at the heart of Pentecost. 

Now, there’s no doubt about it, Pentecost makes us nervous.  It’s the root word of Pentecostal and let’s face it that scares the be jeepers out of us.  Much of the conversation about the Holy Spirit is thinly judgment passed by a loud, minority voice of fundamental Christianity. 

But Pentecost marks the time when the spirit came to enliven the church’s ministry.  When all the promises Jesus made to his followers about strength for the journey and clarity for the work of God’s realm became real.

Each year as Pentecost rolls around it is that reminder that what we do we do by the presence and graciousness of the Holy Spirit.  It’s a reminder that whatever gifts we have, whatever good we do, whatever skills we have are given to us and using them is how we give back.  God doesn’t do what God does without us and we don’t do what we do without God.  It’s a partnership.

We have been l gifted by the Gifter.  This church is alive because of the presence of the still speaking God in our midst. 

When the day of Pentecost had come….there was something for everyone, the young and the old, the foreigner and the native.  Each heard in their own language.  Some heard in contemporary worship, others heard in traditional worship, still others in contemplative. And they were all in the same place…think about that. 

It’s all of God and God speaks in it all and through it all. 

The day of Pentecost the promise of Pentecost is that God comes to bring life and new life. God is known in the diversity of skills and gifts and graces that are at work in each person and through God’s spirit it becomes one voice.  God is known in the generosity of God’s people who respond in faith and for the sake of faith to the joys and challenges of being the church in these days.

This is a day of partnership; with the blessing and promise of the Holy Spirit, with the grace and generosity of a faithful God, with the myriad of skills and gift and treasures and talents and passions that span the breadth of this community that gathers for worship in traditional contemporary and contemplative settings, with the widespread mission that is church school and book groups and building projects and passion for justice and so much more….

God is in our midst.  It is the promise of Pentecost.  In the diversity of this community of faith, let s celebrate the many ways the spirit is known.

God of many colors, god of time and space; when we fear the future give to us your grace; in the midst of changing ways give us still the grace to praise.

Many gift one spirit, one love known in many ways.  In our difference is blessing from diversity we praise one giver one God one spirit one word known in many ways hallowing our days, for the giver for the gifts praise praise praise!