Pentecost 2026, May 24, St. Mark’s, Acts 2:1-21, John 20:19-23
Today is the third most significant celebration of the Christian year. After Christmas and Easter comes the Day of Pentecost, when a gale wind blows through a house on a backstreet in Jerusalem, equipping Jesus’ disciples with everything they need to turn the world upside down. It is God’s own breath, the Holy Spirit, the most mysterious and least typecast person of the Trinity, the muse and soul of Christ’s church.
We have Christmas pageants, Easter parades, but Pentecost has no Hallmark cards
Maybe we are spooked by the Holy Spirit. At 8 o’clock, we sometimes call it the Holy Ghost, which adds a more macabre effect.
Today, Jesus’ disciples receive the miraculous good news that their bodies are to take the place of Jesus’ body in the world. The same Holy Spirit who has filled him comes into them, giving them all they need to carry forward his ministry.
The day of Pentecost is also celebrated as the birthday of the church, the whole state of Christ’s church, united by God’s breath and empowered by God’s Spirit. All over the world today, people are wearing fiery red clothes to church, releasing balloons, reading the gospel in foreign languages, or blowing out candles on a cake with red frosting that says, “Happy Birthday, Church!” //
To understand why a church has a particular personality, find out how it began. If a congregation is founded to oppose something, that opposition composition will remain part of that church’s DNA and its relationship to the world. If a church is born, like St. Mark’s, to embrace and expand something, you can expect that inclusive posture to be passed down to every generation.//
This makes it all the more fascinating when we hear two distinct birth stories of the church involving the Holy Spirit today. One, from John, and the other, from Luke.
John’s story unfolds on Easter evening, as the eleven disciples are locked inside the upper room of a house in Jerusalem. Whenever we experience traumatic events, nighttime takes on new meaning. Ordinary fears are magnified, and we lock windows and doors. Jesus enters without a key. John says he simply “came” and stood among them. “Peace be with you,” he says. Next, he shows them his ID, the wounds in his hands, feet, and side.
Then John describes Jesus doing something creepy and mystical. He commissions them by breathing on them, opening his mouth, and pouring his breath inside them so that their hair poofs up and their eyelashes flutter. They can smell that breath, not just from Golgotha and Galilee, but back before the world was born. Their own lungs fill with the smell of Eden: salt brine, river mud, calla lilies. His breath restores all that Fear killed inside them. It is a second Genesis, as they are created over again by the power of the Spirit coming out of Jesus’ breath.
“Receive the Holy Spirit,” Jesus says. With a gentle breath, Jesus breathes his Spirit into his disciples, who now become the guardians of that Spirit./ According to this Gentle Breath story about the church’s birth, the Church has received the Holy Spirit. The world has not. It is the church’s job to carry that Spirit into the world.
A birth story like this creates a distinctive form of church. Some Gentle Breath congregations forget the “send” part that Jesus says: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” They like being breathed on so much that they stay right where they are, clapping their hands and praising God for the breeze, without ever unlocking the doors.
Other congregations hear the “send” part and go out into the world, to lead those who don’t know about the Spirit back into the church so they can meet God in person.
This is a very Jo/han/nine idea of the church. There is nothing wrong with it, but it is not the only biblical account of the church’s birth. //
Luke describes a different delivery room for the church’s birth in Acts. The disciples are still in a house, but Luke’s story occurs fifty days after Easter. About 120 people are crowded into a house instead of 11. The doors and windows are open because those inside know they are waiting for something to come in. According to Luke, Jesus’ last words are “Stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” While they don’t have a clue what it looks like, they open all the doors and windows so whatever it/ is can get in.
On the day of Pentecost, “it” turns out to be something even Luke has difficulty describing. It begins with a sound like the rush of a violent wind, filling the entire house. Then it bursts into divided tongues like flames above their heads. When they open their mouths to shout, “Watch out! Your head’s on fire,” different words come out, speaking languages none of those Galileans ever learned. Perfect strangers, foreigners, have to tell them they are talking about God in their native language. The disciples are behaving so bizarrely that bystanders describe them as/ drunk.
But Peter says no. “It’s only nine o’clock in the morning,” and then the Spirit rescues Peter by giving him something to say in his language. He describes an old prophecy from Joel, who foresees days like this, when God’s Spirit is poured out upon all flesh, not just chosen people, not just eleven male people, not just church people, but all people, young, old, male, female, slave and free.
EVERYONE upon whom the Spirit is poured is called to spread the word. God’s fiery, transforming Spirit is LOOSE in the world, and from this day forth the church’s job is to FAN it wherever it is found.
In Acts, we hear about the birthing of an alternative church, not a Gentle Breath congregation but a Violent Wind congregation, propelled more by God’s sneeze than God’s breath, where such a strong wind blows toward the open doors of the church that people must lash themselves to the pews to stay inside. They come back weekly to rally, rest and reflect, but then God’s finger goes back under God’s nose, and it is out into the world again, not just to take the Spirit out but to discover it in all the surprising people upon whom it has already been poured.
Members of Violent Wind congregations count on the Spirit to guide them as they go out in search of Holy Fire. They may find it absolutely anywhere: at a disaster-relief station, in the beauty parlor of a nursing home, in a jail where Free Read books go, in the food pantry line, around a family supper table, at a homeless Vets dinner, at VBS, or at Camp Mitchell.
How do we know when we find it? Wherever the Spirit is,/ there is heat and light. People’s lives are being changed around that fire, and they are so excited about what is happening to them that they speak the language of love, a love so generous that it cannot be contained by any human institution.
As different as John’s and Luke’s church birth stories are, they share this: the church doesn’t need a sign out front, a copy machine, or adequate parking,/ though these things certainly help. All it needs is people with a story about how their life together began and what it was like to be LOCKED UP, short of breath, waiting for God knows what. They do know what it is like to be awakened/ by some mysterious divine breath, whether it comes as gently as a sigh /or so violently that their life turns upside down.
Best case scenario, most churches have an obstetrical team trained in both Pentecost deliveries.
These stories do not tell us where God’s wind is going, but they do tell us that God gave the church to the world, not to possess the Spirit, but to serve as ministers of the Spirit, sending us out in the WORLD, wherever the Spirit calls and leads us. /////
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful with the fire of your love, and lead us out to heal our suffering world. Amen
Joanna Seibert
Barbara Brown Taylor, “God’s Breath,” Journal for Preachers, Pentecost 2003, pp 37-40.