A COMMUNITY OF FAITH
A pastor’s young son was told by his mother that he should wash his hands because there were germs living in that dirt. He refused and complained loudly, “Germs and Jesus! Germs and Jesus! That’s all I ever hear around this house, and I’ve never seen either one!”
Today we celebrate something else we hear a lot about yet cannot see it; the Holy Spirit. Pentecost is the celebration of the gift of the Holy Spirit. So often we think of the gift of the Holy Spirit as something we receive individually. However, that is not what we celebrate today. From a scriptural perspective, the celebration of Pentecost is actually all about the creation of the church of Jesus Christ. It is about, the creation of the COMMUNITY OF FAITH.

Pentecost, then, is the celebration of the beginning of our faith community created by, nurtured by, and continually sustained by the power of the Holy Spirit. In a very real sense then, today is the church’s birthday. Just as our personal birthdays remind us that our lives had a definite beginning, so too does Pentecost remind us that the church had a beginning. It is a creation of God’s power, and as such does not belong to us, but remains a gift of God and not something we can possess!
Of course, to say we are celebrating the birth of the church does not address the question of, “Well, what is the church?” “How do we define church?”
I’m sure we cannot exhaustively answer that question, but we can certainly say what the church is not. The church is not this building. Neither is it the building going up next to us. Neither is it the buildings we will soon demolish. Nor is the church the mere sum total of our mission dollars. The church is not the various programs of ministry it offers. The church is not the formal list of membership maintained by the Session. All of these things, while they are important parts of the church - they are not the church.
So, while we can admit that there is much we don’t know about the church, we can say that it is a faith community that does these things. We have buildings, we do mission work, we carry out programs, and we create and fund budgets. All of these things grow out of and from what the church really is - a holy fellowship of God’s children redeemed by grace continually sustained and renewed by the Holy Spirit; a faith community! 
Now, fellowship is an intangible notion. It is more than just socializing, but it is something less than formal instruction.  We can point to its effects, but we cannot accurately measure it. Fellowship is relationships, and relationships are inherently fluid and intangible. Even so, it is a relatively easy matter to point to the tangible effects of fellowship: Specific programs, membership lists, budgets, buildings, etc. However, these things are not the church: They are the result of the Holy Spirit working among us creating relationships which are grounded in our relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is to this basic relational character of the church that our evangelist Luke sought to point as he recounted the events of Pentecost. In these 21 verses there are no fewer than 7 references to all, each, everyone, in the community. You see, Luke is struggling to understand how the church can be the church; he is struggling to understand and name that power which forms us and connects us to one another and to our Lord Jesus Christ. So, Luke tells us the incredible story of Pentecost; a story of tongues of fire and of the disciples speaking in foreign languages so THAT ALL COULD HEAR; the whole community.

For me, the actual historical account of this event is of less importance than the profound theological truth it communicates. The primary theological truth Pentecost reveals is that the power of the Holy Spirit eliminates and reverses all the divisions we human beings have created between us. Through the gift of the Spirit God’s power evaporates the barriers of race, culture, generational gaps, and language which exist among God’s children.
Certainly, as the disciples spoke in the native tongues of different people to share the good news of God’s love and forgiveness revealed in Jesus Christ, Luke intended for us to understand that the divisions among us are in fact no barrier to God. The power of the Holy Spirit overcomes all things and creates us as one people before God.

Secondly, the events of Pentecost reveal for us the fulfillment of Christ’s promise to be with us and to empower us to serve as God’s children. The images of Pentecost, the rushing wind, tongues of fire, and universal discernment, are symbolic of the Spirit’s powerful presence in the church.
Pentecost, then, is really a celebration of power; God’s power at work in the world. The pertinent question for us is, “Do we have this power? Have we received the power which the disciples received?”

YES! We have it. Through the symbolic waters of baptism the promise of the Holy Spirit has been extended to each of us who have received baptism. The waters of baptism poured over us in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are a symbol of the gift of the Spirit. As we are baptized, Christ’s promise of the power of Holy Spirit is in fact extended to us individually. Yet that promise, as Acts 2:1-21 reminds us, is experienced first and foremost as a community of faith. A lone ranger Christian is not something the NT presents. Christian faith is a communal faith and event.
Today, some 20 centuries after Pentecost, we still experience the power of the Holy Spirit moving among us. It is this power which creates and re-creates our personal faith daily. It is this power which creates and re-creates our relationships with one another and with our Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, it is this power which has brought each of us to worship this morning.
Truly, the power of Holy Spirit working among us and through us is what empowers us to tell God’s story, it is what empowers and emboldens us to be Christ’s witnesses in a world hungry to hear his story. It is the foundation and context for the web of relationships we call church; a community of faith. As a community of faith, church is that place where people grow and are nurtured in faith as children of God.

This is the core of what we are celebrating today; that through the gift of the Holy Spirit we are made a community of faith and bonded together not just by human love and concern, but through the grace of God.
Let us then continue to grow in our baptismal identity as children of God. Let us continue to seek the leading of Holy Spirit as we grow in the Lord. So may it be. Amen.   
Reverend Marc V. Mason
Pentecost 2009
May 31, 2009
Trinity Presbyterian Church
Travelers Rest, SC