Let us pray: “Christ-promised Holy Spirit, may your life-giving vitality storm the portals of our minds, set our hearts on fire, and transform us into living witnesses to the renewing power of the Father’s love, in and through our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.” Amen.

It’s interesting to think about events that have happened throughout time that have changed the course of history. Were it not for the American Revolution, for example, we’d be praying for our monarch, Queen Elizabeth this morning instead of praying for our President, George Bush. Were it not for electricity, we’d be reading by candlelight this morning and going to bed tonight just as soon as the sun sets. Were it not for penicillin, many of us wouldn’t be alive today or might never have been born.

We can go back in time century by century and point to the people, the inventions, the decisions, and the events that changed history, that prompted a new chapter, or that turned the tide in some significant way. History is full of significant moments. Countless books are written each year analyzing events that were watersheds in human history. PBS documentaries are produced and movies filmed every year charting historical turning points. Children learn, grade in and grade out, about the dramatic turning points in history.

But of all events throughout time, there are only three that truly changed the potential of what we and the world could become, and those events are the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and The Day of Pentecost. In the Incarnation, God entered our history as a human being. In the Resurrection, God saved us from death as the end of life, and made death instead the beginning of eternal life. And on The Day of Pentecost, God came to dwell not just with us or among us, but literally within us. On The Day of Pentecost, God became incarnate as Spirit inside our souls and bodies.

What we remember in history, on The Day of Pentecost, is that Christ’s promise of everlasting power and presence, in the form of his Spirit, came to the disciples. We have two “takes” on what happened in our readings this morning. The first, written by Luke and recorded in The Acts of the Apostles states that those gathered found themselves in the midst of a windstorm and that tongues of fire were visibly resting on them. Even more dramatically, they were suddenly given knowledge of other languages and were miraculously able to communicate in tongues other than their own. The second story is recorded in The Gospel of John and says that Christ transferred his Spirit in the most intimate way imaginable by breathing upon his disciples, and that his breath entered their very bodies.

That’s what we remember today – an event, in whichever version it may have happened – long, long ago. But what we celebrate today is that The Day of Pentecost inaugurated a new way for God to be in relationship with all his creatures, including us – these thousands of years since.
Pentecost, as the third of the three great turning points in history, inaugurated a new creation, a new community, and a new way of being close to God. Our God loves us SO MUCH that he wants to be as near to us as possible. He forged us and formulated us and recreated us into a whole new way of relating to him and to each other through the event of Pentecost. God is with us right here and now – drawing us closer to him minute by minute, day by day. And God is drawing us closer to each other minute by minute, day by day.

Pentecost inaugurates a new community – not just what we call “The Church” – an institution consisting of hundreds of different branches. More powerfully, Pentecost inaugurates a new way of being bound to one another in God. Pentecost inaugurates a new community as communion itself. God loves us, God is with us, God is within us, and God draws us closer to him and to each other. Divinity and humanity are not separated, but infused one with the other.

Pentecost inaugurates new possibilities of being human – and isn’t that something that we and the world so desperately need? Nothing will ultimately fill us and give our lives meaning but this – where we find ourselves right this very minute. St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church is not a building, not an institution, not an organization designed to serve your needs. St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church is a community, a communion, of God-loved, Christ-centered, Spirit-filled people, empowered to love and serve others through the strength and power of God’s Spirit dwelling within us!

I spent five days at a church conference in Ft. Lauderdale this past week with 35 other priests in the Episcopal Church. Some had jobs as rectors, some had jobs as diocesan staff officers and two were on the staff of the national Episcopal Church, centered in New York City. I learned a lot this past week, from the presenters, but even more from my clergy colleagues. What I was so pleased to learn – or re-learn – is that the church (and I’m speaking of the Episcopal branch of the Christian church) is far healthier than we give it credit for.

The health and vitality of the church, I was reminded, has little to do ultimately with programs and budgets, with buildings and ministries, but has everything to do with congregations and people like us. All across the United States, thousands of Anglican Christians like us are striving to live as Pentecost people, open more and more to God dwelling in us and leading us forward, transforming us into the human beings he calls us to be.

It’s not the outward trappings of money in the bank and busy ministries that make us Pentecost people. It’s not the beautiful buildings we worship in that make us Pentecost people. It’s not even the work we do in Christ’s name that makes us Pentecost people. And it is most definitely not the positions we hold on theological, ethical or moral issues that makes us Pentecost people.

What I was reminded of at the conference this past week is that God invites us to acknowledge his presence within us but far more importantly, to surrender to that presence. It is by surrendering to God within our very hearts that enables him to work his transforming work within us, shaping us, re-creating us and calling us forward in love so that we might love him and others.

As Pentecost people, our work isn’t primarily to do more and more but rather to become more and more. And we become more and more not by our own striving, but by opening ourselves, surrendering ourselves, and giving over our self-will to the Spirit of God within us. On this Day of Pentecost, may we surrender ourselves to God anew, feeling his breath within us, breathing new life within us, transforming us inch by inch, day by day. On this Day of Pentecost, may our church family feel the power of his presence among us, calling us forward to new life, new adventures and new vitality.

And on this Day of Pentecost, may we give “Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever.”

Amen.