Acts 2:1-21; I Corinthians 12:1-13

Gracious God - bless now the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts. Breath your Spirit into us and grant that we may hear and in hearing be led in the way you want us to go. Amen. I heard a story the other day, an amusing story, about a boy who was wandering around the narthex of a cathedral church in Central one Sunday morning and stopped and examined a large bronze plaque that was hung on the wall. "What are all those names up there?" he asked one of the ushers. "Those are the names of people who died in the service." the usher replied. Curious, the boy asked the usher - "which service, the 9:00 service or the 11:45 service?" I am happy to report today that we are about, what we are celebrating, is a birth - not a death - the birth of the church - the birth of Christ in you and me - and in all who call on his name. It is a significant day - the day on which the first believers came alive in their faith, the day when the Rock upon which Christ planted his church began to support and uphold an incredible new life - a life that has existed since the world began, but which was poured out in a special fashion and took on flesh in you and me much as it took life in Jesus, the son of Mary, the son of God so long ago. Pentecost is an event that the world has long been promised and which the people of God have long awaited. Pentecost is the reversal of what occurred at the Tower of Babel when, because of our sinfulness, we became unable to understand one another. It is the gifting of God to make us one - and to make us one in the way he is one. Pentecost is our becoming Christ in the world. It is God taking on flesh - not only in the least of those to whom we give water to drink or clothes to wear; but taking on flesh in us. Praise be to God. God keeps all his promises. Pentecost gives us the eyes to see and the ears to hear. The eyes to see that God is in the details, that God is in the flesh - as well as in the Spirit. And the ears to hear him speaking in our hearts and upon the lips of others - in the rush of the wind. The eyes to see and the ears to hear - as one - and as unique persons valued and treasured so much by God that God comes to us as we are and makes us even more truly who we are when we are His. The story of the birth of the church, of that day some fifty days after the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus that Jews and Christians call Pentecost - tells us that this what God has done - and is yet doing. The followers of Jesus are given the ability to speak the languages of all those who are assembled in the city and beyond. God grants that we might understand one another and that we might understand the good news - in just the way we need to hear it. Much as God communicates to each one of us here today. We hear the gospel in our own language, in our images, with our own metaphors, with our own ears. Some today will be encouraged to spend more time in praise and wonder to thank God for blessings, others will hear that the power that they need for tomorrow's trials and tribulations will come, still others will take heart - knowing that God is present to them at all times. Whatever it is - it will be filled with God - and uniquely yours. Pentecost is the birth of the Church. It is God amongst us in power making us not simply a group of believers but Christ in the world , unafraid, empowered, bearing the cross out of love, and being raised from the Grave in glory. I began with a story - I would like to end with another. One that I pray that God will use in your life as you meditate upon it from time to time. It is a very simple, but true story about a man called Yates, but who could be you and me - and this congregation - or any of a thousand and one other congregations, a thousand and one other persons. The story is told of a man called Yates who, during the Great Depression, owned a sheep ranch in Texas. He did not have enough money to continue paying on the mortgage - in fact he was forced like many others to live on government subsidies. Each day as he tended his sheep he worried about how he was going to pay his bills. Sometime later a seismographic crew arrived on his land and said that their might be oil on his land and could they test drill. After a lease was signed they went ahead. At 1115 feet a huge oil reserve was struck - subsequent wells revealed even more oil than the first well revealed. Mr Yates owned it all. He had the oil and mineral rights. He had been living on relief - yet he was a millionaire. Think of it - he owned all of that oil with its tremendous potential, yet for many years he did not realize it. How often are we like Mr. Yate's? Considering ourselves poor and helpless all the while unaware of the extraordinary power that we have available to us - that which is lying just below the surface in our minds and our hearts. We here today are a Pentecost People. The Spirit has been and is being poured out upon us. The gift of God is just below the surface in our minds and hearts, and to the right and to the left of us - above us and below us, to the front and to the rear. Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and blessed be the church which his victory has won. Amen