You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer to view and print the Sermon documents listed here. Rev. Robin Lostetter From the Pastor Dear Friends, It’s nearly Pentecost, and I’ve now spent a third of a year with you. We’ve been through rain and snow, Lent and Easter, a Lenten study and 5 session meetings, church school rotation celebration and our first coffeehouse together, and we’ve served more than 400 Bread of Life meals! I’m beginning to connect faces and names and am becoming familiar with more individuals’ gifts and talents. You’ve let me into your lives . . . celebrations and losses, weddings and funerals, baptisms and story-sharing . . . sacred spaces. There’s been a good bit of laughter as well as some sobering moments and a few profound encounters with the Spirit. So what does Pentecost mean to us? Pentecost – “the birthday of the church” – celebrates the giving of the Holy Spirit to Christ’s body on earth . . . the church. That’s us! We can rejoice in this powerful wind that blows through our committee meetings, our fellowship gatherings, our worship services, and our ministries in the community. The Spirit binds us together in one family, enables us to find solutions to problems that seem overwhelming, and enables us to see Christ in the faces of others . . . not just our sisters and brothers in this congregation, but in the tear-streaked face of a bereft mother in the Middle East, a desperate fisherman on the Louisiana coast, a starving child’s hollow eyes in Africa, and a homeless man or woman’s downturned face in a local motel. Genesis begins with Adam (actually ha-adam, the earthling) and Eve, who parent all humankind. Through that beautiful book we learn how Noah’s family begins anew within a covenant with God and we follow the “wandering Aramean” as we journey with Abraham and Sarah, Rebekah and Isaac, and Jacob and his twelve sons – the forebears of the 12 tribes of Israel. When this expansive story reaches the New Testament, we see Jesus pushing the boundaries of society . . . companioning with lepers, women, tax collectors, Samaritans, and thieves. And we witness in Acts the disciples’ ethical struggle as the Ethiopian eunuch, the centurion, and all manner of Gentiles are invited into the family. Human communication that was confused and stymied at Babel is translated to everyone in their own language at Pentecost, as the nascent Church stretches to include all the families of the earth. At the Ascension, Jesus tells them to be his witnesses, beginning in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, as they knew it. Our Holy Scripture describes how, from one garden in Eden to “the ends of the earth”, from a circumcised Israelite following the purity laws to Gentiles who ate “unclean” foods and didn’t practice Jewish ways . . . the Church was born. It is an ever-expanding family. It is an ever-challenged family. And it is intended to be a blessing to the world, not a curse. God said to Abram, “and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Let us take our place in that great cloud of witnesses, which began with a small straggling band in first century Palestine. And as the author of Hebrews entreats, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. At Pentecost, and at every Pentecost, with confidence and in good company, let our church family be reborn. Shalom, Robin |