Pentecost Sunday 2025

Sermon: Pentecost Sunday 2025

Texts: Acts 2:1-21, Romans 8:14-17, John 14:8-17, (25-27)

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

On this day when we celebrate Pentecost, that life-changing outpouring of the Holy Spirit that led the disciples to go out and preach the Gospel, I want to remark on two aspects of this moment: First is the fiery passion of Pentecost and secondly the surprising inclusivity of the Holy Spirit. On the first point, many of you know I grew up in a church with Pentecostal flares, a Christian tradition that expresses its devotion in very emotive ways and takes its name from the event we celebrate today as a sign of passionate devotion to Jesus and His Gospel. It was not uncommon to cry, shout, call back, sing loudly, even dance, “in the spirit” of course, not in a “worldly” manner, and all other kinds of lively devotion. As a young introvert, this could be one’s worst nightmare! But you get used to it, as long as no one expected me to raise my hands and get slain in the spirit, as some people call it.

Last week, I had the chance during Synod Assembly to meet the Bishop of Washington DC Synod, Leila Ortiz. Not to compare myself too much to a bishop, but we have two things in common: we are both Puerto Rican and we were formed in that kind of Pentecostal environment. We exchanged experiences of this time of charismatic identity. The bishop however does not have a negative view of this upbringing, and allowed me to see something very precious of the Pentecostal tradition that is actually very present in our own Lutheran tradition. The bishop coined the term that she is a “Luthercostal”, and I think I’m not too far off from that identity as well. We’ve existed in this fruitful combination of flavors, the rich liberating theology of Lutheranism of unconditional grace, and the lively passion and emotion of the Pentecostal tradition. Each tradition brings its gifts in our walk of faithfulness, as I’m sure many of you bring the gifts of other traditions you might be familiar with to your own walk with Jesus.

Bishop Leila remarked that Martin Luther and the theology of grace has its own sense of Pentecostal flare and fire. Luther, Bishop Leila remarked, was a man passionate about the Gospel, a sinner/saint in love with Jesus Christ. Luther was not ashamed of Christ, he staked his life on getting right what it meant to live faithfully to Jesus. In that sense, Luther was indeed very Pentecostal. And in theology, our tradition is passionate in advocating God’s unconditional grace, it is pentecostal in expressing the fact that by no merit of our own, not by any metric of worthiness, God bestows upon us the breath of new life in Christ. Lutheran culture, in difference to Lutheran theology and belief, unfortunately has sometimes hidden this treasure, it has hidden behind layers of convention the extraordinary fire that comes out of our particular Christian witness. We are all invited to be in a passionate relationship with Jesus, to throw our lot with Him and to live a life of radical love and mercy.

This is of course, not to say, that we are meant to be cookie cutter versions of Luther or any other passionate Christian. We are called to be ourselves, but within ourselves we are invited to lit the flames of love of God, and you don’t need to be loud or quiet to accomplish that, what is required is faith. Faith and trust in God’s promises and His goodness, of the fact that He bestows upon us the gift of true life, and therefore we pay it forward in gratefulness. And that means to be witnesses of the gift we have in this gathering. To live out the joy that is found in having these gifts of God’s grace and community. Pentecost in this sense, is an invitation to be passionate about God and His love. To be passionate in sharing the love with which God loves the world, a love that breaks barriers and uplifts the lowly, a love that visits the sick and cares for the weak, a love that is compassionate and stands in solidarity with the suffering of this world. The movement of Pentecost is one where the Holy Spirit enters into our enclosed spaces and sends us out to surprise the world with Gospel love.

Which leads me to my second point. This passion that distinguishes the church for the Gospel of Christ leads us in the Spirit’s own widening movement. The Holy Spirit always moves in ways we can never predict but it opens up in the life of humanity spaces where the life of the risen Jesus can make an appearance. It is an inclusive and widening movement because the spirit wants to bring all of life to the fountain of God’s love, it wants us to live in that love and to share it abundantly. The Holy Spirit has no barriers of ethnicity, nationality, culture, language. When it swooshes in, all it seeks is to reveal the life of Jesus in every person. The crowd in the Book of Acts were caught completely off guard: “ Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?” What a great moment we celebrate today in which God breaks down the barriers of division and instead reaches out to all for greater togetherness, for greater understanding. Pentecost is also passion for inclusion, for human unity! The fact that no human group has a handle on God, God moves about where He wants, and mostly in those we don’t expect. Galileans were not thought of as much in the ancient world nor in ancient Israel, yet God used them to, as the Orthodox troparion of Pentecost says: to fish the whole universe in the nets of God’s love. What a great openness God invites us in this day! In this sense, the church is meant to be the most inclusive and global of communities, we are called to cast the wide net, to love as many people as we possibly can with the love of Christ.

Beloved, let the Holy Spirit lead you to fall more in love with Jesus, may this be a time to put our trust in Christ and His way, so that we might go out and give witness to the Gospel. Open your hearts to receive Christ from any corner of this world, because He is out there seeking us out in the play of all peoples, languages, and cultures. The Holy Spirit reveals to us a God and a life that delights in diverse and abundant expression, so that it may give all that exists its true purpose. So let the Holy Spirit kindle your hearts with a brave hope, and an unyielding trust in the love of God, and go out to the world and give out the light of Christ in the darkness. Let us pray.