It's Only Good News If You Can Hear It

Sermon for June 8, 2025 (Pentecost)
Acts 2:1021; Romans 8:14-17

This is one of those Sundays when we test the limits of what the liturgy can hold.  It’s Pentecost, the day we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples, fulfilling Jesus’ promise that God would empower them to invite people into the Way of Love “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).  So, to celebrate the Spirit’s boundless and surprising love, we processed in with doves swirling above you; and at the 10:15 service, the kids will be part of the procession waving little red flames.  To help us remember the Spirit’s gift of many tongues, we read the Gospel in many languages this morning – and thanks to those who made that happen.  At the 10:15 service, we’ll witness the Spirit empowering five children of God through baptism, and we’ll celebrate how the Spirit brings new members into our parish family.  And finally, in our Prayers of the People at the 8:00 service, we’ll join with other congregations in our diocese praying for victims and survivors of gun violence.  Today is Wear Orange Sunday, which you’ll note from the pins we’re wearing.  In this annual commemoration, we ask the Spirit to guide us in keeping our homes and communities safe from the violence we grieve in our prayers for the departed every week.

Beyond the church’s walls, this weekend includes another way the Spirit is moving us along Jesus’ Way of Love.  As our city is marking its 50^th annual Pride Fest, area Episcopal congregations took part yesterday in a Pride Mass at St. Paul’s in Westport before joining the annual Pride Parade.  Several of us from St. Andrew’s were there, helping to affirm what the Holy Spirit’s been saying ever since that first day of Pentecost:  God loves all.  All means all.  So, pass the peace to those who didn’t realize they’d be welcomed as members of God’s family.

And for some hardy members of the St. Andrew’s family, yesterday’s work to pass the peace began even before the Pride Mass at St. Paul’s.  As you know, every Saturday, we host the Brookside Farmers’ Market at HJ’s.  The parking lot is filled with vendors offering some of the freshest and healthiest veggies and treats you’ll find anywhere.  I was blessed last week to take home a couple of bags of lovely greens – I couldn’t identify them all, but they made great salads.  And there at the Brookside Farmers’ Market every Saturday, one of the tents in the parking lot belongs to us.  At the St. Andrew’s tent, and at HJ’s Café, market-goers can enjoy excellent coffee from our Brew Crew inside and from our Coffee-Tent Crew outside.  It’s a tremendous ministry of presence, people using their gifts of the Spirit to engage with customers, farmers, and other vendors.  Offering a smile, friendly conversation, and a fresh Aztec Mocha Latte, the Brew Crew and the Coffee-Tent Crew live out what the sign on HJ’s proclaims:  God loves all.  All means all.  Pass the peace.

Now, I think it’s right and good to be welcoming our neighbors at the Farmers’ Market, and praying for victims of gun violence, and representing the church in the Pride Parade.  I also know all this is not everyone’s cup of coffee.  In fact, I know some of us would say the church shouldn’t be “out there” as much as we are.  In fact, I know some of us would see participating in Wear Orange Sunday or Pride Fest as political acts rather than acts of ministry or evangelistic witness.

Here's why I don’t see it that way.  There will always be intersections between the Church’s witness and political advocacy.  That’s been true and continues still, whether the topic was slavery, or the nation’s wars, or civil rights, or women’s rights, or when personhood begins, or care for God’s creation.  As we’ll say in a few minutes when we affirm our Baptismal Covenant, following Jesus in the Episcopal tradition includes striving for justice and peace, and respecting the dignity of every human being.  It’s part of our job description as baptized people.  So, we’ll never be able to separate political advocacy completely from the witness of discipleship because, in the Venn diagram, where those circles intersect is in fostering the well-being of God’s beloved children.

That gets messy for us, especially in a nation that’s struggled for 236 years to discern what it means to separate church and state without separating ethics from public policy.  But I think this messy work is a natural consequence of what God was doing on that first day of Pentecost.

From that day forward, the Holy Spirit has been giving Jesus’ followers not just the call to speak to people in different languages but to share God’s love in different cultural contexts.  If Jesus had come just to reform Judaism, like all the other prophets, that cross-cultural work wouldn’t have been part of our call.  He would have had his followers stay put in Judea and Galilee, and they would have taught people how to follow Yahweh most faithfully, just like the prophets who came before.  But on that day of Pentecost, God said to Jesus’ followers, “Your work is greater than that.  You are the body of Christ, the presence of Jesus in the world now; and I want you to take his way of love on the road.  I want you to go to the ends of the earth with this movement.  But don’t worry,” God said; “I don’t expect you to do it all on your own.  I’ll send you the Holy Spirit as your source of power – to be your advocate, your helper, your counselor, your comforter.  Through the Spirit’s power,” God said, “I want you to share Jesus’ love in ways that people at all the ends of the earth will understand.”

The religious scholars call it contextualization or inculturation – the idea that good news is only good if it actually speaks to the people who hear it.  The Church hasn’t always done a great job of this.  In the bad old days, missionaries crossed oceans to demand faith, and land, at gunpoint.  Even in more recent times, the good news was more about escaping the hell fire that your sins deserved, rather than leaning on God’s everlasting arms.  Reacting against that brand of evangelism, many of us in our Episcopal tradition went too far and thought, “All we have to do is unlock the doors and be nice, and God will bring us more nice people like us to fill the pews.”  But from that first day of Pentecost, God has been empowering us as people who are sent – sent to share good news in ways that folks beyond the Church can actually hear.

And so, we come back to this very full worship service on a very full weekend empowered by a very busy Holy Spirit.  We share coffee at HJ’s to speak to neighbors at the Farmers’ Market.  We wear orange pins to speak to those whose hearts break every time we read the names of more neighbors who’ve died from gun violence.  We walk in the Pride Parade to speak to those who’ve been told by churches that they don’t matter, or worse – saying instead, “You are a beloved child of the God who’s more interested in being your Dad¹ than being your Judge.”  On Pentecost especially, the Holy Spirit says to the Church, “You know how to invite people into this Way of Love:  Show up alongside them, and pass the peace.”  

That’s a language the Spirit teaches all of us to speak.

1.      See Romans 8:15. “Abba” is an intimate form of address in Aramaic, roughly equivalent to “Dad” or “Papa.”