What are the 3 most important holy days in the Christian calendar?

This is not a trick question, though it does get tricky after # 2.

Any one want to take a stab at this? I can give out hints.

#1 (happens in December)  Christmas. Yes!

#2 (happens in the Spring)  Easter.  (Brilliant!)

And #3 (starts with P) …. Pentecost?

I mean that’s the logical guess to make given that today is Pentecost Sunday, right? But hey - All Saints, Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday?!? - you could be forgiven for thinking those are just as important.

In fact, if Pentecost didn’t fall on a Sunday, I don’t think it would be a particularly well attended service. And it’s not like anyone outside of the church has any clue that it’s even happening today.

Pentecost is technically the third biggest holiday in our tradition, but you’d never know it walking through the seasonal aisle of Target. There are no Cadbury cream doves to buy for the kids. We don’t gather on the town green to recite Acts 2 in different languages. Nor has anyone ever suggested that we save the dried out husks of our Christmas trees till June and light them on fire to represent the holy tongues of flame that settled on the disciples.

(Though the more I riff on this the more I think we could make a bigger deal of Pentecost then we do and, who knows, people might get into it.) But we don’t… and a lot of commentators wonder why.

After all, Pentecost marks the birth of Christianity and the church. It is the day that the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples, set them on fire with the good news of God’s reconciling love made known to us in Jesus, and propelled those disciples out into all the world to proclaim God’s unconditional love for all.

Who wouldn’t want to do that? Who wouldn’t want to go out and tell everyone you meet that God loves them?

Actually, by a show of hands, who doesn’t actually want to do that?

It’s ok. I get it. I mean what with graduations and weddings, the end of the school year and wrapping things up for summer, who has time to locate your soap box, your John 3:16 sandwich board, and your bullhorn for some good old fashioned street evangelism? If Pentecost were a little easier to commodify or secularize, you probably could pick those things up at Target. But it’s not.

In a discussion about this at pulpitfiction.com, (and yes, I prepare for my sermons by listening to a podcast called Pulpit Fiction) a fellow preacher confessed that:

“The problem with Pentecost is (actually) not that it's a busy time of the year, but that it so unambiguously requires of us that we carry the gospel out into the world, and blow our own covers. It is one thing to adore the infant Jesus or mourn the death of Jesus in our insular communities. It is something …VERY else, and to many, VERY scary, to proclaim the gospel in every action we take, and to publicly proclaim ourselves to be THOSE people, those [insert negative adjective here] Christians. Pentecost gives us marching orders. Christmas (and Easter are) so much easier…”

I think there is some truth in that. I mean look how much courage it took for Nova and Narri to stand up here the morning in front of us all and tell us about their faith in here. (You two are amazing, by the way.)

But let’s be honest, it’s going to take just as much, if not more courage for us to take the message of God’s love out there, and that is what Pentecost is about.

Friends, this is a story about going public with one’s faith. This is a story of testimony and evangelism.

Jesus’ disciples - the people who knew him and loved him and want to keep following in his way - the people who have been in the upper room hiding behind closed doors, praying behind closed doors, and waiting behind closed doors since the mind blowing events of Easter - are blown by the Spirit out into the public square.

They are led forth to not just proclaim that everything has changed, but to become the change; to manifest with their words and their actions what the unconditional love of God looks like in the world.

Imagine, if you will, giving your first sermon, not amongst people you know, but amongst people you have never met. Imagine giving your first sermon in a language you’ve never spoken. Imagine giving your first sermon with no preparation, no education, no ordination. I have all of those things and speaking about matters of faith in public is still hard.

And yet these ordinary men and women did. They stood up and proclaimed that the messiah had come… come with the message that God loves the world so much that nothing we have done or failed to do can separate us from God.

Jesus sent his disciples into the world to proclaim God’s unconditional love, proclaim the good news that it doesn’t matter if you are male or female, slave or free, Parthian or Mede, Jew or Gentile, a saint, a sinner, or a little bit of both. God loves you already. God forgives you already. And God longs for you to know this love and extend this grace to others. If you’re not living in this way of love for all, repent! Cut it out. Stop hating and start forgiving everyone around you because the more we love one another and make peace with one another, the more earth will become like heaven.

That’s it by the way. That’s the gospel. That’s our whole faith in a nutshell.

Jesus sent his disciples forth to baptize people into this loving way of life, not so they could get right with God, but so they would know that God is right with them and get right with each other.   

So once more, for the people in the back, the gospel really is good news for everybody. The gospel is an invitation not a threat. And Jesus asked us to baptize one another as a way of signaling that we get it, we accept it. We are baptized, not so that we can become beloved children of God, but as a way of acknowledging that we are already beloved children of God, and every time we baptize someone, we do it so that they will know this too.

Baptism is simply our way of acknowledging what God has known all along, that you are loved. You belong. You are a part of the family of God, as is every other person you will ever meet, whether they have been baptized or not.

So go and find them and share this with them, says Jesus. Go and live this truth out loud says the Spirit. “Blessed are the feet of those who bring good news,” said the prophet. “Go and tell,” said the angels at the tomb…

But that’s where we get hung up, isn’t it? At least here in the mainline church. We get hung up because we may be Christians but we’re not that kind of Christian, right?

But you know what? If I’m reading this right, I think that may even be ok. Pentecost is a story of public proclamation, but hey, there is more than one way to go public.

Let’s just say that if the Spirit can communicate the good news of God’s love to a Cappadocian through a Galilean - two people who spoke entirely different languages - then the Spirit can communicate the good news of God’s love through you in more ways then one. In fact, it’s well documented that up to 90% of communication is non-verbal. So if you’re nervous about sharing your faith verbally, getting it wrong, offending someone, or coming across as pushy, relax.

I think we get into trouble here because we think sharing the gospel means telling people they have to change and become like us, believe what we believe, and worship the way we worship. We’ve been conditioned to think it means telling people they are wrong and we are right and they need to convert and become like us in order to be saved.

But that’s not what we are being asked to do. That’s not the message we are being asked to share. Steve Garnaas Holmes, a retired Methodist Pastor who I follow, hit the nail on the head this week when he wrote:

Here comes Pentecost, when Christians get all fired up about telling people the “good news”— but it too often comes with all sorts of hooks and strings attached, like that you have to believe certain stuff.  But the real spirit of Pentecost is to communicate (maybe not with words) that there is a trustworthy love at the heart of the universe, and they are loved, honored and cherished, unconditionally.  The Spirit says: Show them they are loved and stop with that.

Show them they are loved. Period. Full stop.

Friends, all God, Jesus, & the Holy Spirit are really asking us to do is go forth to love…love so hard and so well that people want to love that way too. Because those first disciples loved - not just with their words but with their actions, 3000 were baptized and added to their number that day.

People flocked to be part of this new thing that wasn’t even called church yet, not just because of what they said but because of what they did.  Those first disciples shared, “all they had with any who had need;” not just their message but their bread, their wine, their homes.

Embodying the gospel is the purest way to preach it.  The story of Pentecost calls us to love in word and deed… to love out loud… and First Churches, that’s what you do, week in and week out, and you do it well, which is why we saw 2 more people baptized today…and have 2 more to baptize before this month is out.

We loved and we loved hard last Sunday when we welcomed all those other churches into this space for Pride, just as we love out loud when we pass the peace with anyone who gathers here. We do it in all the ways we give and support one another and the wider community through our our offerings of time and money.

We share God’s love every Wednesday on the front steps with our posters and our songs and every Friday when we open our doors to the community for a free breakfast. And that love is communicated every time I stand up here and welcome everyone to worship or an AA group meets downstairs or the Buddhists gather in the nest to meditate or the wider community meets here in our sanctuary to figure out how best to live together.

“Preach the gospel at all times,” said St. Francis, “if necessary, (what?)…. use words.”

“They will know we are Christians by our (?)  ….love.”

They will. In fact, I think they already do.

So First Churches, have no fear. I think you’ve got this more than you know.

A blessed Pentecost to you all and maybe somebody write to Cadbury and share that chocolate cream dove idea. Amen? Amen.