Day of Pentecost, Year C | Acts 2:1-21
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
June 8, 2025
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page.
“All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.” – Romans 8:14[1]
Good morning, and happy Pentecost! With all the changes that have taken place between our time and the Bible’s, it’s been genuinely difficult to know where to begin on our texts this morning. So we’re going to start with the basics: what Church holiday actually is.
As Christians, we think of Pentecost as the Church’s birthday, when we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit, but Pentecost was already an ancient Jewish feast before Jesus’ lifetime. Also known as “first-fruits,” it was essentially the spring harvest festival. Fifty days after seeding the land, early plantings—in the case of my own garden, zucchini, broccoli, and certain peppers—have matured, offering the first fresh veggies of the year—a big deal when your only means of long-term storage was dehydration. This was an opportunity for ancient Israel to come together and celebrate before God, offering their thanks and praise for this promising sign while donating some of its proceeds to the Temple as evidence of gratitude and trust that God would continue to provide.
So that’s the context within which this Christian celebration roots itself. The seeds have been planted; hungry people have been eagerly watching their produce mature; and today—voila!—fresh food for everyone for the first time in months!
But there are multiple layers of imagery and meaning converging at this event. We might see a child welcoming air into its lungs for the first time. Or maybe you’ve noticed the event’s parallel with the Hebrew Bible’s creation story, where God breathes the Breath of Life into a perfectly formed, as yet inanimate body—a sort of start-over or reset for humanity. Yet this time it isn’t just one individual left to go it alone in a garden but an entire community living to encourage and support one another. The most significant and applicable image for our time, however, might be a continuation of what we’ve encountered with the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension: the unmaking of the Three Realms.
Jesus’ birth began this Cosmic revolution, with the Divine taking their first steps to reconnect the Celestial and Earthly Realms. With the crucifixion and burial, this Son of Man takes the path all humans someday follow, becoming a citizen of the Underworld. The resurrection sees Jesus reveal the Divine order underlying even this most mysterious and terrifying layer of existence. He then rips down its imposing gates from the inside, thereby erasing the Underworld as its own separate layer of existence and freeing us humans from the tyranny and fear that Death attempts to impose upon us. As we discussed last week, then, Jesus’ ascension completed this massive renovation, destroying the restraints that separated the Earthly from the Divine and thereby uniting all of existence under the authority, mercy, and kindness of the same generous and loving God.
Now if everything had all stopped there, that would have been more than enough. However, God had even more work in mind. That’s because, despite the reunification of Reality, one problem remained: people were still divided from one another, as we had been since the prehistoric tale of ancient Babel.[2] We humans aren’t necessarily the brightest or most intuitive beings, so God needed to make the consequences of this Cosmic Renewal even more explicit to us. And that is the image Pentecost begins to reveal.
With nothing left to bind giver or recipient, God exhaled, distributing their own Divine and Purifying Breath, not just on one chosen leader but, according to Peter’s message, on all flesh.[3] The mystical flames rest on everyone gathered in the room, making each person at the disciples’ prayer gathering—named or not—equal in calling and status. Observant Jewish outsiders find themselves drawn to this new community as it expresses words of joy and wisdom to one another only to be surprised that they’re hearing God’s Good News—that each who calls upon the Royal Name can be restored[4]—all in their own native languages and dialects, allowing everyone who was willing, no matter their background, to unite in one truth and one hope. The rest of the book of Acts—all the passages we’ve been reading over the Easter Season—show us this concept of unity expanding.
We started with the apostles proclaiming to the religious leaders in Jerusalem. The next week we saw Saul transform into the Apostle Paul and watched as the Christian community began to embrace this former, theologically-motivated archenemy and killer. After that, Peter breaks taboos by entering a foreigner’s house to raise a woman back into life. When observant Judean Christians question him about these recent untoward activities and his newfound boldness of even daring to eat with such people, unclean as they are, Peter communicates God’s vision and recounts a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit, leading the rest of the Church to glimpse the possibility that God’s work may just be more expansive—and far more inclusive[5]—than they initially presumed. Paul and his partners then go to the Greco-Roman colony of Macedonia in search of a man from a vision only to discover the truth of their call once they look past their patriarchal expectations and submit themselves to sharing the Gospel among a group of women. Last week, then, the author showed us that even a person employed to sustain the Empire’s political oppression and reign of violence may turn to join and serve this new United Community of God!
The Christ Cycle didn’t just unite the Realms, canceling fear of the unknown and liberating us to walk as the citizens of the Celestial Reign that we are and have always been. Pentecost demonstrates that God has shattered every single impediment that might divide us! Jesus did not come to be the ultimate drawbridge or portcullis, one that prevents unworthy outsiders entry and allows cloistered sheep a sense of moral purity or superiority. Jesus describes himself as the gateway—that which allows passage between seemingly insurmountable obstacles.[6] In Revelation he even begs the church to unlock a door that they, in their arrogance, have erected between him and themselves![7]
So when we’re uncomfortable with how the Church has been changing and growing—and we all are, at times—that’s actually a good thing. It suggests that we just might have started once again listening to Jesus, allowing him to move among us by breaking down the barricades we’ve established against one another and reintegrating once-despised groups, as the basic nature of the Trinity itself calls for!
God has remade the Cosmos and swept away the most significant and uncompromising barriers in existence! With so great a transformation, the partitions we humans so often rely on had no choice but to fall into ruin. So why do we keep trying to rebuild them? Why can’t we see that segregating ourselves from one another leads to nothing but harm and enslavement? If—when, really—we share God’s Peace with one another and partake in Christ’s body and blood together, who then can deny the Image of God standing beside us? Who dares restrict anyone from the same rites[8] we enjoy for ourselves!?! “My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so!”[9] This ought never have been so, and this cannot be so!
Through Christ, all obstructions are gone—we are one body. On Pentecost, we celebrate the reality that we, individually and collectively, been filled with—and have even become!—one common and indivisible Breath. That is the air share within and amongst ourselves—the oxygen that fills each of our lungs and distributes itself to the tiniest reaches of the Body through circulation of the Blood! How can we keep falling to the illusions of division that the world—that Sin, that Empire—has so long imposed upon us? “In the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”[10] “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”[11] “I…beg you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace: there is one body and one [Breath], just as you [all] were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”[12]
“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God!”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSVue unless otherwise noted.
[2] Genesis 11:1-19 | the Revised Common Lectionary’s alternate first reading for Year C Pentecost
[3] Acts 2:17
[4] Acts 2:21 | The “calling” connotes someone requesting aid.
[5] Diverse, equitable, and inclusive, to be blunt
[6] John 10:7-9
[7] Revelation 3:20
[8] I intend this with both spellings of the word.
[9] James 3:10
[10] I Corinthians 12:13
[11] Galatians 3:28
[12] Ephesians 4:1-6