The Rev. Dr. Kenneth H. Saunders III
Greeneville, TN
Pentecost
May 24, 2026
In the book of Acts, Pentecost does not begin as a triumph. Similar to the account in John's Gospel, when Jesus breathed on his disciples… It begins in a closed room. The disciples were all there, gathered together, not because they were brave, not because they had everything figured out, but because they were uncertain...
The resurrection has happened. Jesus has ascended. And now they are waiting for the unknown paraclete… That advocate, comforter… The helper that Jesus promised them.
Waiting can be a holy experience, but it can also be frustrating and frightening. The disciples don't know yet what it will be like. Nor do they know what the ecclesia… the small gathered community, the church, will become. They don't know yet what their faithfulness will cost them. And they don't yet know how to live without Jesus standing physically beside them… patiently teaching and guiding them…
And then, without warning, the Holy Spirit comes. Not quietly… Not politely… Not safely. But with a sound like a violent rushing wind. Like tongues like fire… With their voices speaking in languages they never learned.
Pentecost is not a convenient, private, spiritual moment. It is a major disruption. The Spirit of God crashes through locked doors and pushes the frightened disciples out into the streets. And what happens next may be the most astonishing part of the story. People understood one another.
Parthians, Medes, Elamites, visitors from Rome, Egypt, Libya… people from every imaginable place. They all hear the Good News about the mighty power of God spoken in their own language. Not one language replacing another or being forced… But a mixture of diverse sounds and tenses, not uniformity. Not erasure. But honoring culture and communication…
The miracle of Pentecost is not that everyone suddenly becomes the same. The miracle is that God speaks through diversity and difference. And we need to understand this right now. In our day and age…
Because we continue to see brokenness and fragmentation all around us, brought about by some folks who see diversity as a threat. We are surrounded by division, suspicion, rage, tribalism, nationalism, and fear. People are constantly speaking over and past one another. We see nations fracture, churches splinter, and families dissolve.
Yet, Pentecost shows us that the Holy Spirit still speaks. Not to people who only look alike, vote alike, or worship alike. The Holy Spirit speaks across those boundaries. The boundaries that we create for ourselves out of fear. The Holy Spirit does not remain trapped inside the upper room. Faith is pushed outward into the chaos and noise… Into the complexity and the diversity of the world.
And that is the challenging part… Because some of us would rather have a manageable Holy Spirit. A Spirit that comforts us privately and doesn't inconvenience us publicly. A Spirit that reassures us without transforming us.
But that's not how the Holy Spirit works…The Holy Spirit in Acts behaves less like a docile houseguest and more like wildfire burning out of control. The Spirit creates movement and fosters courage. The Holy Spirit creates community where community shouldn't naturally exist. And perhaps most importantly, the Spirit creates the ability to communicate and be understood.
People who were silent and uncertain begin proclaiming. People who were hiding begin publicly witnessing. People who assumed they had nothing to offer discovered that God can speak through them.
And that's still true. Because Pentecost is not only about the apostles long ago. It is about us in the church now. It is about ordinary people through whom God still breathes. Sometimes we imagine that the church's strength depends upon strategy, numbers, budgets, or influence.
But the Pentecost story in Acts reminds us that the church was born powerless. It had no buildings, no institutional standing. No political leverage… Only the Holy Spirit. And that was enough.
Because the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus, has never depended on human strength. It depends upon the living breath of God. And that's the Good News that our weary churches need to hear. It's Good news for tired Christians. Good news for those wondering whether hope still exists in this cynical age.
My friends, God has not abandoned the world. The Holy Spirit of God is still moving... Still moving and working among us. She moves in hospital rooms, in grieving families, in exhausted caregivers. She moves in acts of mercy that no one notices… in congregations that keep showing up week after week, and in prayers whispered through tears. The Holy Spirit moves in young people longing for relevance and meaning, and in older saints who continue loving faithfully.
The fire of Pentecost has not gone out. But the world, as it is, remains skeptical. It will still mock and ridicule what it doesn't understand… When the crowd hears the disciples speaking, some are amazed, but some folks mock them. "They are filled with new wine," they sneered, thinking they were drunk at 9 o'clock in the morning.
The Holy Spirit has always appeared foolish to a world that is organized around money, power, and control. To the world, forgiveness looks foolish. Generosity looks reckless. Loving your enemy looks irrational, and hope looks silly.
But the church was never called to look impressive. The church was called to bear witness to the Love of God and the Good News of Jesus Christ.
And Peter stands right in the middle of that crowd and declares, "This is what was spoken through the prophet Joel. I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh." All flesh…Young and old... Women and men... Servants and free… Insiders and outsiders…
Pentecost tears down the assumption that God only belongs to a select few. The Holy Spirit can't be hoarded. She spills outward and overflows with God's great abundance.
And that means the church must continually ask itself, Where are we resisting the movement of the Spirit? Where have we mistaken comfort for faithfulness? Where have we closed the doors that God is trying to open?
Because Pentecost is not merely a celebration of some event that happened once, a long time ago… But, it's an invitation to us to become the kind of people through whom the Spirit still speaks. People of courage. People of compassion. People who listen before condemning. People who cross boundaries. People who carry hope with us into weary places. People who are willing to believe that God isn't finished with this world yet. That God isn't finished with us yet.
The same Spirit that hovered over creation, that filled the prophets, that raised Christ from the dead, that shook the house at Pentecost... that same Spirit continues to breathe new life into the world. She's still unsettling. Still healing. She is still sending.
So we are called to pray, with open hearts and open minds. Come, Holy Spirit. Come into our fears. Come into our divisions. Come into our weariness. And come into your church again. Set our hearts on fire not for ourselves, but for the life of the world. Amen.
