Last Sunday’s service, led by members of the Board of Parish Ministry, featured so many wonderful elements including: special music and beloved hymns, the classic children’s book When I Was Young in the Mountains, and a sermon by our very own Rev. Daniel Webster.  It was a fitting and moving (pun intended) end to our series “Moving Mountains.”

Sunday was also a holy day for many Christian communities: the celebration of Pentecost.

A historical/linguistic side note: “Pentecost” comes from the Greek word for “fiftieth,” and the Christian holiday is 50 days after Easter. But the word Pentecost actually appears in the New Testament – because it is also the Greek name of the Jewish festival Shavuot, the harvest festival. Shavuot is a Hebrew word meaning weeks — but many Jews living under Roman occupation (including those early followers of Jesus) would have written in Greek, and known the festival as Pentecost.

The Christian New Testament, you’ll recall, is written in Greek, and while the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) was originally written primarily in Hebrew, many first century Jews — including Jesus — would have known their scriptures through reading the Septuagint (from the Greek: the seventy), the Greek translation of the Tanakh.

So! Fifty days after Easter, the story goes, the apostles of Jesus (once disciples – followers – they are now apostles — sent out) are gathered in Jerusalem once more. The Resurrected Jesus has now ascended into heaven and is no longer on earth, and the apostles have gathered in the city to observe Shavuot, but also to figure out how to do the work he’s left to them.

While they’re gathered there, the Holy Spirit appears among them — rests upon them — as a mighty wind and tongues of flame. This presence and gift enables them to speak in all the languages of the diverse peoples who have gathered in the city: “Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs.”

They tell the story of God known in Jesus, and the people understand them, each in their own language. This story is compelling to many, perhaps because it is spoken in intelligible ways for the first time, and thousands are baptized into the new Christian community. Peter stands before the crowd and quotes the Hebrew prophet Joel,

“in those days…

[God’s] spirit will pour out on all,

and your children shall prophesy,

and your young shall see visions,

and your old shall dream dreams.”

Pentecost, then, is the story of how a handful became a community. It’s the church’s origin story.

These next few months will be Pentecost months for us as a congregation. They will be days in which we learn to tell the story of who we are as a congregation together — who we have been, and who we are, and who we long to be — in both visionary and tangible ways.

The transition team held our first meeting with congregational coach, the Rev. Laura Stephens-Reed, this week, and began the process of dreaming some future dreams.  One of our UF summer interns, Mya, began her weeks with us asking questions about communication — how we tell our story in engaging ways on social media. We’ve also begun the process of our website redesign, with funds given from the UCG endowment. The new Board of Human Resources met for the first time this week, and our justice ministry teams are finalizing the process of becoming an official creation justice congregation with the denomination and dreaming up how to work together in increasingly intersectional ways. In just a few weeks, our youth and their many adult leaders will travel to West Virginia to serve and learn about experiences and lives that may at first seem unintelligible to them, but will surely expand their vision.

This is a season for dreaming together, friends. On that first Pentecost day, a small group living in an occupied land felt the presence of the Holy, however known, and were empowered to transform and open their community to the next season of their life together. May we be, too, know that empowering Spirit in our community here and now.

Grace and Peace,

Bromleigh