Rev. Zach

Genesis 11:1-9 ; Acts 2:1-21 As many of you know, Pentecost is one of my favorite church holy days. Those who may not be familiar with liturgical traditions that include special Sundays may not have a clue what this day is about or why it matters, and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, I would suggest that our Old Testament lesson stands to remind us that anything that we set up as important might not be important to God. Having said that, it may also have struck you as odd that God acted in the way God did in this passage from Genesis. Am I not always preaching unity? Why would God want to keep us from working together? We’ll get to that in a minute, but first I want to acknowledge the movement of the Spirit of God in these two passages. Taken together, along with the contexts they are pulled from, what we see today is a movement from the problem of exclusion to the problem of inclusion. At first glance, it seems that God, in Genesis 11, is the one who created the problem of e...

Genesis 11:1-9      Acts2:1-21      John 14:8-17, 25-27 Pentecost. Pentecost! I love Pentecost! I’ll admit that it is one of those days that only “church people” really talks about, and that’s mostly because the minister brought it up. That’s probably because it hasn’t been marketed to death in secular culture. There’s no Pentecost mascot that sells things like Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny. I know they give stuff away, but you know what I mean. There aren’t any cards that say, “Happy Pentecost!” Children don’t wake up looking to see what color of fire the Holy Spirit brought them. I’m not suggesting this as a marketing strategy. If anything I’m glad that it’s not all that marketable. Pentecost is kind of pure in that it celebrates the activity of God, tells part of our story, and sets us up to tell the next chapter. Sure, there are lots of other liturgically significant days on the calendar, but this one is special. At Pentecost ...