St. Paul's Episcopal Church - Pentecost Sunday - June 8, 2025 - Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Wallens

St. Pauls - Easter 5 - May 25, 2025

I’m going to begin with a couple of questions that ask you to reflect on your life. Since today is the Feast of Pentecost they are questions about the Holy Spirit in your life. You ready?

Here’s my first question. What is amazing you today?

I’m talking about the kind of amazement that deepens your life and gives meaning; that leaves you weeping in gratitude; that surprises you with your own goodness and beauty; that causes you to whisper to yourself, Yes, amen, let it be; that takes your breath away, leaves you speechless, and makes you glad to be alive; that opens your heart and eyes to more than you ever imagined; that makes you wonder how you ever got through that rough time in your life. 

I am amazed when I’m preaching and I say something I didn’t plan to say and didn’t even know I knew until I say it. I’m amazed at the courage and trust of others when they share with me their lives, tears, hurts, hopes, and stories. I am amazed at how so many people rallied around Susan in her battle with Breast cancer….I’m amazed that I have been here at St. Paul’s 8 years. When I can for my in person interview, the first question was will you make a 3 year commitment to St. Paul’s. I am amazed at all we have done and been through together.

What about you? What is amazing you today? If nothing is amazing you, why not? When was the last time you were amazed. What happened? 

You got it. You know what is amazing you today? Hold on to that.

Here’s my second question. What is perplexing you today? 

 I am taking about the perplexity that leaves you shaking your head in disbelief; the things that cause you to ask, How can this be? or to say, I just don’t get it. I’m talking about times when you were confused and confounded by a situation that left you at a loss and without a solution. They are those times when you go through a list of possible explanations or ways forward but don’t find one.

These days I am perplexed by how we often talk to and about one another, and our inability or refusal to listen to each other. I’m perplexed by the violence in our world today and how some can turn away from injustice and say we need to move on. I am perplexed by my own inconsistencies and self-contradictions. I’m perplexed by how I keep the same patterns of thought and behavior even when I know they aren’t working and I say I want something else. 

Think about the Tower of Babel and what might have been perplexing to the builders…..In many interpretations of this text, the destruction of the Tower of Babel stems from the builders’ exaggerated sense of their own power. They are thinking too big: a tower to the sky. Their arrogance and their certainty make them imagine a name for themselves. But the Midrash suggests the that it’s not that the builders’ imaginations are too big, but that they are actually too small.

What the builders of the Tower of Babel fail to imagine is a multiplicity of selves, of worlds, existing together, even interacting with one another. The Tower of Babel is a tower built on sameness, on conformity, on a denial of difference.

On the surface, the text seems to present a jealous and spiteful God who is against human achievement, a God who worries that humans will become too powerful and self-assured. I can imagine that the builders felt perplexed when they watched their creation crumble to the ground: God must hate us. But the text introduces something more of a perplexing question: what is it about human purpose and cooperation that can go so wrong?

Reflecting on the Pilgrimage this past week focusing on Detention centers, I am perplexed how people cannot understand that they are not just prisons. They are machines of despair.

As a fellow Episcopal priest has said….The people inside -mothers, fathers, sons, daughters - often don’t know why they’re there, how long they’ll be held, or where they’ll go next. They are cut off from family, from information, from hope. Visits are rare. Legal help is scarcer still. These facilities aren’t about justice. They are about dehumanization. They are about crushing the will. I am perplexed as to how human beings can be so cruel. I am perplexed as to why we let this continue.

What about you? What is perplexing you today? If nothing is perplexing you, why not? When was the last time you were perplexed. What happened?

You got it. You know what is perplexing you today?

Maybe you are wondering why I am asking questions about your amazement and perplexity. Maybe you are wondering what they have to do with Pentecost. I’m wondering if they are Pentecost.

What if amazement and perplexity are ways the Spirit moves in our lives? Here’s why I ask that. All were amazed and perplexed. That’s how St. Luke describes the disciples’ experience of Pentecost in today’s second reading.

Most of the time we give our attention and interest to what happened at Pentecost. We focus on a sound like the rush of a violent wind [filling] the house; divided tongues of fire resting on each disciple; and their speaking in other languages. I don’t want us to do that today. 

Today I am more interested in our experience of Pentecost than I am in what happened at Pentecost. Here’s why I say that. I sometimes wonder if the story is so big and the images so fantastical that it’s difficult to make sense of and find Pentecost in our lives. 

I’ve never had a sound like the rush of violent wind from heaven fill my house, have you? But I have felt the winds of change blowing in my life. I’ll bet you’ve felt that wind in your life too. Sometimes I was amazed by what was happening and other times I was perplexed and sometimes it was both. You know what that’s like, right?

Has a divided tongue of fire ever rested on you? No? Me either. But I have felt fire in my belly. Haven’t there been times when you were driven by a passion that connected you to something larger than and beyond yourself? When have you felt that fire in your belly? What amazement or perplexity did it bring about? What burning question were you asking and following? 

I’ve never suddenly spoken or understood a foreign language but I’ve had times when I needed to change the voices I listened to within and outside me. I’ve wanted to find new ways to communicate with others and discover the native language of the human heart. Maybe that’s true for you too. Changing the language we speak and listen to changes how we see, think, and understand the world. That usually brings about some amazement and perplexity. 

Wherever there is amazement and perplexity the Spirit of God is moving, the Wind of God is blowing, and the Breath of God is giving life. Look at your experiences of amazement and perplexity. Feel the way they move and affect you. They are Holy Spirit moments. 

They are moments when we ask, What does this mean? That’s the question the disciples ask in their amazement and perplexity today. 

What about you? What does your amazement and perplexity today mean for you? 

What is it evoking and bringing up in you? What is it offering you? What is it asking of you? What are you learning about yourself? In what ways is it inspiring you? How is it affecting you? 

It is not enough, however, to just experience amazement and perplexity. And it’s not enough to just give them meaning. We must also respond to the meaning we make of that experience. That’s the power of Pentecost.

Pentecost isn’t about only the Spirit’s movement. It’s also about our movement in this time and place. It’s an invitation to act and do something. 

Years ago I told my spiritual director that nothing was happening. I wasn’t growing or changing. I felt stuck. I wasn’t getting anywhere. I was, to follow a theme in this sermon, perplexed by what wasn’t happening. She said, Mike, the wind of God is always blowing but you have to put up your sail.

The Holy Spirit propels the apostles out onto the streets to preach with courage and 3,000 are baptised (Acts 2:41). Whatever we might’ve heard, Pentecost is not the story of devout believers lost in prayer, hidden away in an upper room, caught up in mystical rapture. Pentecost is the story of bewildered not-sure-what-to-believe believers swept out of prayer into the streets, into the public eye. Pentecost is the end of spirituality because the Spirit presses the church into the public square, into public responsibility. Following the Spirit always leads down from the upper room and out to the outer courts.

What is amazing and perplexing your today? That’s the wind of God. And it’s always blowing. What would it look like and take for you to raise the sail of your life today? What is the Spirit moving you to do?

Martin Luther King has said:  Faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.

It’s Pentecost and there’s a fresh wind blowing. Taking one step at a time…..I wonder where it might take you.