Sermon; Pentecost 2026

In her book Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard (a prolific and award-winning author) has this to say about faith and worship:

Does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets! Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews! For the sleeping God may awake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us to where we can never return.

Over the centuries we have diluted and tamed our faith. We have created proper liturgies for proper days in which all things are done decently and in order.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. A standardized Lectionary provides us with a vast amount of the Bible over the course of six years, as well as keeping clergy from only choosing their favorite passages on which to preach. The Church calendar leads us not only through the life of Christ, but gives us opportunities to learn about and celebrate the lives of saints. The liturgy itself has been formed over 1900 years with roots in Judaism and early Christian practices that represent and fold us into the very real presence of God. And in that liturgy we are gathered with all the saints of God – past, present, and future – in a single moment when we all participate in the heavenly banquet. It is a powerful, awesome, and sometimes fearful thing to be a part of this.

But because we do all of this “decently and in order,” because it has become so familiar, because we know what to expect, we have maybe lost the wonder of it all. Or maybe we can't appreciate the mystery. Or maybe we overlook the fact that we are, as Dillard suggests, playing with our chemistry sets and mixing up batches of TNT completely unaware of the power in which we are meddling. Today, of all days, should wake us up to this fact. Today, of all days, we should remember that our God cannot be tamed or controlled, despite our best efforts to do so.

In the reading from Exodus, Moses is fed up with the Israelites. They have been complaining to him both night and day about not having food, not having water, only having bread, and not having meat to eat. He has been pushed so close to the breaking point that he tells God, “Just shoot me now.” And this is where today's reading comes in. It's here that God tells Moses to choose seventy elders who will receive a portion of God's Spirit that had been with Moses.

All but two of those seventy go out to the Tent of Meeting where they begin prophesying. But two, Eldad and Medad, remained in the camp. Those two didn't follow the rules. They weren't doing things “decently and in order.” This caused a certain young man to report them to Joshua who then reported them to Moses because, in their eyes, they needed to be stopped for not following the rules. They decided that it was their job to control God. But Moses knew differently. He knew that God cannot be controlled and he left the Dad brothers alone.

It was this same Spirit of God that descended on the apostles on the Day of Pentecost.

On that day, 50 days after the Resurrection, the apostles were gathered together in a room. Suddenly a rush of violent wind filled the house and tongues of fire appeared resting on each of the apostles. This was the same fire that Moses encountered in the bush, a fire that burned but did not consume. This was the same Spirit that came down on the seventy elders. Each man was then filled with the power of the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages. The crowd outside the house heard them. In amazement Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia and Pamphyllia, Cappadocians and Egyptians all heard the message of the Good News of God in Christ proclaimed in their own language.

In this wild and chaotic event there were those, like the young man and Joshua, who tried to control God by limiting what can be done. “It's not God, it's just a bunch of rowdy men filled with wine.” I think they do this because if they allowed themselves to think this was from God then they would have to step into the mysterious, wild, and uncontrollable world of God. They would have to give up control. They would have to give up themselves. They might have been, as Annie Dillard says, drawn into a place from where they could never return. And that may have been too much for them.

This is us. For better or worse, we have more in common with the two in Exodus and those who accused the apostles of being drunk than we might care to admit. We come together. We pray. We worship. And as long as God stays quiet, everything is fine. As long as God behaves in ways we want God to behave, everything is fine. But what if, as Dillard suggests, what if the sleeping God awakens? What if the Holy Spirit comes down with fire on our heads? What if we start speaking in tongues?

Do we really know what we are praying for when we pray, “Come, Holy Spirit?” Are we really prepared for what God might do? Or, as I suspect, are we blithely playing with spiritual TNT without a clue as to what we are conjuring up or asking for?

Today is Pentecost, the day we celebrate the apostles being baptized with the power of the Holy Spirit. But if all we see in that are balloons or bows or ribbons or (in some places) cake, we are missing the point. Today is the day the apostles were burned but not consumed. Today is the day of speaking in tongues. It is the day when sons and daughters prophesy and young men have visions. It is the day when old men dream dreams. It is the day when the unexpected comes to life.

So let us pray and worship. Let us enter the kingdom of God and marvel at the beauty of holiness. Let us feast on the heavenly banquet that nourishes our bodies and souls with the very real presence of Christ. Let us rejoice in the power of the Spirit.

But let us never forget that, despite our tendency to do “all things decently and in order,” we are in fact dabbling with holy TNT. And, regardless of whether or not people accuse us of being drunk or use other ways to shut us down, let us always be ready to answer the call of the living God who will draw us completely into his presence from which we will never return.

Amen.