Pentecost: The Presence and the Power
Pentecost: The Presence & the Power
Acts 2:1-17
May 24, 2026 Pentecost Sunday
Rev. Cynthia Cochran-Carney, First Presbyterian Church, San Rafael, CA
When the feast of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?
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—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." All were amazed and perplexed.
We are in this new season to celebrate. You might think – spring allergies! Hardly worth celebrating. Whew, this year has been rough given all the sneezing in my house and the church office and neighborhood.
Graduation season. Yes, that is also true. I like reflecting on those rites of passage in my own life and our sons and young people. Joy. Bittersweet. Amazing accomplishments – high school, trade school, college, grad school.
Memorial Day weekend is in many ways a gateway to summer plans and rhythms. Tomorrow the holiday is meant to be a solemn celebration. We pause to remember the veterans who gave the ultimate sacrifice. To offer solemn gratitude and recommit to honoring their memory and finding alternatives to war and more bloodshed.
Today marks a new season in the church calendar. It is not well known outside of church circles. You won’t find Pentecost cards in the card section at Walgreens. According to Luke and his writings, Pentecost is just about as important as Easter. The risen Christ ascends into heaven; the Holy Spirit comes down.
Pentecost. It is a story, an event, a season.
So what is Pentecost? It was a holiday that had been around for a while. In the book of Exodus, the roots of Pentecost start with a festival called Shavuot, which draws upon the Hebrew word for the number seven. Also called Festival of Weeks. This was a festival to celebrate the first harvest of the wheat crop, numbered seven weeks after the celebration of Passover.
Eventually this Wheat Festival moved from the countryside into the city, as Israel’s people shifted toward Jerusalem. There was the Passover, the departure from slavery in Egypt, and then God spoke and Moses received the 10 Commandments. It became a celebration of God’s Words. We don’t know when that happened, but they had a good day already set aside so Pentecost became a celebration of the Voice of God.
That’s why, in our story, there were Jews gathered from every nation under heaven. They came to Jerusalem to celebrate the God who speaks. It followed 49 days after the Passover, so the holiday name had shifted to “Pentecost.” (“Penta” signifies 50, fifty days). They were celebrating the Torah, the speaking of the Holy. Word, speaking, Divine Word and mystery.
And that year, the year that Jesus died, after those Jews came to Jerusalem, after they gathered from every nation, the Wind started to blow, the Fire came down, the flames distributed, and then, All That Noise! Everybody was speaking. Everybody was talking about the great deeds of God.
They had gathered to talk about the great deeds of Christ. To tell those stories of healing, hope, feeding and welcoming. And they had seen or heard stories of the risen Christ. What next? Then on Pentecost the eleven disciples, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and all the women and men with them were empowered to speak about Jesus. A kind of power that is rooted in love, in grace, in hope. The Spirit blew through the windows, filled the lungs of the Christ’s followers, people of the Way. They breathed in this power and they exhaled Good News to the world.
After those who loved Jesus and following his ways are empowered share the good news, a mystery of Pentecost - everybody understands the message. Everybody comprehends the good news is for all people. Nobody is excluded, everybody drawn in.
A new community was formed. A movement, a miracle, a vision of the Reign of God.
Pentecost is the undoing of all the confusion at that old Tower of Babel. It is in Genesis 11. You might have heard that story. Our mythical ancestors presumed they could storm heaven by building a tall skyscraper. They underestimated their ineptness. They thought they could climb up there and make themselves equal to God.
The plan crashed and burned, and they ended up merely talking to themselves. All of them isolated, unable to communicate with one another, unwilling to listen, refusing to learn how to reach out to one another. Everybody out for themselves. Ego and desire for power are destructive forces if that is our foundation.
By contrast, Pentecost offers the miracle of community. God creates understanding among a human family that was diverse from the very beginning. God unlocks hearts, opens minds, and provides a depth of comprehension that creates community.
In one brief shining moment, everybody gets it: Christ is alive, death does not have the last word, cruelty is conquered by love, and now, a new human community is possible! This is all God’s work, God’s Word, God’s way. People know the holy one is as close as their breath.
Now, this is chapter two in the book of Acts. In chapter three, there is pushback from those who refuse to listen. Yet we still have that memory of chapter two. There is a God-given unity that comes before the division. It is possible to live together. To share, to understand. We can dwell in faith, hope, and love. We can work with each other. This is a reality. For God has given us Pentecost.
Many people struggle to understand this. They reject it. Those who guard crumbling principalities believe it’s not possible for people to get along. That’s why they work so hard to keep dividing us. There are those who tell us who to hate. Who is our enemy. Who is outsider. Who is not worthy. Human beings turn people into “the other.”
God gave us Pentecost – to proclaim and understand that the love of Christ is stronger than divisions and hate.
I like the translation of the Pentecost story from the First Nations Bible Acts 2:8-12
“How is it that these people from Circle of Nations ( Galilee ) are speaking in our many languages ? For we all can understand them in the languages of the places we have come from ! There are people here for the festival from nations and places close by and far away who are members of the tribes of Wrestles with Creator ( Israel ) , and those from Outside Nations who have been taken into the tribes . “ They come from Land of Victory ( Parthia ) , Land in the Middle ( Media ) , and Land of the Ancient Ones ( Elam ) . Many come from Land
Between Rivers ( Mesopotamia ), Land of Promise ( Judea ) , Land of Handsome Horses ( Cappadocia ) , Land of Black Waters ( Pontus ) , and Land of the Rising Sun ( Asia ) . Some come from Dry Wood ( Phrygia ) and Many Tribes ( Pamphylia ) , and the territory of Land of Tears ( Lybia ) near the village of Strong Wall ( Cyrene ) .
There are travelers from Village of Iron ( Rome ) , both Tribal Members and Outsiders who have become Tribal Members , along with those who come from Flesh Eater Island ( Crete ) and Land of Wanderers ( Arabia ) . “ We can hear them , in the languages of these nations , telling about the great and powerful things done by the Great Spirit ! ”
All peoples, languages, tribes. What might a modern story about the movement of the Spirit, the winds of change, of transformation, of a bigger vision Christ’s family, look like? There is a movie I saw years ago that has stayed with me because it reflected so many themes of Pentecost. Chocolat
Set in Lansquenet, a small, quaint French town in 1959. It's a place that holds fast to its traditions, thanks largely to its zealous mayor, the Comte De Reynaud, whose brand of Catholicism is repressive, austere, and distrustful of strangers. The movie opens on a gray damp day in the village. One day a wayward north wind blows open the doors of the Catholic Church during the sermon by parish's new priest. Arriving in town at that very moment is Vianne Rocher, the single parent of Anouk, her young daughter.
Vianne earns the immediate ire of the Comte de Reynaud by opening a chocolate shop during Lent. Often a season of rigorous discipline and denial. Besides her exuberant delight in life, this outsider has the knack for reaching out to other outsiders in the tightly knit village. They include Josephine, whose husband verbally and physically threatens her; Armande Voizin curmudgeonly woman who has been prevented from seeing her grandson; and Guillaume Blerot, who yearns to court a widow whose husband died in World War I.
The wind often blows in the movie. Vianne endears herself to this segment of the community by guessing their favorite chocolates and treating them like royalty. A symbol of the Spirit. Vianne does nothing out of obligation, but everything out of love. It is her encouragement that brings Josephine out of her abusive marriage. It is her encouragement that brings Armande together with her grandson. It is her encouragement that brings a widow of 30-some-years out of mourning and into a new relationship. The town is transformed by her chocolaterie and her grace.
We can’t see the wind. We can’t see the Spirit. But we can see evidence of the movements of this power of love and connection and Divine grace. In Acts people spoke in their language and they could understand each other. And they began to form a community. In the movie, Viviane invited people into her chocolate shop, and saw them and listened and offered them what they needed to feed their souls and they began to be transformed.
Potent, powerful, provocative, the Holy Spirit can never truly be seen, yet the evidence of her presence is unmistakable. And that evidence reflects the Spirit’s united and unifying source. In a world that thrives on the art of dividing people, we have more reasons than ever to seek out evidence of that Spirit wherever we can find it.
Breathe in the Spirit today. Exhale and offer words of the good news of hope into the world. You are beloved, you are a wonder to behold, you are not alone. Amen.