"When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force-no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.

Their heads were spinning; they couldn’t make head or tail of any of it. They talked back and forth, confused: "What’s going on here?" (The Message, by Eugene Peterson)

Central truth: We need the Holy Spirit in our Christian witness! For we have a very special calling to be Christ’s voice among our own kind and the larger Christian Church.

Sermon Outline:

1. Come, Holy Spirit. We need You. (vv. 1-4)
2. Speaking our truth. (vv. 5-8) (Come out of the closet for Christ)
3. The truth will set many free. (vv. 9-12)

"Come Holy Spirit, we need you. Come dwell among us we pray. Send us your power this very hour. We want to live for Christ each day. Come Holy Spirit, we need you. Come now and fill us, we pray. We’re waiting here, for we know you’re near. We want to live for Christ each day." Amen. (written by David K. North of the Gospel Celebrations, at http://www.whosoeverwill.com)

The Gospel comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable! And some of us will leave comforted while others will feel afflicted. For today is Pentecost Sunday. It is the birthday of Christian mission for the church. Christ never told the world to go to church. Christ told the Church to go into the world. As God’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Christians, we have a very special two-fold calling in the Christian Church. We are called to be missionaries among our own people. And we are called to share our witness among conservative non-UFMCC Christian churches. We need the miracle of Pentecost. There remain entire countries, cities, villages and towns where our people are denied the Gospel of Christ because of homophobic Christianity. We desperately need the power of the Holy Spirit to bring the light of Christ among our communities. Our Biblical passage offers us great insight and help.

Real life reminders and practical jokers reveal what a difficult calling we have! Today one of my Internet prayer partners sent me an alleged Associated Press release titled, "Christian Right Say "No" to King James." The story goes like this. It seems that three right wing Christian groups-the Family Research Council, the Christian Coalition and Americans For Truth About Homosexuality made an announcement urging their members to stop using the King James Version (KJV). It seems that they finally realized King James I of England was gay. We’ve known that about "Queen James" for a long time! Back in 1611 he was responsible for the KJV of the Bible. Here are some of their alleged responses to having a known homosexual handling the Bible. "Christians should stop using the translation……..I feel uncomfortable that good Christians all over America, and indeed the world, are using a document commissioned by a homosexual. Anything that has been commissioned by a homosexual has obviously been tainted in some way." Another said in their press conference, "The Homosexual has from the earliest times sought to subvert Christianity in many subtle ways-some so subtle that we scarcely notice. I would ask Christians to check who is responsible for both the translation as well as the editing of their Bibles. We all need to be vigilant." Another based in Virginia is on record for saying "It is very important that we stand up to the homosexual wherever and whenever he appears." This turned out to be an April Fool’s Internet "joke!" Yet there is more truth to the joke than we would care to admit, for many in those conservative Christian organizations do voice those very feelings about us. These people are not speaking the truth in Christ. Is it any wonder so many of our people are suspicious of traditional "Christianity" and even view our witness and churches with caution?

Church, hear me! We have a great life calling ahead of us because of our spiritual orientation! Our voice urgently needs to be heard.

Let’s go to our text. If I were to summarize chapter two in a nutshell, I’d break it into three major sections as C. K. Barrett has done. Our first twelve verses are concerned with God’s outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the early Church. What follows next is Peter’s great missionary sermon explaining this marvelous miracle. Thousands respond to the Gospel message. Come Holy Spirit! We need you!

Here’s the situation. It’s been seven weeks and a day since Jesus was resurrected. Easter is long gone. In chapter one of Acts, Christ has literally gone up in the sky and returned to heaven. His parting words to the amazed and bewildered disciples were simple. ‘Don’t leave Jerusalem until you get your gift God has promised you! Wait for it, however long it takes. In just a few days, you’re all going to receive a special baptism with the Holy Spirit. You’ll be transformed and empowered. You’re all going to be my witnesses, my story tellers in this city, this country, the next country and throughout all the world!’ (My paraphrase) Then he was gone! The disciples were stunned, standing with their eyes fixed on heaven where Christ had disappeared. I suspect some had their mouths hanging open. They needed a couple of angels to say ‘hey, it’s OK. Jesus will someday return again in the same way! It will be very cool. But go wait and do as he told you.’ (My paraphrase) And so they did just that. About 120 of them along with the initial disciples returned to what was a very crowded upper room. Jesus’ Mom and other women were present. As a group they united in prayer. "Come Holy Spirit, we need you!" They literally cast a lottery to replace the betrayer, Judas. Then comes our twelve verses.

Come Holy Spirit, we need You.. In our first four verses we see a Christian community in prayer. By golly, they were told to wait for their promised gift. They knew they desperately needed what God would give them. In one accord, in unanimous agreement they sought God in prayer. Through prayer they waited and spiritually prepared for their miracle. It was during one of three great religious feasts in the Jewish faith, Pentecost. It had all kinds of meaning. For the Jews, it meant celebrating the gift of Torah, OT law. It was also a harvest festival. For the Christian, and we ARE Christians, it is the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church! Religious pilgrims from all over the world were in the city. It must have been something like Washington D.C. when it’s a big crowd event! Perhaps like last year’s Promise Keepers? Hundreds of thousands of male pilgrims converged upon the city. The male pilgrims in our story however, were Jewish. It was about 9a.m. Suddenly without warning this enormously strong, noisy wind, like a gale force fills the entire building! It must have sounded like tornadoes and hurricanes all together. No one could tell where it came from. Like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread throughout all their ranks without discrimination! Everyone present got the same thing. All sexual orientations had a common spiritual orientation! They all began speaking intelligently in many different languages as the Spirit prompted them. The wildfire seemed like tongues of fire and rested upon each one present. It was a miraculous moment of high drama! God blessed them with symbolic wind, fire and inspired speech from heaven itself.

What does this mean for us? If we were to stop here and go no farther, what does it mean? Could it mean we need to be gathering in devoted, dedicated community bold prayer? What would happen to us as a vital part of the Christian church if we insisted on Holy Spirit power for fresh witness and holy boldness? Imagine if as a church we prayed with one accord for the Spirit of Pentecost to blow afresh in our buildings and on each of us! We would be transformed. We would be empowered for God’s blessing in witness and proclamation of the Gospel! Again and again throughout the book of Acts we find the Holy Spirit is often concerned with this bold proclamation and empowers our witness! (Acts 4: 8, 31; 9:17; 13:9) It is God who brings people together for Holy Spirit divine appointments. It is God who empowers the Church for missions and witness in many languages. It is God who transforms us for active missionary work. God confronts the world with the Word through the church. We are the church. We too, have a Great Commission spiritual heritage to reclaim. We have good news for every city, village and town wherever our people live. The Holy Spirit sends us, equips and empowers us.

All we have to do is speak our truth in Christ. All we have to do is share our faith stories. God will lead us in coming out for Christ in the power and timing of the Holy Spirit. Look again at our story for insight and guidance. The Bible tells us that devout religious pilgrims from all over the world were staying in the city. They heard this loud noise and come running to check it out What’s going on? Are you OK? And when they heard their own native languages being spoken by the Christians they were thunderstruck, perplexed, astonished and totally confused by what was happening. They tried to figure it out but couldn’t! They kept saying, "aren’t these all Galileans?" How could these mostly uneducated and obviously local bumpkins be multilingual? It was a mystery and supernatural event! A miracle! We’re told three times in our passage (vv. 6-7, 12) the ever gathering crowd was amazed, excited and full of wonder and confusion. God was in this marvelous event.

For us, often when we share our faith many ask "aren’t you gay? I’ve been told you cannot be Christian!" Yet we also say "Jesus is Lord." We are Christians. Jesus never said one word about homosexuality. He said plenty about loving God, our neighbors and ourselves with every fiber of our being. Christ came and helped the outsiders, the marginalized and despised become disciples and friends with God. Jesus was politically incorrect, a perceived theological troublemaker and a true spiritual revolutionary. It is the Christ who seeks our people with love and compassion. Christ uses us to bring Good News to our people. No one will love our people as much as we do! If we allow overtly homophobic Christians speak without hearing our testimony, we are not fulfilling our Christian call to be a witness. Jesus loves us. God blessed some of us in the Divine image as a sexual minority. We are the twenty first century Ruth and Naomi’s/ David and Jonathan’s in the Christian church. The church needs our witness and presence. Our people need Christ "Just as we are." We have a missionary call. Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered spiritual seekers need to hear our faith journeys. They need to hear God loves them, that in Christ we have peace and intimacy with God. The Gospel message is pure love. Our people can no longer be denied God’s heartbeat of love.

And God pulled those early Christians out of their closet, out of the upper room and out into the streets for public proclamation! The Christian faith cannot be closeted. It must come out in the open. We must come out with our faith stories! God didn’t called the city into the upper room. God called the upper room into the city. No matter how closeted we are in the world to protect our jobs, our homes, our families, sooner or later we must come out for Christ. Sooner or later our witness is desperately needed to bring the light of Christ to a fellow seeker. Sooner or later, we are called to break the stereotypes of religious bigotry and prejudice with our stories of meeting Christ. The Church desperately needs our voice and our witness. Even the "straight Church" needs our fellowship. It is only with the Holy Spirit that we are equipped and encouraged in this life calling common to all of us.

I believe we need to learn from this early group of previously timid Christians. They were in community, gathered in worship and prayer. They were partners in ministry. God blessed them in spiritual community. We too need to be in Christian fellowship and community. And if any are isolated here, with no UFMCC nearby, or with no reconciling/more light or gay affirming Christian church in the area…..perhaps the good Lord is calling you to begin praying for two or three like minded people for fellowship and spiritual encouragement. Prayer changes things. Just look at Pentecost! Ask for Pentecost in your local community. Insist on Pentecost. God will hear your prayers.

Our truth in Christ will set us free. Our truth in Christ will set others free. The liberating and healing truth of the Gospel is for all peoples, all nations, all sexual orientations. Our final verses are most revealing. People from all over the known world are represented in this event from modern day Iraq to Rome. In every language they are hearing praises to God. The Christians are telling the world how wonderful God is! As we say in UFMCC, "God is good all the time!" Holy Spirit inspired speech began in praise language among the believers. Those listening were totally confused. G. Campbell Morgan said, here is a picture of the church! "First amazement, second, perplexity, third, criticism." Truly this is a "divine disturbance!" They kept asking "What’s going on here?" "What does this mean?" Over and over again, commentators agree, we see the evangelical law here. The Gospel has gone to every creature and to the represented world. We are given a theology of world evangelism for the Church. Christ is telling the church to go to the world.

Now, we can make the Bible say anything we want it to say. Certainly the Bible has often been used to "Gay bash" our people. We can argue for or against slavery for example. Others will go for the jugular vein over the ordination of women and gays. Others will argue the death penalty for gay men based on verses taken out of context from Leviticus. Some will even say Christ said certain things never recorded in scripture. One homophobic preacher preached a made up parable about how much Jesus hated homosexuals. This misinformed preacher put his prejudice and bias into a make believe story about Christ. He lied from the pulpit. As a result, one little boy grew up fearful of God’s wrath and disgust. As an adult, he found that those were lies. There is no such parable. Jesus only loved people. His best friend was a same sex friend, the beloved disciple John. Christ was comfortable with same sex touch as demonstrated in the Upper Room. The young man who had been so spiritually damaged from the homophobic preacher is now transformed. He sings in a MCC choir and invites other gay friends to services. Their lives are being transformed with the hope of the Gospel! Christ loves us, died for us, sends us into the world with Good News for our people. And as in Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is given to each unconditionally. It is our spiritual orientation, not our sexual orientation that is important in the heartbeat of God.

I believe the Bible is saying to us, share the hope within us. In a careful reading of Luke-Acts, it seems to me that Jesus is needed by everyone. He turns no one away. He sends his people to share the love and hope of God to the rejected in society through the power of the Holy Spirit. I believe Jesus is a missionary Savior. He taught, preached and healed all in the love of God. Jesus has said to us, "Go be my witnesses …..to the ends of the earth." He said, go tell your stories about how you met me. Tell your friends and family how I helped you. In the Gospels he taught again and again that faith sharing is as simple as opening our eyes and looking around us. We are to pray for the crowds are who seeking God. We are to pray for God’s people to go to them. Think about this during our Gay Pride events. Look at the crowds with the compassion of Christ. Pray for them. Jesus is our way, our truth and our life. In Christ we are all one. It doesn’t matter if we are Jew or Greek, male or female, "straight" or "gay." We are equally loved by the Savior. This is what I believe the Bible is sharing with our people.

Praise is our primary language for evangelism. We who have found God wonderful to be with can share praises of gratitude with others. No one can take away our story and our experience with God. Share the goodness of God. Charles Spurgeon, a great evangelist said "We are simply beggars sharing our bread with others." Christ is the soul food our people hunger and thirst for. Christ is the light of the world. Share your light with others who are still in the dark. Share the goodness of God’s love. Ask the Holy Spirit to fill you and your church. Ask in prayer for opportunities to share the love story with others. Expect miracles. Expect divine disturbances! In holy boldness, ask God to bring a loving witness to every city, every village, every town where our people live. May many fall in love with God because of our truth. Our truth will set us free. Our truth in Christ will free many!

May God bless you all, in your politically incorrect, theological trouble making. May the good Lord bless you as a spiritual revolutionary in proclaiming God’s love for our people. May our people throughout the world come to Christ as a result of our prayers and witness! And may the Lord Jesus Christ bless our people in the unfinished evangelism ahead for the 21^st Century. May the good Lord bless our witness among the non-gay communities as well! Come Holy Spirit, we need you. Bless us with Pentecost, we pray.

I would like to close this sermon with the famous prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. "Lord, make us instruments of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is discord, union; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; To be loved, as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned’ and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life. Amen.

Surprisedbyjoy@yahoo.com is an ordained Christian UFMCC minister. She wrote this sermon in 1998 for a doctor of ministry multicultural sermon dedicated to the hidden people in the world who are sexual minorities. All readers are invited to share, distribute and reproduce this sermon for their Pentecost services and local Pride outreach. May readers be blessed with God’s big table and be "surprised by joy." God bless you.