Pentecost in 2016 happens during the United Methodist
Church's General Conference, on May 15. It is the birthday of the church, a
commemoration of the day when the power of the Holy Spirit came upon the
disciples in that Upper Room with a mighty wind and tongues of fire.
The disciples spoke in many different languages that day and
proclaimed the Good News of Jesus Christ to people from a variety of cultures
and lands. The Spirit gave the power for
this proclamation to all people. That’s
the fire and the wind part.
The Book of First Peter talks about stones. “Come to him, a living stone, though rejected
by mortals, yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let
yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer
spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (2:4-5)
We are born again by the power of the Spirit and we are
called to work together as the church to be a collective spiritual powerhouse. Each of us is a stone with Christ as its cornerstone.
Many years ago I was involved in a renovation project of an
old stone church building that had been built in 1846 and was abandoned in
1922. The roof has been burned off in
subsequent years and many of the stones that formed the walls of this church
had fallen out of place and were scattered on the nearby ground.
The stone mason we hired had a huge task of reassembling the
walls. Each stone had a particular
place. Some were large, some small, some
had angles and sharp edges but all were needed for the structure to be
recreated. We are like these stones,
each unique, each important, all a part of the church.
How true of our United Methodist Church today! All are needed to do the work of ministry
that began on the day of Pentecost. May
we be a household of faith that offers “spiritual sacrifices” of praise and
ministry in the world in the 21st century.
Only as we keep Jesus as our cornerstone will we stay
together and stay strong as a church. We
need to lean on the Holy Spirit for the power to overcome our differences so
that all will know the saving love of the living Christ.
