Pictured above: Pastor Rachael (center, holding her child) at her ordination service, surrounded by friends, colleagues and members of Community of Hope.

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I’m Rachael, she/her, CoH queer church plant, these are my kids, thank you for hosting us! 

Pentecost is my favorite church holiday, and arguably is the most major Christian holiday of the liturgical calendar. On this day, we remember the story of Jesus’ community, gathered together in one place in the days following Christ’s death and Christ’s resurrection. While they were gathered, they heard what sounded like the howling of a fierce wind and saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them. They heard their own language being spoken by those there, even though the people there spoke many different languages. And they could understand each other as if each spoke in the native language of the other. 

This holiday is the birthday of the church. It’s a celebration of the Spirit of God dwelling not just within Jesus, but within each one of us. As Anabaptists, we do not believe that only the priests and leaders can discern the voice of Divine Wisdom. Early Anabaptists broke off from the Catholic church in part to exercise the freedom to follow our own inner wisdom, and our movement has never been homogenous. Anabaptists and Mennonites throughout history, all the way to today, accept that different congregations and regions will interpret tradition and prayer and Scripture into their local contexts. Part of the reason I joined the Mennonite church is because of this freedom to pray and discern the voice of God within the accountability of a community, rather than submitting to the bishops and other church leaders of the denomination I grew up in. 

Prayer and discernment are central to my own faith, Pentecost is my favorite church holiday. And the Holy Spirit is my favorite member of the trinity. She is the most gender flexible- gendered neutrally in Greek pneuma, female in Hebrew ruach, and male in the Latin translation spiritus. I will use They pronouns for the Spirit in this sermon, but as a kid growing up in the church, the Holy Spirit came across genderless to me. And as a queer kid growing up in heteropatriarchy, the divine ungenderdness of the Holy Spirit gave me a felt sense of freedom. 

These past few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom to trust in the rule of law, freedom to walk your kids to school without worrying about getting detained on the way there. Freedom for a court order to prevent your deportment, freedom to be my Muslim friend who wants to take kids to visit family members out of country, freedom to be trans and visit friends in Canada for the day without being dead-named at the border. Freedom to openly disagree with the president and not risk losing your job. 

The courts are supposed to be a check and balance against the executive branch, but Trump’s administration has ignored court orders. People are being detained illegally, without judicial warrants, without due cause and with undue cruelty. They are sent to detention centers that have inhumane conditions. Our freedoms under the law are being violated. It is a time when my freedom of speech, even as a white middle class cisgendered citizen, is not something I take for granted. I now think about what I say when I’m preaching, whether it will be posted on our church’s website, and whether it might put me at risk.

The Holy Spirit guides us towards freedom, helping us to notice the stark contrast when we experience the qualities of tyranny that the Holy Spirit does not share.

One of my congregants preached a few months ago about gender expression. She worked with a style coach who helped her identify the fabrics and patterns and cuts that gave her joy to wear. Maybe it seems frivolous, she said, to spend time and energy doing discernment about clothing, in a time when there is so much needed action on climate change and anti-racism, on trans human rights and ending the violence in Gaza. But on the contrary, she said. Putting on clothes that affirm us in joyful gender expression and personal identity, is exactly the type of grounding practice that we need to engage and respond sustainably to this moment in history.

In “A Piece for All Hard Times,” Rebecca Solnit writes,

“Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember in this tide of hate what love is. The pain you feel is because of what you love.” 

We recognize the voice of the Holy Spirit guiding our prayer when it leads towards freedom.

True freedom, though, is relational. Pentecost freedom liberates us into community. At Community of Hope, part of our membership covenant is to give and receive counsel. In the history of Anabaptism, we interpret Scripture and the Holy Spirit in collaboration which our church community. Freedom that releases us to do or say whatever we want without concern for others looks an awful lot like tyranny. 

This week, I felt led to read “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century” by Timothy Snyder. This small, cheap little book is written in the form of 20 tips on how to resist the rise of authoritarianism in the United States, and it includes warnings from history in Europe, especially the early beginnings of Hitler’s leadership in Germany in the 1930’s. Examples of the twenty “lessons” include: “Do not obey in advance, defend institutions, make eye contact and small talk, do not display symbols of loyalty, and be as courageous as you can.” He wrote this book after Trump was elected to the presidency the first time.

The early church in our Acts passage today was also dealing with life under a government that threatens members of their community, which recently had sentenced Jesus to death and executed him. In their grief and their fear they are also making sense of new forms of hope, shifting their ideas about the kind of freedom that Jesus had been telling them about. I wonder if some of you can resonate with that.

Living through scary times in this country, we have a lot to learn from the story of Pentecost, but I’ll focus on three ways that life in community with the Holy Spirit guides us towards freedom, not tyranny.

The first word I’ll lift up is: Gather. 

Autocrats thrive when we are isolated, when we don’t know who to trust. 

Daniel Hunter wrote a viral article called “10 Ways to Be Prepared and Grounded Now Trump Has Won.” You can find it all over the internet, especially at Sojourners’ website or at WagingNonviolence.com. He writes in the article about the importance of relationships of trust, like those of Jesus’ community when they responded to their fear by gathering together after Jesus’ death and resurrection. Daniel Hunter writes: 

“As a nonviolence trainer working with social movements across the globe, I am blessed to have worked with colleagues living under autocratic regimes to develop resilient activist groups. 

My colleagues keep reminding me that good psychology is good social change. For us to be of any use in a Trump world, we must pay attention to our inner states, so we don’t perpetuate the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion, and constant disorientation. As someone raised by a liberation theologian, I’m reminded of how we lean hard on community and faith in tough times.” 

Gathering as church, to love and care for each other, to disagree and learn from each other, to dance and eat together, is a way to follow the Holy Spirit in the ways of freedom. It’s also a way to resist autocracy. Pentecost came when “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.” 

This is a community that was so strong in the aftermath of fear and violence, that it still lives on today, in the form of us, and of communities of peace and freedom around the world. We are gathered here today because of the tradition they created, because of the Hope they found in the resurrection, because of the Power they found in the Holy Spirit. 

In your fear, in your joy, in your anxiety and your hope, find people you trust, earn their trust in return. Gathering can help us trust ourselves, that what we are seeing in the world is really happening. It gives us the courage to check in with our gut, which knows when something’s wrong. Gathering with those we trust, to check in and listen together, is powerful.

The second connection I’ll draw is to Treasure Diversity.

In the Pentecost story we read that “There were devout Jews from every nation, and each heard them speaking in the native language of each.” When the Holy Spirit visits and reveals to them the kind of church we are called to be, Their vision for us is to be a gathered community that treasures diversity. The Holy Spirit allowed each language to be present in that space, languages from many nations. Just as the Holy Spirit guides each of us to the gender that will be most life-giving for us, so She teaches us to celebrate the unique voice of each person in our community. We are not called to be the same as each other. We are not only called to Gather, we are called be our most Authentic Selves. To wear pants with birds on them or wear headphones in noisy environments, to choose our own pronouns and take care of our bodies with Pride. We are freed into community, and we are freed for abundant life. While Tyranny asks us to submit and conform, freedom in the Holy Spirit invites us to bloom. 

Another way we celebrate our differences is through diversity of tactics. There are so many ways to do peacemaking. In my town, two dozen workers at a roofing company were detained at once, leaving small children and teens and older adults behind who counted on them for income. Through a diversity of skills, our town is helping to take care of them with donations of food and diapers and other things. Someone has to send out the email saying what size diapers are needed and not to bring anymore canned beans. Someone else had to count the beans, or be there for distribution. Someone else wrote the newsletter to spread the word.

You are a beloved child of God. No matter what is easy or hard for you, there is a valuable role for you to play. God gave you your voice. 

My third connection between our today’s context and the Pentecost story, is to Stand Out. 

Timothy Snyder writes:

“Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. Remember Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.”

It is the church’s job to stand out for peace. 

We are called by the howling winds and tongues of flame of the Spirit of God not to give up or acquiesce to tyranny. We are called to run for the local school board, advocate for food stamps, or post signs saying everyone is welcome. We are called to gather and love diversity and expect a visit from the Holy Spirit when we do. 

Standing out comes from the fact that we define what’s normal. 

Siblings and friends, I am here to tell you that the nagging in your stomach, that feeling of ease, is sometimes the voice of the Spirit telling you that something is wrong. Telling you that your neighbors’ fear that their parents will be detained while they are at school is not normal. That Trump freezing funds without congressional approval is not normal. Telling you that cutting funding to the poor and giving tax breaks to the rich is not normal. That hospitals being bombed by our country’s weapons in Gaza is not normal. 

Siblings and friends, children of God, we the church are called to define what should be normal. To join the Spirit’s vision of a world of safety, of helping those who are in need, of accepting help from others. A world of compassion and climate justice, where nutritious food and safe housing and dignified medical care are human rights. 

On that day of Pentecost, those present acted so strangely they were accused of being drunk. Maybe it would have been more normal, more expected by Empire, for Jesus’ community to scatter and give in to fear. But Peter didn’t go along with that narrative. He claimed his experience of the Spirit and connected it to the Torah passages of his tradition. They are not drunk, he said, and he started quoting Joel. 

Together, his community created a new thing: the first Christian churches. Communities of Hope. May we be strengthened by remembering them among our community of saints, with us today, as well as in the hard days to come.

The Spirit calls us to gather, to treasure the differences between us, and to stand out. 

When you see signs of fascism drifting into your life, do not let yourself get used to them. 

Gather with the people you trust. 

Celebrate the diversity of voices you find there. 

And with the Spirit’s help, measure this moment in history not against its own metrics, but against the windy and joyful freedom of the Divine.