Pentecost C’25 “The Feast of Pentecost”
8 June 2025
Acts 2
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
North Little Rock, Arkansas
The Rev. Carey Stone <+>
O Holy Spirit bearer of the cataclysmic creative power of Love: Come down once again and bring new life, filled with wisdom, understanding, power, and love: cleanse, heal, and bestow upon us your gifts of grace, with the Father and the Son, who reigns forever. Amen.
Thanks to the Scottish American, Alexander Graham Bell who invented the telephone, you can always have a conversation 24/7 or call 911 if in danger. Thanks to Anglo American inventor of the electric light, Thomas Edison you don’t have to sit in the dark. Thanks to the English clergyman, the Rev. Edmund Stone, you don’t have to suffer with headaches, he discovered the active ingredient in Aspirin. Thanks to Stephanie Qwolek the American inventor of Kevlar and the bulletproof vest, you can survive a gunshot. Thanks to Captain Ward, British inventor of the life jacket, you don’t have to drown in the lake or ocean. Thanks to Garrett Morgan, African American inventor of the first gas mask, you can survive toxic gas. Thanks to the Irish American inventor, Anna Connelly, thousands of lives have been saved by her invention – the fire escape. Thanks to Margaret Wilcox, the inventor of the windshield wiper, you can drive a car safely in the rain. Thanks to Bertha Benz wife of Karl Benz, the inventor of the first brake pads, you don’t have to run into other vehicles, people, or obstacles when driving.
Our dependence and interdependence with the global community knows no bounds. Do you like coffee you can thank the 16th cen. Sufi Monks of Yemen who drank it first! Think education is important? The world’s first-ever university wasn’t Oxford or Cambridge, it was the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco, and was founded by a woman named Fatima al Fihri in 859. These are just a few of the things that have saved our lives or made them better. We all owe a debt of gratitude to these men and women, and people of many ethnicities throughout the world for their marvelous contributions.
Variety truly is the spice of life! I mean what would life be without real Italian spaghetti, Turkish coffee, African American macaroni and cheese, Swiss chocolate, Lebanese falafel, Greek baclava, German Schnitzel, Austrian Strudel, Mexican burritos, or Asian stir fry? Are you getting hungry yet?
Our minds are boggled as we contemplate the complexity of an ever-expanding universe of galaxies and planets, and planet Earth; a marvelous biosphere of interrelated and interconnected kingdoms, phylums, genuses and species of all creation, down to all the tribes and cultures of the world – it is clear that the Language of God is diversity and beauty! Rubies from Myanmar, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. Emeralds from Columbia, Zambia, and Brazil; Diamonds concentrated on the African continent, and a place called Arkansas, and last but not least, Gold from South Africa bring countless value and beauty to the world.
What started with a bang from a single Word spoken by God, the universe began to pulse with light and life manifesting in all kinds of creatures, to the delight and glory of the Creator. Finally, humanity arrived the only forms within the whole creation that are made in the image of God.
Our reading from the Acts of the Apostles names just a few of the tribes of the first century: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans, Cappadocians, Pontusans, Asians, Phrygians, Pamphylians, Cretans, Arabs, Egyptians, Libyans, Cyrenians, Romans, and Jews…I think that’s the whole list!
All of the known world at the time were represented on the Day of Pentecost, fifty days after Easter and 1o days after Christ’s ascension the Holy Spirit blows into Jerusalem and through the windows of an upper room where Mary Jesus’ Mother and 119 other disciples were all filled with the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity. The gift of languages, as well as other gifts like prophecy, healing, words of knowledge and of wisdom were given and people started to hear people speak in languages they never studied but were easily identified by the native speakers, “In our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” (from Acts 2)
The value of the great variety and diversity of peoples and languages was driven home in the pacific theatre during WWII. The Japanese had managed to break every code of the allied forces and it was taking a terrible toll in the number of lives lost. Desperate for an unbreakable code a military officer who had grown up on a Navajo reservation as the son of a Christian missionary thought about the Navajo language – one of the most unknown an obscure in the world. Native Navajo speakers were found among the US Marines and a special company of them were formed. Through codes based on the Navajo alphabet and language they were able to send messages to troops that could not be translated by the Japanese and it made all the difference. A movie was made starring Nicholas Cage called Wind Talkers and is based on this incredible story.1 Once again diversity on the part of the American forces eventually helped to win the day!
Diversification and expansion are the twin pillars of any successful international business or enterprise, including the Church. You’ve got to get the word out to as many people in as many places and in as many ways as you can. On Pentecost the revelation of the Holy Trinity was now complete!
The Creator – God above us
Jesus – God with us
And The Holy Spirit God within us
A shock wave of the Spirit was sent out and the Word of God’s love for all people began to spread throughout the world and continues to this day. Anyone who’s heart is opened up to God can be filled with God’s powerful and loving presence.
The shockwave of the Spirit evidently even entered a town in Arkansas know as Texarkana. There was a small boy there whom God began to work on, later in his life this work of God would culminate in them being tapped by the Holy Spirit to become a deacon in the Church. That Deacon – Richard Robertson, for whom we give God thanks! That same Holy Spirit is still speaking today. What is the Spirit saying to you?
1 https://dorindabalchin.com/2021/08/14/windtalkers-the-navajo-code-talkers-of-the-second-world-war/#
