Looking Ahead to May 20, 2018 -- Pentecost Sunday

The Scripture Readings this week are:

• Acts 2:1-21
• Philippians 4:4-9

The Sermon title is Keep Calm and Keep On

Early thoughts: How can we continue to be the church? In a world of change how can we keep being something that has been around for 2000 years?

A couple of thoughts come to mind from our passages for this week.

One is that the Spirit is still blowing around this crazy world of ours, calling forth faith and courage. The Spirit still breaks into closed (even locked) spaces and sets itself free -- freeing people in the process.

The other is that if we honestly still believe that God is with us we are still called to "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice". Paul wrote to the Philippians from prison, but even then he did not give up on the church. It is not always easy to be the church (some might argue that it should never be "easy" to be the church). But still we are called to be the church.

We keep the faith. We try to keep calm, to avoid panic, to avoid giving in to "the church is dying" rhetoric (even if we half fear those statements might be true). And we keep on.

Not always in the same way. But with the same vision in mind. We focus on the vision, we focus on the Gospel, we focus on the God revealed in the faith story and we keep on being the church. We might use different language or different tools or different styles than our parents and grandparents (or even different ones than we ourselves used a few decades ago). We might put the emphasis on different parts of the story. We might even change our understanding of how God is calling us to react to some things. But we keep on. We keep looking for those things that are true and honourable and commendable. And we keep on being the church.

Centuries ago the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Risen Christ blew into the hearts and souls and lives of a small group of people and transformed them. They then went out to share a story that would transform the lives of dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of others. The same Spirit  blows in our world today. Are we ready to keep on being the church?
--Gord