Children and adolescents make clear to us how essential, and challenging, it is to actually be a Pentecost community, a congregation willing to risk a genuine welcoming of God's children into our midst, not just the ones we feel most comfortable about having here. Children and adolescents show us the challenge of the Reign of God; they ask us how serious we are about welcoming anyone into our midst, if we're not ready to make room for their voices at all stages of their lives.

As one of our members, Jan Fetter-Degges claims about bringing up her own son in this community, "I want him raised here.  I want him to be loved by this community.  He needs who these people are in his life."  And by God, we need Karl, Theo and Silas and Gloria Jean and Manuel and Dakota and Eleanor and Madeline.  We need Isabelle and Cori, Abbi and Matthew.

In a few moments we baptize and welcome Karl and his mother Jane, the newest members of our household of St. Thomas'.  When we all reaffirm our baptismal vows, we're saying yes to Karl's toddler vulnerability, his childhood spontaneity, and yes, even some eventual teenage sulking! Their singing and praying among us, even if we need the Holy Spirit to do some translating to help us make sense of it, are a part of what God's household looks like and sounds like.  When we say to a child being baptized that we will help to raise them in the community of faith, we're pledging ourselves to provide guidance and mentoring for life.

While writing this morning's sermon, I wondered whether Amy Whitford's parents, or Henry Bruel, her childhood priest, imagined that when Amy was crawling under these very red chairs during worship as a toddler, that she would be one of the adults making a decision about how to be a good steward of this place for our children's grandchildren and adolescents in the future?  It's a Pentecost question, the question of our seriousness in welcoming into our midst both the wind and fire of the Holy Spirit and the child we baptize into community today.

To be the church is to invite into our midst the comfort and challenge of both the Holy Spirit and the newly baptized!  In our welcome to both, we'll discover what it really means for us to be the church.  "Come Holy Spirit, come"!  Come as wind and fire -- in child, adolescent and adult - and make us that new place for the household of faith, the church, where God reigns.