Pentecost and baptisms go together like a good bottle of red wine and dark chocolate!  We're decked out in red, the symbol of God in our midst to welcome the Holy Spirit, who since the day the church began, always shows up at our grandest occasions - and what occasion could be more grand than a baptismal welcome of two new members into this household of faith we share-and it just happens to be Mother's Day!

Pentecost celebrates the birth of the church with the coming of the Holy Spirit to Jesus' followers who had gathered after his crucifixion.  As a post on our parish blog said earlier this week, on that first Pentecost day "diversity and hospitality were etched indelibly onto the souls of Christians. As Christ had done when alive, the coming of the Holy Spirit reached out and touched a dispersed and diverse crowd of people who - differences of language and culture notwithstanding - came to understand that they were now the very body of Christ in the world, with the power to transform and change that world - the power of unquenchable love". 

These words help us to understand why Pentecost is reserved as one of the days in the church year when we do baptisms. Just as the Holy Spirit came upon the people of God to mark the beginning of the church, so does the same Spirit come upon those lifting up their arms and hearts and faces in saying "yes" to God this day, the day of their baptism. To be baptized means to live a life that in all things we will seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves, striving for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every person created by God.

The Pentecost story, as we've just heard in our reading from Acts, is about discovering the connection with those who differ from us the most, while discerning our common destiny, to love and serve God in all things.

I imagine the first Pentecost sounded like a room full of junior high students from around the globe, each with a microphone set on volume Ten.  Pentecost is also the promise that in the midst of that room, each child can discover that God knows them by name, and that in their indelible individuality they're woven together into the household of God, where prophetic hospitality reigns.

Pentecost offers up a vision of human community where the contributions, capacities, gifts, and talents of each person are interconnected-interdependence realized--to create a new place when the Spirit of God reigns.  Community replaces chaos.  Misunderstanding is overcome. Standing together in this new place, people work together, speak together, understand and are understood, as God transforms the landscape of our hearts.

Like those gathered on the first Pentecost Sunday, we come to this place speaking a variety of languages.  St. Thomas' speaks the language of married persons, single persons, straight couples with children, gay and lesbian couples with children, single persons who adopt children, couples who choose to live together before making public commitments and covenants and other persons who claim a call to celibacy.