The day my lectionary discussion group covered these texts, we also had the privilege of hosting Pedro Jimenez, pastor of a Presbyterian church in Cuba. His church, Santo Spiritu, is just across the island from our congregation's sister church in Sagua La Grande, Cuba. We Americans were doing our usual wrestling with the text when we decided to ask Pedro what he thought was the message of Pentecost. Pedro said he thought that the Holy Spirit is to Christians as the sea is to fish. Like fish, we are always swimming, yet we are not always aware of the sea, as a fish is not aware of the sea around it. It is the environment in which we live. We are always in Pentecost, Pedro thought. Our very lack of conscious awareness of the Holy Spirit shows our need to be united with Christ and the church. The thing about reading the daily lectionary texts, especially as we lead up to one of the major events of the church year, like Pentecost, is that one gets a lot of background information. Anticipation builds. What I've been seeing the last couple of weeks is this: to be "in Pentecost" (as Pedro says) is to be united as God's people. Sure, Pentecost is about giving spiritual gifts to the people who are claimed by God, but the purpose of those gifts is to grow the body of Christ (the Church), to unite God's people as a body in close communion with God. That must be why we've got the table set today for communion. That must be why last week Stinky reminded the children to prepare for communion. If you were here, you might remember that Stinky talked about reconciling with God and reconciling with each other. Making our relationships right. Because the unity of God's people is the gift the Spirit gives us.

Well, what about all those tongues of fire on Pentecost? That stuff about every imaginable ethnic group-existing and extinct, as it reads in the text-every language group hearing the gospel proclaimed in their native tongue. What about that? This isn't "celebrating diversity." It is about celebrating the disappearance of the boundaries that separate us. And this is because--? This is so un-American. It is because, unless the whole body is growing, no one is growing.

That is so outrageous. It is so contrary to what I have always thought. Look at what we read today in 1 Corinthians. Paul uses the body analogy. The church is like a body, he says. It's made up of many parts, none of which can say it is better than any of the others, because they are all part of the whole. Imagine if your foot (he says, later in 1 Corinthians 12) were to decide to secede from the body. You would limp, your foot would die. Ridiculous. What if your right foot decided it wanted to be a size 13, whether the left guy wanted that or not? You'd look funny, shoe shopping would be twice as expensive, and you'd still limp. Imagine if one part of the church decided to grow, whether the rest of the church wanted to grow or not. Or the opposite-one part of the church refusing to grow while the other tried to grow.

And this analogy is true, whether we are speaking of the "particular church"-this congregation-or whether we are speaking of "the church universal." What was sobering for me about the lectionary group discussion, was having it in front of a Cuban pastor. Every Presbyterian I've talked to who has visited our presbytery's sister churches in Cuba has come back saying, "the Cuban church is alive and spiritually vibrant, despite terrible poverty and hostility from the communist government." Did I feel like the right foot that wanted to grow or the left foot that didn't want to grow? Did it feel to me as if the Church universal might need two pairs of shoes, one size shoe for the North Americans who are moribund and paralyzed by bureaucracy, and one size shoe for the physically impoverished Cubans whose faith leaps and dances and sparks with joy?

What is the message of Pentecost to the church today? What are we supposed to learn from this event? The lesson of Pentecost to us in Oregon is the same lesson the baby church learned on the first Pentecost after Christ's resurrection. Remember that those orphaned disciples had just spent the last 7 weeks together, devoted to prayer with each other, in eager anticipation of how God would keep the promise Jesus had made to them about power to be his witnesses. The Holy Spirit will come upon us and give us power to be the church when we are engaged in faithful practice of our faith in community and when that community is open to the newness of God's energizing work in and through the church.

When we join each other at this table today, we are saying "yes" to Christ's invitation to us personally (and to us corporately) to be the church. That means, of course, that we worship and commune with each other. It also means socializing and eating with each other at other times in the week. It means making visits to shut-ins together, doing service in the community together, encouraging each other, holding each other accountable, praying and studying together. The message of Pentecost for us today means the same thing it did for the formation of Christ's body, the very first church. It means that we are praying the same prayer that Moses prayed in the wilderness: "Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!" We need each other to live out that prayer today.

Christ is risen!