May 24, 2026 Sermon
I have been in spaces with women when birth stories start being shared. I have listened, and I have shared my own. I have witnessed people’s tears because they didn’t have one to share. Some folks have really crazy stories; like late-night host Seth Meyers’ wife, who didn’t make it to the Uber waiting for her and instead had their child with the help of the doorman in their apartment building.
Well, the church has a crazy birth story. This is it.
And just like when we hear miraculous birth stories, we may feel that Pentecost can’t happen for us.
“Well, that’s wonderful for them. But my life doesn’t look like that. That doesn’t happen today.”
We don’t get to see flames dancing over someone’s head. We don’t get to suddenly speak another language.
Most of us have enough on our plates —
trying to raise children, trying to keep up with all the doctor’s appointments, trying to pay bills, trying to find joy in our 9–5 work, trying to know what we want to say yes to and learning to say no to things in our retirement years, trying to find time to be with friends.
Trying to keep it all together. Trying to keep faith while the world feels heavy.
Today for Curious Hearts, Honest Questions series, the question is: “Is God really involved in our daily lives?” We can read stories like this one - of fire coming over heads and people suddenly being able to speak and understand each other as quickly as if they were using Google Translate - and think that since God isn’t doing that, God might not be involved in our lives.
Pentecost, the birth of the church, feels relevant for this question because it celebrates the Spirit of God refusing to be confined to buildings, religious experts, or priests. Instead, the Spirit is poured out on ordinary people living ordinary lives.
This is a story rooted in the understanding that God has the ability to be present in the real lives of people.
The people of God have had different experiences with God.
You have the Creator God, who could be seen as a distant parent who sent us off to boarding school, sending occasional care packages and checking in every now and then.
Then you have Jesus, who had deeply personal moments with people, but who was also rather confusing, and who couldn’t physically reach many people, no matter how remarkable he was.
And now, the Spirit of God shows up, creative like the Creator, personal like Jesus, and never confined by time or space.
In the Bible, God showed up in ordinary life:
in deserts, in kitchens, in fishing boats, in prison cells, at dinner tables,
on dusty roads, in grief, in laughter, in conflict, in community.
And I think, through the Spirit, we can experience that as well.
Richard Rohr says:
“One foundational and revolutionary idea of the Bible is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now.”
Or as Paula D'Arcy writes:
“God comes to us disguised as our life.”
That means:
The Spirit comes when a discouraged person receives a phone call at exactly the right moment.
The Spirit comes when someone finds the courage to apologize.
The Spirit comes when an exhausted nurse keeps caring tenderly for patients.
The Spirit comes when a community gathers around a grieving family.
The Spirit comes when someone who worries about being enough receives affirmation that they are.
The Spirit comes when a church works towards God’s justice.
The Spirit comes when barriers fall between people.
The Spirit comes when strangers begin to understand one another.
Notice: these strangers didn’t become the same. They still had different languages. Those different languages were celebrated and learned. And they all got to experience God in their own culture and language. The miracle was not sameness. The miracle was understanding.
I want this miracle to be renewed. I want the Spirit and believe that the Spirit can wrap herself around the many people out there who feel beyond God’s reach:
immigrant families waiting for security, communities waiting for justice,
people who need access to life-saving treatment, churches facing closure and grieving, people waiting for someone to walk alongside them and reduce their isolation.
I want to remember that the Spirit of God came without the house being clean, before everyone took language classes, before meetings were held to gather people from the specific countries that would be involved.
In other words, the Spirit came while they were still uncertain.
That feels like good news. We don’t have to understand before the Spirit comes.
Which means our ordinary lives may already be holy ground.
Pentecost is and can serve as a reminder that God will work in us. The invitation is to become aware.
You may know about breath prayers. They can ground us through the breath and centering through focus. They are short. They can help us become aware of what God brings into our lives and notice what God is doing.
A breath prayer example is:
Inhale: Lord
Exhale: Have mercy
Or maybe:
Inhale: Holy Spirit
Exhale: Fill me
Or maybe just:
Inhale: Holy Spirit
Exhale: Come
What if you made this a practice?
Before a difficult conversation:
Holy Spirit, come.
Before making a decision:
Holy Spirit, come.
Before entering the hospital room.
Before parenting exhausted children.
Before responding in anger.
Holy Spirit, come.
Breath is intimate, close, and can draw God into our mundane moments.
And then maybe we breathe in enough brave love to make crazy things happen, like the birth of the church.
One example: in late January 2017, hundreds of volunteer attorneys descended on major international airports across the U.S. to provide emergency legal counsel to travelers impacted by President Donald Trump’s travel ban.
You might remember that attorneys of all sorts showed up at O'Hare International Airport and worked with laptops, shared outlets, and brought printers so they could file emergency habeas corpus petitions.
This wasn’t coordinated in many regards just friends texting other friends to show up and bring an extension cord, handwritten signs, and a willingness to talk to random people in the airport.
Chaotic and Caring and Unplanned. Pentecost moments still exist all around us.
In meals where kids share a win with us, in the graciousness a stranger offers, in a reconciling conversation, in a quiet moment of reading that leads to new understanding, in responding to a friend’s frantic phone call, and anytime we choose love over fear.
I wonder if we might become more mindful of God’s activity in our lives through the spiritual practice of examen — usually done in the evening by reflecting back on your day. Sometimes this is called Rose (a small win), Thorn (the difficult part of the day), and Bud (something you are looking forward to).
What if we started asking:
Where did I see God today?
And where did I miss God today?
I wonder where we might experience God if we turned our attention toward it. I hope we would begin to see the little ways God might be present — ways that are just as important as the big ones.