The Holy Spirit inspires us to speak out. The first gift that the Spirit granted to the church was the gift of speech. The followers of Christ were transformed from meek and frightened men into people who spoke the truth of the God boldly. There’s a scene in the movie “Sister Act” when Sister Mary Robert is asked at choir practice to sing all by herself. She doesn’t want to. She tries to say “no,” but the choir director eventually gets her to sing. And this mousy, tiny, childlike voice finally peeps out a note. But over the course of the movie, Sister Mary Robert gains confidence. She learns to speak up for herself. And in the end of the movie, Sister Mary Robert sings a solo in front of a huge crowd. And she sings boldly and beautifully with a voice she didn’t even used to know that she had. The Holy Spirit at Pentecost gave us a voice that we may not have known that we had. The Spirit offers us the gift to speak with confidence when we share the good news of God’s love. Notice that the Bible doesn’t say that the disciples spoke eloquently or persuasively. The Bible doesn’t assure us that the apostles always knew what to say and never made fools of themselves. In fact the crowds outside their window heard them and thought that they must be drunk. The Spirit didn’t transform them into well-worded, smooth orators. The Spirit simply filled them with the passion to speak despite their insecurities and fears and lack of training. The Spirit transformed this group of underachievers who had denied Christ at his trial and execution. And they were recreated into people so filled with God’s love that they couldn’t do anything but shout and sing and tell the story of the joy of God in their lives. We may not always believe that we’re qualified to talk about faith. We may feel insecure about all that have yet to learn about the Bible. We may wonder why anyone would think our story of faith is worth listening to. But we’re called to speak anyway. This gift to speak is at the heart, at the very beginning of who we are as the church. We, the church, are in this world, speaking in the languages of the world. We worship a God who is real and active and making a difference. And if this is the God whom we follow, then how can we do anything but enthusiastically share the story? Pentecost tells us that the foundation of the church is telling the story of our faith. The Holy Spirit christened the church to speak boldly.

The Spirit also inspires us to listen. Listening isn’t something to be taken for granted. The gift of listening is priceless, and not to be assumed. My family always told my dad that he needed to get his hearing checked. We’d all be in the same room talking, and he wouldn’t even know something had been said. He agreed that he ought to get his ears checked, but he put it off because he dreaded the news that his hearing was impaired. But finally, about five years ago, my dad went to the doctor to have his hearing checked. And after extensive testing, the doctor concluded that my dad’s hearing is perfect. His ears work just fine. The doctor suggested that maybe it wasn’t that my dad couldn’t hear. Maybe it was just what my dad was choosing to listen to. Listening is something that we can’t take for granted. Listening requires that we pay attention to what another person is saying. I knew a couple who’d been married fifty years. And the secret to their longevity, I think, was that they fought all the time. For fifty years they bickered back and forth about all sorts of trivial things. They snapped at each other about who forgot to make the bed, or who didn’t buy enough stamps. They rehearsed the same arguments for fifty years. In fact the arguments were so familiar that all he had to say was, “the bed,” and that would infuriate his wife. She could respond by bitterly saying, “stamps,” and in that one word was summed up an ages old argument that they’d rehearsed so often they didn’t need to hear it any longer. Too often, though, we assume that we know what someone else has to say. Too often we think we’ve heard it all, and we jump to conclusions before another person has finished talking. At our United Methodist Annual Conference, people will almost certainly get up and debate all sorts of controversial topics. But I expect that there will be more words said than heard. There will be more things spoken than people will listen to. Most of us, by habit, will tune each other out once we think we know what the other has to say. But the second foundational gift of the church was the gift of listening. For only in listening to one another can we discover what God is trying to tell us. Only in listening to each other’s stories can we discover all that God is doing in the world. At Pentecost, the crowd heard the message of God calling out to them, searching for them. They were astounded and said to one another, “in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power!” At first some assumed that these men must be drunk, and they dismissed them. But some of those who first heard the disciples at Pentecost listened. They listened to the babble of voices all speaking in different languages. They listened to Peter’s sermon, explaining that God was at work that day. They listened, and they were transformed by what they heard. We must take time to listen, even when we think we’ve heard it all before. We must listen, in order to hear what God is speaking to us in the lives and words of others.

The story of Pentecost is the origin of the church. It’s a story of who we are as a people still today. Like the apostles, we gather together to pray and to wait. We remember and anticipate the presence of Christ. And we’re also the ones with tongues of flame upon our heads, compelling us to speak in the face of fear. We’re the ones called to listen to the voices of others telling us where God is calling us to go today. When we choose to follow where Christ leads us, we may have to surrender some control. Once we choose to take the path that God has placed before us, sometimes all we can do is to hold on as the Spirit takes over the direction of our lives. The journey promises to be a little frightening, thrilling, and exhilarating. And the Spirit promises to go with us with the joy of Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen.