“Flowing Water & Tongues of Fire” a Pentecost sermon on Acts 2:1-21 & John 7:37-39

Acts 2:1-21
John 7:37-39
“Flowing Water & Tongues of Fire”
Preached Sunday, May 24, 2026 (Pentecost) 

Let’s talk about the Holy Spirit - a fitting day and time to do so, as we observe the day of Pentecost in the church where we remember and celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit - to the disciples on the day of Pentecost and to all of us through the ages.

The Holy Spirit is God. God who gave us God’s self in Jesus, also gave us God’s self in the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the remaining presence of God within and around us, at work in our lives and in the world.

A note about my use of pronouns for God’s Spirit. The Greek word sophia and the Hebrew word ruach used for the Holy Spirit in the Bible are feminine words. We know that God does not have a gender as we talk about and understand gender and sex today. Jesus came in the form of a man - yes. And God and the Spirit both encompass all gender expressions and transcend above and beyond them. And yet we often use “he” or “him” to talk about the Godhead, especially as God as Father is a metaphor for God that Jesus used and finds great resonance with many followers of Christ. And yet, that can often contribute to the idea that God is male and can separate women from connecting to the Divine or seeing the Divine in themselves. All that being said, I will use the pronouns she/her when talking about the Holy Spirit in my sermon today.

And so let’s talk about the metaphors used to try and understand the Holy Spirit:

We’ll start with fire, as that is where the day of Pentecost normally takes us - the color red and tongues of flame. So let’s talk about fire.

Fire brings warmth, heat, and light.
Fire cooks food.
Fire can also be dangerous. While we have found ways to try and control fire we also know how it can readily get out of control - from a leaping spark, fires started among dry brush, and small flames turned into raging blazes.
Fires can be destructive forces - all of us know someone or know of someone who has lost their home due to a fire. All of us have watched forest fires on the news, praying for those in harm's way and those courageous people who fight them. We should pray specifically as states move into wildfire season this summer with drastic cuts to the forest service who fight those fires. We should also always pray for our local firefighters who respond and help many in our community.
Fires can also be beneficial to the environment - sometimes forests need controlled or small fires to clear out underbrush and even are a part of many native species' necessary life cycle. Sometimes we even do controlled burns for the health of a forest.
A fire can also be cleansing in order to start anew.
In a metaphorical sense, fire is our passion. It spurs us on. It motivates us.

The Holy Spirit is like fire.

Our Acts passage also describes the Holy Spirit coming like a great gust of wind. And in the beginning, in Genesis, we first encounter the Holy Spirit as ruach, this word that means wind, air, breath. So let’s talk about breath and wind.

Breath keeps us alive. We breathe without consciously thinking of it. In, and out, in and out.

Clean air is so important - for our health and the health of our planet.
We can focus on our breathing to regulate our nervous systems, calm our hearts and minds. Our breath is connected to so much more than just our lungs.
The wind offers a cooling breeze, it moves weather patterns, disperses seeds, carries birds through the air.
The wind can also come as a gale, a storm, a tornado - destructive and strong, uprooting trees and causing immense damage.
Wind, breath, air - unseen and yet so necessary and powerful.
Metaphorically wind is the unseen, powerful force that affects our lives.

The Holy Spirit is like breath and wind.

Another metaphor for the Holy Spirit that comes to us from John this morning is water. So let’s talk about water.

Water is necessary for life - our own personal lives and the life of our planet.
Our bodies are about 60% water and our planet is about 70%.
Water teems with life, water is where life started - in the evolution of life on our planet and in the water of a womb.
Water cleans, water renews, water causes growth.
Water is worth protecting and has often been in the news when drinking water is unsafe, Native lands are threatened, and new technology raises concerns of drying up reservoirs.
Water can also be a powerful force - dams generate massive amounts of energy. Water made the Grand Canyon through the natural process of erosion. Water shapes the very world we live in.
So too, floods and hurricanes are a concern - we pray for all those who have experienced loss due to their destructive forces.
Water can be the rain that waters the plants or the flood that wipes away homes and lives.
In a metaphorical sense, water is the very essence of life, it renews and restores, it parches our thirst - literal and spiritual.

The Holy Spirit is like water.

There are many, many other metaphors used to describe the Holy Spirit throughout Scripture. Today, we are focusing on these three - and what do they have in common? They are all necessary for life and also impossible to pin down and control. While we may have “tamed” aspects of wind, fire, and water - humans will never control them entirely, we will never fully pin them down. They will do what they will.

These metaphors are so apt for understanding the Spirit of God - for she is impossible to pin down. We will never fully understand her. We will never “tame” her so that the Spirit of God does just what we please, when we please, as we please. No, the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, is always trailblazing, expanding, and even destroying our notions of who God is and who God includes.

Both of our Scriptures we read today highlight that.

In the story of Pentecost, the Spirit comes like wind and fire and immediately expands the Gospel message to people of many different nations, ethnicities, languages, cultures. It is an explosion of inclusion. Much of the rest of the book of Acts and many of Paul’s letters deal with the cultural differences and misunderstandings that this act caused as Christians of Jewish and Gentile descents (and Gentile here is a very broad term for anyone who wasn’t Jewish - 14 different countries/areas were mentioned in Acts). This was unheard of, unthought of - and yet like a wind that knocks down barriers and a fire that cannot be controlled, the Spirit breaks down walls and sparks a fire that makes the followers of the Jesus movement so much more diverse, and beautiful.

In the Gospel of John today, it’s important to look at what Jesus was saying right before the verses we read. He is verbally sparring with the Pharisees and they ask, “Where does this man intend to go that we will not find him? Does he intend to go to the dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks?”

“The Greeks” here is used like Gentiles - anyone who wasn’t Jewish, anyone who wasn’t “like them.”

And then Jesus says, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”

So basically Jesus is saying - it doesn’t matter who you are - Jew or Greek or Gentile - an us or a them - if you are thirsty, come to me and drink.

He doesn’t end there - Jesus says come to me and drink - AND the Spirit will cause water to flow out from YOUR hearts, out of the hearts of the followers of Jesus, a living stream, that will provide water for all who are thirsty.

This is the Holy Spirit working within our hearts and flowing out of our hearts. There are so, so many thirsty people in this world. People who are longing for community, for belonging, for acceptance, for peace, for love. The Holy Spirit, which is the very breath within us, can light a fire within our hearts, and flow out of us like a river, giving living water to those who are thirsty. Through us - through you - each and every one of you - you can be a river of living water to quench the thirst of those who are longing to know God. To know they are beloved children. To know they can have a community. To know that they are cared for by God and can walk through this world surrounded by people who share that unconditional, generous love of God with one another.

My prayer is that not only that the river of living water would flow out of each of our hearts, but that it would be a powerful river, a surge of power forming new paths, a wave that overcomes any barriers we have put up - that it would honor the wall-breaking Spirit of Pentecost and the every expanding energy of the Holy Spirit - that through us and the Spirit’s presence within us - everyone, and I mean, everyone would come to drink deeply of living water. Barriers of language, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, ability, creed, and more would cease to exist - would burn away, would be blown away, would be washed away - that through the Spirit, all, truly all, would drink deeply.

How can we do this?

It’s as simple and as difficult as this:

1. Love God. Worship, pray, spend time in the Word.

2. Pray for God to offer opportunities for you to love your neighbor. Pray that God gives you eyes to view all people through the eyes of God, to see people as God sees them. You can practice this too. You can meditate on a stranger at the coffee shop, a figure on the news, someone you know who you have a strained relationship with, or even a person you harbor ill will against or an enemy. Meditate on them being a beloved child of God, ask God to help you see them as God sees them.

3. Listen to and learn from people who are different from you - in any category. Read books, listen to podcasts, have conversations - whatever it may be - with people who come from a different background or school of thought - all those barriers I mentioned before: language, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, ability, creed, etc. This will help each of us better show love when we encounter one another. For there is no us or them, there are only people created and loved by God.

As simple and difficult as this.

Take heart - the Spirit of God is fire, wind, and water. She moves through us, within us and - this is Good News - despite us. The Spirit of God will continue to move, continue to expand, continue to share the Gospel with more and more people - whether we get on board or not. And, God desires us to not only drink deeply of the living water, but allow the living water, allow the Spirit, to flow out of us.

This Pentecost, let us - as individuals, as a community, as a church - be a part of God’s expanding, uncontrollable, powerful, wonderful, beautiful work in this world.

May it be so. Amen.

Call to Worship for Pentecost based on Acts 2:1-21 & John 7:37-39

Leader: As we begin worship today, we cry out:
People: Come, Holy Spirit, Come!
L: Within us, we ask the Spirit to touch us with holy fire.
P: Come, Holy Spirit, Come!
L: For those who are thirsty, in the pews and outside the walls, we pray:
P: Come, Holy Spirit, Come!
L: Holy Spirit, fill us with fire and make living water flow from our hearts.
P: Come, Holy Spirit, Come!
All: Amen.

"Water & Fire" a sermon on John 7:37-39 and Acts 2:1-21

John 7:37-39
Acts 2:1-21
“Water & Fire”
Preached Sunday, May 28, 2023

This morning I want to tell you three stories.

The first story goes back to the very beginning, Genesis 1:1-2: “When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was in complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”

That wind from God that hovered over the deep at the beginning of creation was God’s ruach. A Hebrew word meaning breath and wind. The breath of God that hovered over the deep at the beginning of our creation story, is the Holy Spirit, one of the three persons in our Triune God. And the world ruach, that first reference to the Holy Spirit, right at the beginning of our Scriptures, is a feminine word, as are other words used to refer to the Holy Spirit in our Scripture, such as the Greek sophia for wisdom. So as I am telling you stories this morning and talking about the Holy Spirit, you’ll hear me use she to refer to the Holy Spirit. So as the Holy Spirit hovered over the deep, the chaos, the primordial waters of creation, she had a direct role in the creation of the universe, and it’s the start of a long-standing connection between the Holy Spirit and the gift of water.

She was present in the waters of creation. She was present as the flood waters receded and a rainbow, a sign or promise and covenant, appeared in the sky to Noah and his family. She was present in the parting of the Red Sea, when God led the Hebrew people out of slavery, out of Egypt. She was present as the next generations crossed the Jordan River and into the promised land.

And then, she was present with Jesus in the water of the womb, for when one member of the Trinity is found, they all are. She was present in Jesus’s baptisms, in both the water of the Jordan and the dove descending. She was present in the water that gushed from Jesus’s side during his crucifixion and then subsequent resurrection.

The story of our faith, from the beginning of creation to the wider story of Jesus - to today, can be traced through water and traced through the Holy Spirit.

And if that story that I just told you sounds slightly familiar - it’s because you just heard that story retold in our Baptismal covenant as we baptized two young children of God. We trace the Holy Spirit’s presence above the water of creation to her presence in the water here today that we baptize with. Because when we baptize children of God, of any age, we are placing ourselves in the story of the Holy Spirit, in the story of our Triune God, in the story of creation, in the story of God’s salvific acts, in the story of our faith. When we baptize with water, we don’t just baptize with water, we baptize with water and the Spirit. What we are saying is that story that we just told, the story of the Holy Spirit’s presence in all of history, that is our story too. That God, through water and the Spirit, has incorporated us into the story, grafted us in, adopted us into the family as children of God. Thanks be to God for that!

The second story I want to tell you today is the story of Pentecost. In the Christian tradition, Pentecost is 50 days after Easter, following Jesus’s resurrection and his ascension to heaven. So, today! Pentecost was a Jewish holiday celebrating the harvest and the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai. Here this Scripture from Acts 2:

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?’”

The Scripture continues that the disciples, empowered and overcome by the Holy Spirit, preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, they tell of how God became human among us in Jesus, how he died and yet rose again, and how eternal life through Jesus is promised to us as well. And each person there understood them, heard them speaking in their native tongue, the language that they were born with, the language of their home countries and mothers, the language of their minds and hearts… And so on that day, through the power of the Holy Spirit, that Spirit which is present in water and breath and wind, and on the day of Pentecost, fire, on that day, 3,000 people from every corner of their known world converted and were baptized in the name of The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Incorporated into the story of our faith, adopted as God’s children.

Many people call that first Christian Pentecost “the birthday of the Church.” Because on that day, God through the Spirit, through fire and water, gave birth to the Church, empowering new disciples of Christ, adopting so many into the family of God - and then those disciples, having been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, would then go out and continue to share the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and baptizing children of God.

And from that first Christian Pentecost on, which not only birthed the Church but immediately pushed that Church out, to reach new people, different people, reaching across borders and ethnicities and languages, reaching across any line of divisions…from that first Christian Pentecost on, the Holy Spirit continues to work within, through, and despite that Church. Within, through, and despite US, to birth new things, to ever reach outward, to expand to new people, to cross any line of division, to bring the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to ALL people. Thanks be to God for that!

And so now let me tell you a third story… But it’s a story that I can’t fully tell. Because it’s not just one story but all of your stories. The stories that belong to each and every one of you. The story of how that same Holy Spirit that was present at creation, that was there in the waters of your baptism, how that same Holy Spirit adopted you as a child of God. The story of how that same Holy Spirit that came down as tongues of flames at Pentecost and birthed the Church and crossed lines of divisions and empowered the disciples to spread the Gospel - the story of how that same Holy Spirit fills YOU and empowers you to spread the Gospel. The story of how YOU, yes, each and every one of you, is a beloved Child of God, claimed in baptism, and filled by the Holy Spirit to spread the love of God to all peoples.

Tell yourself your story now. Think about how the Spirit of Water and the Spirit of Fire is the Spirit that lives in you. How has God’s loving, empowering, and transforming Spirit been active in your life? Always, since the moment you came into being.

As Methodist we talk about how the Spirit is active in our lives as grace. That the Holy Spirit, God’s grace, is always being offered to us, always being given to us, even when we don’t realize it. That the Holy Spirit, God’s grace, transforms our lives and our hearts to be more like God’s. That God’s Grace, the Holy Spirit, redeems us by Love, for Love. And how God’s grace, the Holy Spirit, never gives up on us, that continues to work within and around us to sanctify us, to make us more like God, to make our Love more like God’s love, to always push and empower us to better love God and love neighbor.

As Christians, as baptized Christians, baptized by water and fire, baptized by the Holy Spirit in the name of Triune God, that is all of our stories. The details are different. The road to get there is different. And still, it is all our stories. Thanks be to God for that!

These stories are all connected. The story of our baptisms, the story of Pentecost, the story of our lives. I pray that in our being reminded of our stories today, we would remember that we are beloved children of God, remember that we are empowered to share the Gospel of Love with all people, and remember that the Holy Spirit is always active and present in our lives.

Thanks be to God for that! Amen.