So the church was born today.  Pentecost.  Penta for 50 like pentagram, the 5 pointed star.  Pentecost being 50 days after Passover, a planting festival celebrating the good harvest God is cooking up for the fall.  The Holy Spirit was in labor with the church for 50 days, and on Pentecost shoved us not too gently out of her comfortable womb where the disciples had been sustained with memories of Jesus, shoved us out to BE Jesus, the risen body of the Christ.  As you undoubtedly know from reading Paul's letters, which of course you do daily, we are the church, you and I.  Not any buildings, beloved as they are and obviously sacred spaces.  Whenever I enter a church building I greet the spirits who dwell therein.  Not ghosts, but the spirits born of the prayers and grief and kindnesses and joys that were offered here.  All those remain to nurture future generations.  They are, in a way, that upper room, the Holy Spirit’s womb.  But they are not the church.  We are the church.  When we are more than one.  God may use us as individuals to be the one person to speak a prophetic word and call others to account.  But that is not the church either.  We are the church when we are gathered together for worship, or for a pancake breakfast, or volunteering at a soup kitchen, among mourners at a funeral home, giving out comforters to troubled girls, at church conventions, in Bible study and prayer groups, marching behind our banner at a gay pride parade.

And yet it takes even more than a gathering to make us the church.  Some might be sure it takes Jesus' presence among us, for Jesus said when two or three are gathered together in my name, I will be in the midst of them.  That when we gather Jesus is walking among us, a presence whispering in our ears or holding our hands.  Not likely.  Or perhaps we imagine Jesus is among us as the stranger, the new person in the next seat.  More likely.  Or Jesus is the person with whom we have been angry for months, maybe even years, harboring and stroking our resentment.  More likely still.  But none of these is as simple and true as Paul's explanation of how Jesus is present when we gather.  Jesus is present in us because when we gather we become the risen Jesus.  We become the risen body of Christ, the hands, eyes, mouths, brains, beauty and brawn of Jesus.

And yet, even being the body of Jesus is not quite being the church.  We are the church when the Holy Spirit gives us life.  Without the Holy Spirit, we are not much more than a social club with a rich and long history.  Like the Masons we have odd and ancient rituals, have great fellowship and do good works.  Like the Unitarian Universalists, we sign up for worthy causes and are concerned about ethics and like inspiring lectures that challenge us.  But neither the Masons nor the Unitarians nor the American Legion nor the Congress of the United States is the church even though Jesus' name may be mentioned in all those gatherings.  Or we could meet every day of the week and go through all the motions of worship to absolute perfection and live our lives according to the laws of our faith and be the body of Jesus indeed, but the dead body of Jesus.  And not much use to God or God's suffering world.

The Holy Spirit doesn't do death.  The Holy Spirit gives life.  Wild, unpredictable, painful, joyous life.  At Pentecost it created the church by roughing up 12 farmers and fishermen with no education and making them articulate in every known language.  John had called the Holy Spirit the comforter.  Some comfort, to run around like crazy people, babbling in languages they themselves could not understand.  Ah, but God's idea of comfort is quite likely different from ours.  Perhaps God's idea of comfort is riotous, teeming life.  That was the message the living church was babbling in all those languages, the message of life, the message that God had killed death.  So the church was out there in the streets that were full of thousands of pilgrims come to celebrate Pentecost and thousands more tourists from everywhere watching the pilgrims and pickpockets watching the pilgrims and tourists and soldiers watching the pickpockets.  And the church was button-holing all of the above to blather on about life.  And they could be understood because it was the Holy Spirit whistling through their vocal cords.  And the people being button-holed and hearing every language under the sun including their own kept looking at each other and going, Hey, let’s get baptized today?  Luke says about 3000 got baptized right there but the majority figured the church had been drinking too much new wine.  All that talk about life instead of terror or a depressed economy or how many got killed in Afghanistan today, or that disastrous oil spill, or the screaming me-me blame game that is most of politics lately.  Had to be drunk, those Christians, new wine gone to their heads, Fishermen and farmers, poor dears.

Think about it.  We have more than 12 people in our parish.  And the Episcopal Church has always had a reputation for loving that wine, new, old, whatever.  In fact we'd probably rather people think we were acting drunk or high than acting pentecostal.  But guess what?  This is Pentecost!  What do you think?  You think 3000 is doable?  I know, we prefer that the world come to us and can't really understand why it's not flocking to us, tasteful and so nice and pleasantly nutty, and, let's be honest, near perfect as we are, have been and always will be.  Dead, maybe too, but tastefully so.  We feel that it is distasteful and even a little, dare I say, rude, what happened back there on Pentecost.  All that charging into the street and bubbling over about life.  It is so not us.  But it was so not the disciples either.  They longed for their farms and their fishing nets but Jesus had brought them to this upper room and kind of abandoned them there and they had just started organizing themselves when the Holy Spirit burst into the room and blew them all out into the street to button-hole and babble.

And here we are with our lovely tasteful buildings, somewhat organized and comfortable.  So what do you think?  Is 3000 doable?  I know, I know, where would we put them all.  But with God nothing is impossible.  Nothing.  Is financial sustainability doable?  Is an afterschool program doable?  If 12 illiterate farmers and fishermen could change the world, think what 30 well educated, ever tasteful Episcopalians could do.