EMPOWERED

the Rev. Dr. DeWayne L. Davis

June 8, 2025

Text: Acts 2:1-21

Today is the Sunday we observe Pentecost, the fiftieth and final day of Eastertide. Theologically and communally, we now enter the post-resurrection reality of a world transformed by the presence of Jesus, not in the flesh, but in the Spirit of God.

For a long time after the active years of the Black freedom struggle, from 1954 to 1968, when direct action and nonviolent resistance broke the stubborn hold of segregation and domination, not just in the south but throughout the nation, people wondered how did they do it. How did they breakthrough hundreds of years of the machinery of domination that kept Black Americans on the margins for so long? Perhaps, the mass meetings that attended the many marches, rallies, and acts of nonviolent disobedience hold the key to some insight.

The disciples were still basking in the joy and awe of resurrection and wandering when Jesus would restore the kingdom to Israel when Jesus told them, “You shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). And after all that has transpired, after witnessing Jesus being taken from them up into heaven, Luke reports that about 120 of those followers of Jesus settled in an upstairs room to regroup, likely wondering and discerning how to move forward with the ministry Jesus ordained them to offer. They are in that liminal space of praying and waiting. Luke doesn’t tell us precisely what those disciples were feeling. Still, I suspect that many of us have experienced times when the way forward is not clear, those times when, even when our faith remains secure, we know we must discern what our next steps will be because something is calling us to move. It is in this moment, when the gathered community is in a revelatory state of mind, open to the movement of God amid uncertainty and anxiety, that something powerful happens.

When the day of Pentecost had come, something indeed happened. On that day, Jews from all over the known world had gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish harvest festival known as the Feast of Weeks. Too often, we skip too quickly over Luke telling us about the Jews from all over coming into Jerusalem. We move too quickly over the listing of the regions represented among the pilgrims arriving that day. We should sit with this image because it is a tip-off that a multitude of diverse people from various linguistic, regional, genealogical, and ethnic backgrounds, including Gentile converts to Judaism, will experience that unexpected thing that God will do on the day of Pentecost. The spirit of God will be gracious and indiscriminate in its touch and movement.

The images of what happened that day bespeak of the movement of God as from of old… a sudden loud sound, a violent wind, divided tongues as of fire. God acts. The Spirit of God fills the room and fills them. Whatever fear, whatever hesitation, whatever disconnect the followers and disciples felt was washed away in the unexpected, untamed, uncontrollable, indiscriminate grace that filled the room and filled them. They ran out of that room and began to proclaim, testify, and prophesy all about God’s deeds of power in the languages of all the pilgrims from every nation. The Spirit of God disrupts the routine of the festival pilgrimage to fulfill the promise of power. All barriers to speaking and hearing the good news of Jesus fall away, and the word goes forth. In God’s surprising intervention, there is no silencing the voices or languages of anyone open to speaking and hearing the good news.

The reaction of the crowd that saw all of this is telling. What does this mean? Those who could not or would not discern the movement of God thought that the saints were drunk. But the curious and the seeking soon found out what happens when the empowering presence of God falls on flesh. For Peter, the question—”what does this mean?”—was not a rhetorical question, and the slander that they were drunk could not go answered. And Peter, newly empowered by the very presence of the Holy Spirit, steps forward to bear witness, to proclaim, to testify about the power of the Holy Spirit indiscriminately empowering all God’s children, men; women; children; even the enslaved to find their voice and accept their call so spread the gospel.

The Holy Spirit transformed the frightened followers of a crucified leader into an empowered community determined to bear witness to the work of God in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit compelled a people considered powerless and inconsequential to the empire to break out of their closed room and reach out to a diverse community hungry for good news. Those same people who were sitting in that room, praying until something happened, now display spirited lives, empowered and emboldened to communicate and connect to a diverse multitude of people.

And this gift of empowerment is instructive, especially for us today. In response to the illiberal and autocratic turn of our democracy, with the federal government’s daily choices to abandon programs that provide food, safety, medical care, and economic opportunities, I have heard many people express feelings of powerlessness. But the empowering presence of God’s spirit sparked a holy boldness in those early followers who would become the church. No matter how bleak things looked. No matter how acute and wounding the absence of God seemed. No matter how powerless they felt. God was not through with them yet. God was pouring out God’s spirit on all flesh so they would have everything they needed to move out from behind a closed door and speak a word. And there was no turning back. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, these people will no longer be silent. They will no longer be afraid. They will no longer hide out. And so it begins. The Spirit of God’s dramatic disruption of the status quo unleashes a radically new way of being and living. In the unfolding of God’s imagination, “a people unknown and undesired”[1], now filled with God’s power and presence, are driven out into a hostile world to tell the story of the crucified Jesus, who made God known in his life, death, and resurrection.

And now that ministry falls to us. Not just on the day of Pentecost, but every time we gather in worship and reaffirm our commitment to love and serve God and our neighbor, within, among, and beyond, every time we stand confidently in our identity as a church, we testify that God’s Spirit is moving. What does this mean? That is always the question posed to us when we show up fully as the church. What does this mean? It means the Holy Spirit empowers us. The Holy Spirit is that force, that calling, that draws us toward the humanity of others, that facilitates communication and connection beyond the comfort and familiarity of our own tribe. And every time we speak up for justice, every time we welcome the stranger, every time we speak truth to power, that is the sign that the Holy Spirit is empowering us to manifest God’s presence amid the division and estrangement and the cruel aims of the machinery of domination.

It’s worth noting that the church, as an institution, was not planned or envisioned by the followers of Jesus. Those faithful people in that room on the day of Pentecost did not expect that the church would be how Jesus would make himself known when he was no longer with them. The forces that persecuted the faithful and crucified Jesus had no idea that God’s spirit was ushering in a spiritual and religious breakthrough under their watch. It is also worth noting that this breakthrough in communication and connection did not originate with powerful preaching. Peter’s sermon followed the Spirit’s empowering, galvanizing, and propulsive creation of beloved community. When the Holy Spirit empowers, there is no telling what can be unleashed and accomplished. And it all starts with the power to communicate and connect for the sake of building a beloved community.

I hope we see what the Spirit of God makes possible. Given the cruel harassment and persecution of immigrants and LGBTQ people by a federal government, the intentional stoking of racial and class grievance and division, and the demeaning indifference to those who live on the margins, I hope that Pentecost experience reminds us that the spirit of God within us is God’s affirmative act of joining with us in our lives, creating a way for us to speak to each other, love one another, and move confidently into the world with God’s prophetic utterance in our mouths. The Holy Spirit reminds us that we have the power to communicate and connect across differences of race, sex, sexuality, ethnicity, and any other distinction, to be a beloved community and to be the church. The Holy Spirit isn’t moving because of what we are doing or our desire to have it. The Holy Spirit is a gift of God sent to us, giving us the power to do what Jesus did, to serve as Jesus served, and to bear witness to the world of what God is doing. And the power of the Holy Spirit will be more acutely felt and transformative when we let God lead, when we yield for a moment in pursuing our agenda for power, control, and safety, when we allow a revelatory state of mind to prime us to be ready for the new thing God is doing.

Let us be the church empowered to communicate and connect beyond our walls, across all that separates, divides, and pulls us apart. Let the world hear us speaking about God’s radical hospitality, unconditional love, and unending grace, even as we become the hearers to the testimonies of God’s beloved of every race, sex, sexuality, ethnicity, and any other distinction. May we be the empowered, embodied church that serves as the evidence of the promised coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. May it be so.

[1] Willie James Jennings, Acts, 32.