Sermon — June 8, 2025
The Rev. Greg Johnston
I spent the summer before my third year of seminary getting ready to lead Vacation Bible School at my second internship parish: a week-long day camp for thirty kids from the neighborhood, led by yours truly with the help of four volunteers from the church. It was five days full of stories, arts and crafts activities, and songs, and the preparation had me stressed.
I opened the plastic bucket that contained the curriculum we’d bought, and tried to wrap my head around the list of the supplies. Each day, there were three or four things to do with instructions like “for this activity, you’ll just need a pair of scissors, colored yarn, cotton balls, six soda-bottle caps, the horn of a unicorn, and a heart-shaped balloon.” Just dividing everything up into the relevant categories felt like a gargantuan task: here are the things every Sunday School room has, here are the things we could easily buy, here are the things that nobody sells: what can we substitute?
I remember standing in a Michael’s parking lot on the hottest day of July, the sun beating down on me as I stood frozen in place, completely overwhelmed by all these little details. And let me tell you, it was a brutally hot summer, as my wife Alice could attest—because, while I was stressing out about Vacation Bible School, she was six months’ pregnant with our first (and only) child.
Now, over the years since, I’ve become a wise and self-aware person—and humble—and I know now what I didn’t quite know yet then: I was feeling a lot of a stress, but it wasn’t really about Vacation Bible School. There was a bigger change going on for me that summer, and it was one for which, no matter how carefully you shop for strollers and organize a nursery, it’s not really possible to prepare.
It’s why I’ve always found the titles of the What to Expect When You’re Expecting series to be so funny. Sometimes it feels like the only useful advice I’ve ever gotten in life, let alone as a parent, is to expect the unexpected.
It certainly would have been good advice for the disciples, as they gathered on Pentecost Day. Because they were expecting something, too. It’s not for nothing that Pentecost is sometimes called “the birthday of the Church.” It marks the arrival in the world of a person who’s going to change the disciples’ lives in ways they never could have imagined, and lead them to grow in ways they desperately need; not a child, in this case, but the Holy Spirit of God.
And make no mistake, they are expecting this Spirit to come. Jesus had told them, when he was still with them before his death, that they should be expecting someone else: that he would be going away, but that “the Advocate, the Holy Spirit,” would come. (John 14:26) And he had told them, just before he ascended into heaven, that they should wait, because the “Holy Spirit” would come upon them, and they would “receive power,” and they would be his witnesses “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8) He said he couldn’t tell them exactly when these things would take place. (Acts 1:7) But he gave them the sense of what it would mean: this Holy Spirit would be “another Advocate,” he says, just like him; a “Spirit of truth,” who would “teach [them] everything, and remind [them] of all that [he had] said to [them].” (John 14:16-17, 26)
This description of the Holy Spirit almost sounds like a kind of Jesus 2.0: a ghostly form of the same teacher they knew, there to remind them of what he’d taught, and to lead them toward the truth.
I don’t think they were quite expecting this: “a sound like the rush of a violent wind,” and “divided tongues, as of fire,” resting on their heads, and the sudden eruption of speech in other tongues. (Acts 2:2-4) They’re amazed, and they’re perplexed, and the skeptics think they’re drunk. (Acts 2:12-13)
It’s not what they’re expecting at all. But the Holy Spirit acts in unexpected ways. It doesn’t only remind them of what Jesus had said, it leads them to live those teachings out: the very first thing they do after Peter’s sermon ends is to they sell everything they have and share the money with all who are in need. (Acts 2:45) And the Holy Spirit doesn’t only lead them to the truth, in an inward, spiritual way. It sends them out into the world, to share the good news of what God has done for them.
What happened on Pentecost wasn’t what they had come to expect. But that’s only because they hadn’t yet learned to expect the unexpected.
Today we’re celebrating several different things: the baptism of Charlotte DaSilva Connors after six months in this world (almost seven!); a farewell to our seminarian Michael Fenn after two years at this church; a ribbon-cutting for the work to restore our Garden, carrying on the legacy of generations.
Each of these moments is just one phase of a longer journey. A journey for Ella and Ryan into parenthood, in all its beauty and messiness. A journey for Charlotte into a life of learning, as the Holy Spirit helps her grow into the vows that her parents and godparents will make on her behalf. A journey into ministry for Michael, as he continues to grow in his knowledge of God and of himself, and as he shares the amazing gifts he’s offered to all of us over the last two years with so many more people over the rest of his life. A journey for our church toward our own vision of the future, even as we celebrate the dreams of the generations who came before us.
These journeys all follow different paths. And yet, in the most important ways, they are the same: because if we want to be ready to receive the Spirit of truth, we need to expect the unexpected.
Vacation Bible School went fine, by the way. It turns out you don’t need to prepare for all the details on your own, and the four grandparents who’d signed up to volunteer were perfectly capable of adapting the activities based on what we had. The week was full of crises, but none of them were the ones I’d planned or prepared for. And the week was also full of joy that I’d been too distracted to anticipate. (And also full of coffee. It turns out coffee helps when you have small kids around.)
And I suspect that’s true for all our paths through life: there are crises that we never could’ve prepared for, and joys that we never could’ve imagined. And is a God who loves us, who is there to comfort and inspire us, and to send the Holy Spirit to remind us of this again and again. “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus says, “and do not let them be afraid,” and it’s not bad advice. Not because nothing bad will ever happen in this life. But because the greatest joys and sorrows of life are rarely the ones we’re worrying about: they’re the ones that show up as unexpected as a sudden wind, or a tongue of fire.