George Hermanson

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All We Need Is Love

Year C
Season of Easter
Pentecost Sunday

Acts 2:1-21
Read the Bible passage: Acts 2:1-21, The Message;   or   Acts 2:1-21, The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

Faith-provoking, historical insights into the lesson by David Ewart, Acts 2:1-21, Holy Textures.  

Click here: George Hermanson's sermon, for an easy to print or email Adobe PDF version of this sermon.

The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson

In our Acts passage we get the marching orders for the church. We may puzzle over the meaning of the coming of the Spirit. They did then. The watchers ask if the disciples were drunk.

It is called ecstatic speech. We have all some experience of this when we are so excited we cannot get out our words or they tumble over one another. Then there are times the moment of awe is so great we say nothing. There is nothing magical about this experience, and the writer of Acts uses colourful and metaphorical language to tell of a moment when the world changed.

We all have a moment or event in which our world changed. We heard or saw things in new ways, heard or saw things that we had never had before. Our world was changed, we were changed.

Discernment

"Ascension living calls us to being 'clothed in power from on high.' This is the development of spiritual eyes and insight where we see God is in all things."

Year C
Season of Easter
Ascension Day

Acts 1:1-11
Read the Bible passage: Acts 1:1-11, The Message;   or   Acts 1:1-11, The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

Luke 24:44-53
Read the Bible passage: Luke 24:44-53, The Message;   or   Luke 24:44-53, The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

Click here: George Hermanson's sermon, for an easy to print or email Adobe PDF version of this sermon.

The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson

When I was in seminary we would issue a joke course outline, and one course was on the ascension - "It will meet in the elevator." Ascension Sunday is one that is often ignored in the UCC. Yet it is an important moment in the gospels. For Luke it is a literary device to get Jesus off stage so the church could get on with its work.

It is the time after Jesus’ resurrection where followers become leaders, and must speak with their voice, testify and witnessing to their world. Like a good spiritual leader, Jesus must depart physically so we can mature as spiritual leaders. The early church claimed the Spirit that informed Jesus, that comes from God, to witness and testify in their time and space. We, too, are called to live out of the Spirit of God, to find our own witness and testimony for our age.