1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
No one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.
4Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord;6and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.
12For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

Acts 2:1-21
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. 5Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6And at this sound, the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes 11 Cretans and Arabs — in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” 12All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” 14But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. 16No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 17 ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. 18 Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. 19 And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 20 The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. 21 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’”

It was on the Day of Pentecost that the church was born and born with wind and fire and many tongues.

Luke tells us in Acts that when the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. Suddenly, the Spirit rushed upon them, and people from every nation under heaven heard the mighty works of God in their own languages (Acts 2:1–4). Some were amazed; others scoffed and said, “They are filled with new wine.”(Acts 2:13) And Paul tells the church in Corinth that this same Spirit does something just as astonishing: “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.”(1 Corinthians 12:13) Wind and fire in Jerusalem; A new body actively being formed in Corinth. One Spirit, many tongues. One Spirit, many members. That is Pentecost.

This morning, I want to explore these passages through a story—not from the first century, but from our own history—a story about what happens when the Holy Spirit takes seriously what we only recite: that in Christ we are made one.

A Modern Upper Room: Azusa Street

The year was 1906. The city was Los Angeles. America was divided by race and class. Jim Crow laws had hardened segregation; even most churches were separated into black congregations and white congregations.

In a small house on North Bonnie Brae Street, an African American preacher named William J. Seymour gathered a handful of believers to pray and seek a deeper work of the Holy Spirit. Seymour was the son of formerly enslaved parents. He had one blind eye, little formal education, but a deep conviction that God was not finished with the church.

Historians report that in early April 1906, during one of these prayer meetings on North Bonnie Brae Street, several participants experienced what they described as a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit, including speaking in tongues. Crowds grew so large that the front porch of the house collapsed, and the meetings moved to a run‑down former African Methodist Episcopal church and livery stable at 312 Azusa Street.

What happened there over the next months and years has come to be known as the Azusa Street Revival. Services went on three times a day, seven days a week. Contemporaneous accounts and later church historians describe conversion, physical healings, and intense experiences of God’s presence, which participants explicitly connected to the events of Acts 2 as a kind of modern Pentecost.

But the most remarkable thing for our purposes today is not simply what they claimed to experience; it is who gathered in that old stable. 

Eyewitnesses and historians tell us that at Azusa Street, African Americans, white Americans, Latinos, Asian immigrants, and Europeans worshiped side by side. They knelt together at the same altar, laid hands on each other in prayer, shared meals, and testified in the same meetings. Both men and women preached, led worship, and laid hands on the sick—unusual for that era. Seymour himself welcomed women into leadership.

One white Holiness preacher who attended, Frank Bartleman, later wrote that at Azusa Street “the color line was washed away in the blood [of Christ].”

Just imagine that: in 1906, in a deeply segregated America, when the laws and customs alike were building walls between people, this little congregation at Azusa Street became a kind of living parable—a body where the Spirit refused to recognize worldly divisions.

Not everyone approved. The Los Angeles Times ran a front-page article on April 18, 1906, mocking the revival, under the headline: “Weird Babel of Tongues – New Sect of Fanatics Is Breaking Loose – Wild Scene Last Night on Azusa Street.” Even while ridiculing the meetings, the article noted “colored people and a sprinkling of white” gathered together late into the night—evidence of the interracial character of the services.

Do you hear it? There is an echo of Acts in that headline! On the first Pentecost, some said, “We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” Others said, “They are filled with new wine.” At Azusa Street, some said, “The Spirit is being poured out.” Others said, “This is a weird babel.” The world saw confusion. But in both Jerusalem and Los Angeles, God was quietly forming a body.

Many Tongues, One Gospel

Acts 2 begins with sound: the sound of a mighty rushing wind, the sound of many languages. Some in Jerusalem heard only noise, a babel of strange words. But those with ears to hear discovered that the noise was actually a proclamation: “We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”

God did not erase the languages of the nations. He did not tell everyone to speak the same way or to become the same kind of person. Instead, by the Spirit, he took many tongues and filled them with one message: the good news of Jesus Christ. So too at Azusa Street. The Los Angeles Times called it a “weird babel of tongues,” but the believers understood it as the same God who had acted in Acts 2—taking diverse voices and using them for one testimony. People of different races, classes, and nations encountered one Christ, crucified and risen.

In both stories, we see this truth: the Spirit does not flatten us into uniformity; He harmonizes us into unity. And that is exactly what Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 12.

Many Members, One Body

The church in Corinth was gifted—and divided. Some believers were proud of their spiritual gifts; some despised the gifts of others. Some believed their social status gave them higher standing in the community. In the middle of all this, Paul writes that the Holy Spirit enables true confession of Jesus as Lord. He does not pretend that differences do not exist. He names them: Jew and Greek, slave and free. He acknowledges many gifts, many members, many roles. Yet he insists that in Christ those differences are not erased but reordered. The same Spirit gives different gifts. The same Lord calls different people. The same God uses all of these for the common good.

The miracle of Pentecost is not that God makes us all the same; it is that God binds us, people who would never otherwise belong together, into one body.

So, What? Pastor Rob.

What, then, are our scriptures saying to us today through the Holy Spirit? 

I hear at least three invitations.

1. Let the Spirit name your unity before you name your differences.
At Pentecost, the Spirit did not remove national identities or native languages, but gave something deeper: a shared Savior, a shared message, a shared baptism. Paul tells us that whatever else may be true of us—our background, politics, temperament—if we confess “Jesus is Lord,” that confession itself is the work of the Spirit.

2. Receive your gifts for the common good.
The Spirit does not give gifts so that we can compare or compete, but “for the common good.” Your ability to listen, to organize, to teach, to pray, to give, to encourage—these are not private possessions; they are ways the one Lord is caring for his one body. At Azusa Street, men and women, rich and poor, Black and white, young and old, all discovered that the Spirit could use them—and that they needed one another—something we often need to confess on Sunday mornings. 

3. Let the Spirit challenge the lines we draw.
Our popular culture is expert at drawing lines: lines of race, class, age, education, ideology. The Spirit has a way of crossing those lines and introducing us to someone on the other side. When Frank Bartleman said that “the color line was washed away in the blood [of Christ],” he was not saying that differences vanished; he was saying that those differences no longer had the power to separate believers at the Lord’s table.


Where, in our life together, are there quiet lines we still observe—people we do not approach, stories we do not listen to, gifts we overlook because they come in a different package than we expect? The Spirit who gathered Parthians and Medes, Jews and proselytes, slaves and free, is still leading the church to repent of its divisions and to live more fully as one body.

Drinking of One Spirit

Paul ends our passage with a beautiful image: “we were all made to drink of one Spirit.” That is baptismal language, Eucharistic language, and Pentecost language. To be a Christian is not simply to have once said a prayer, some “magic” set of words that make all the bad go away; it is to be brought again and again to the fountain of God’s life, to drink deeply of Christ’s grace through the Holy Spirit. To come together at the foot of the cross, where all ground is level. (Paraphrased from Lowry)

At Pentecost, those who believed Peter’s message began to share a communal life—sharing possessions, rejoicing together, bearing one another’s burdens—which was itself a sign that the Spirit had been poured out.

In Los Angeles in 1906, people crowded into a shabby building because they were thirsty for more of God. The world heard a “weird babel of tongues.” But heaven heard many hearts, in many languages, crying out to the same Lord.

And here we are today: different stories, different struggles, different gifts. Yet the same Spirit has brought us here, to hear the mighty works of God again, to confess again that Jesus is Lord, and to drink again of the living water he offers.

Invitation to the Holy Spirit

So, on this Day of Pentecost, let us pray:

Come, Holy Spirit. Come, Spirit of the living God, who once filled a frightened room in Jerusalem, who gathered a divided church in Corinth into one body, who crossed the lines of race and class on Azusa Street. Come and do your work again.

Where we have resisted your gifts, soften our hearts. Where we have envied others' gifts, teach us gratitude. Where we have drawn lines you would erase, lead us to repentance. Where we have forgotten that we belong to one another, remind us that we were all baptized into one body and all made to drink of one Spirit.

Make our many tongues instruments of one gospel. Make our many members servants of one body. Make our small congregation, with all its ordinary weaknesses, into a living parable of your reconciling power.

And as we go out from this place, send us—not in our own strength, but in the power of the One who has already overcome the world.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.