This is a sermon that I preached on Sunday, 6/8/25, at Berkeley Friends Church. The scripture reading for this sermon was: Acts 2:1-21. You can listen to the audio, or keeping scrolling to read my manuscript. (The spoken sermon differs from the written text.)
Today is Pentecost Sunday, often called the birthday of the church. Not Berkeley Friends Church in particular, but the whole church – the global community of believers that we call “the body of Christ.”
The Body of Christ
Why do we call the Christian community the body of Christ? This is a metaphor that the apostle Paul uses many times in his letters to the early Christian communities scattered around the Greco-Roman world.
In Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, he writes that, “as in one body we have many members and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.” (Romans 12:4-5)
In his first letter to the church in Corinth, Paul writes some of his most beautiful and well-known prose, comparing the community of Jesus-followers to a body. In this letter, he uses the body as an extended metaphor for how all members of the community make up a single, organic whole – one body, with many individual members; each one with their own gifts to offer and roles to play.
In this same section, Paul reveals the reason that we as followers of Jesus have become one body. He writes that, “just as the body is one and has many members… so it is with Christ. For 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.” (1 Corinthians 12:12-13)
What makes us one body? It’s through immersion into God. Paul says that when we choose to follow Jesus, we are baptized – immersed – into his life, into his body. We were all made to drink of one Spirit.
What is this Spirit?
What is this spirit that Paul is talking about? It’s the Spirit that Jesus promised the Father would send to the disciples after his resurrection. It’s the Spirit who descended on the community of disciples, all one hundred and twenty of them, gathered in that upper room in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. It is the Spirit that came with a sound like a rushing wind, filling the entire house and appearing as divided tongues of fire.
This Spirit filled not just some of them, but all of them, and caused them to begin to speak in other languages, so that they could share the good news of the gospel with all of the diverse people who were present in Jerusalem at that time for the festival, each in their own native language.
This wasn’t a new spirit. The Spirit that came at Pentecost and filled up those hundred and twenty disciples in Jerusalem was the same Spirit that hovered over the waters at Creation. It’s the same Spirit that fell on Jesus at the time of his baptism by John in the river Jordan. It’s the same Spirit that dwelt on Moses and the prophets. It’s the very breath and life of God, now poured out on everyone who calls on the name of the Lord. All of them.
One Spirit, One Body
The day of Pentecost marks the beginning of a new era. Before, God spoke to some unique and chosen people: prophets, priests, and kings. But now, God is pouring out his Spirit on all people, from all tribes and languages and nations. Now, God is gathering a people, a community, a body through which God’s presence on earth can be seen, felt, and experienced.
The Spirit is the breath of God. What is breath? Breath is the underlying life force and consciousness of a being. What are we when, in the words of Paul, we are all baptized into one body and made to drink of one Spirit? We are the body of Christ. His mind is our mind, his will is our will. He is the vine, and we are the branches.
This is not the individual salvation that American Christianity has taught us. This is not about a merely personal relationship with Jesus. This is about becoming an organic part of Jesus, collectively with the whole body of disciples. This is about becoming a new creation, an expression of God’s presence on earth, not a temple made with hands, but one constructed out of living stones – you and me.
It’s bizarre when I get thinking about it. Isn’t it? All of us sharing one spirit and becoming one body? It sounds like something out of science fiction. It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, except instead of being harmed, we are being healed. We are being transformed.
The Spirit of God is filling us, making us not merely better individuals, but part of a greater unity, a new organism. God is creating something new – not just in you, and not just in me – but in all of us, together. We are something new. We are the body of Christ.
Greater Things
This is important for me to hear. My default mode is to think primarily in terms of my little personal self: My needs, my desires, my sins, my responsibilities. And of course, that’s real. I am an individual, and there are things I have to work through that no one else can do for me. Yet, in choosing to follow Jesus, I am learning that I am so much more than an individual. As I am filled by the Holy Spirit, I become an eye, an ear, a toe, a nose – I’m some kind of part. I am a member of the body of Christ, a small part of the collective entity that is being in-breathed by his Spirit and transformed into his image.
I think this is what it means, in the Gospel of John, chapter 14, when Jesus says that “the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” And right after this, he says: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth… You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you.” (John 14:12, 16-17)
At first glance, this passage from the Gospel of John is scandalous. How can Jesus say that we, his followers, will do “greater works” than he himself did? We’re just puny sinners, Jesus is God incarnate! But when we understand what God is up to here, when we realize that God is sending the Holy Spirit to abide with us and be in us, it starts to make sense how we could do even greater works than Jesus did during his earthly ministry.
Not me; I won’t do anything greater. I, as an individual, am unworthy to untie the thong of his sandal. But together, with all of you? With his own Spirit breathing in us, animating us, making us like him? As the body of Christ, millions strong? Yes, I can imagine greater things.
Christ Is All
I need to hear this. For someone like me, who is tempted to power through life under my own strength, it is important to realize that everything I do is meant to be part of a wider ecosystem, a wider community, the body of Christ. By myself, I can do nothing. But as part of his body, this body of disciples scattered throughout our city, country, and world, Jesus is fulfilling his ministry of love, justice, and reconciliation. In the words of George Fox, when the authorities asked him whether he thought he was Christ, “I am nothing, Christ is all.”
This is freeing for me because I realize that I don’t have to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. Yet at the same time, I am given a role to play, gifts to bring, work to do, as part of the life of this greater body – this body that is animated by the very life, power, and Spirit of God.
But maybe you’re not like me. Maybe you’re not tempted to grandiosity. Maybe you don’t play the hero. Maybe, instead, you tend towards false humility. Maybe you imagine yourself as small and helpless. If that’s you, then the message for you in this story is that God has created you and redeemed you as a unique and consequential member of Christ’s body.
You are being baptized into Christ’s body. You are being made to drink of the one Spirit. You are a member of the body of Christ, and your faithfulness and courage play a vital role in the work that Jesus is doing to heal and transform the world.
We are the body of Christ. Not just scattered individuals, but a living temple, joined and animated by the Spirit of God. So let us neither shrink back nor go it alone. Let’s offer ourselves, our gifts, our voices, our lives for the healing of the world. He is the vine. We are the branches. His Spirit is in us. And through his body, he is still at work.