Senior Sunday Sermon
By the Rev. Alanna Sullivan
Associate Minister and Director of Administration
The Memorial Church of Harvard University
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, May 26, 2026)
You may take your seats. That's one of my absolute favorite hymns. Before I start my sermon, I just wanted to begin by saying thank you. Thank you to all who have sent me messages and have spoken to me this past week. It is truly hard for me to express all that this church has meant to me over the past 13 years. So to the congregation, and the students, and the staff, and the ministers, my primary message to you, oh church, is just enormous gratitude. You have taught me again and again about the transformational power of love in a world that is so often short of it. You will always reside in a special place in my heart.
This place was my first call. It's where I got ordained. I got married, I became a parent and I am so, so grateful for our time together and I am so excited to see what God has in store for this beloved community in the heart of Harvard Yard. So with that, will you pray with me? May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts and minds be pleasing to your sight, oh God, our rock and redeemer. Amen.
So today we celebrate Pentecost, what some affectionately call the birthday of the church. It's when disciples gathered in Jerusalem 50 days after the resurrection of Jesus and they receive the Holy Spirit who commissions them to go out to witness, serve and love the world. Now I have a confession. The Holy Spirit is perhaps the most challenging and mysterious part of the Trinity for me. The story described in Acts is a fantastical one, full of details that challenge the imagination, tongues of fire, rushing wind, bold preaching, mass baptism. It's almost too much to take in, almost too much to believe. And yet from my own lived experience, I know that there have been times that I have been blown away. I have witnessed things that defy explanation. When I have received grace from places I least expected and people who have loved parts of me that I deemed unlovable.
Experience is no less miraculous than what is described that day. So the Holy Spirit remains what I can least define or describe of the Trinity, and yet it remains what I most intimately and palpably know as a person of faith. So I do wonder what this story of Pentecost, the story of Jesus' followers being overcome by the Holy Spirit, might reveal to us about what the presence of the Holy Spirit could and might look and feel like. As congregants who've been a part of this church for a while might know, I love a good list.
And so I have found six elements that I wanted to share with you today of what the Holy Spirit might look and feel like. Now this is by no means an exhaustive list. And I really look forward to hearing where else you recognize the Holy Spirit, both in this story and in your lives. So first, the Holy Spirit is not someone or something we can control. We cannot conjure the Holy Spirit out of thin air, which means that when it comes to matters of the spirit, our role is much more limited than we would like to admit.
It requires patience; it calls for expectant waiting. The psalmist often speaks of expecting waiting. I wear a ring on my right hand, and on this ring is inscribed "Be still." It comes from Psalm 46, which says, "Be still and know that I am God." Praying this line has become a refrain of my daily prayer practice, ever serving as a reminder to wait expectantly, attentively, open-heartedly for God. Second, the story of Pentecost reveals that not only is the spirit not someone or something we can control, but the spirit in fact delights in surprising us. The spirit likes to appear when we least expect it and in ways we would not always anticipate.
The Spirit is nimble, sometimes even mischievous in the way it reveals itself. Notice language used in Acts used to describe the people's response to the appearance of the spirit on Pentecost. Words like amazed, bewildered, perplexed, wonder. And sometimes we look back on unexpected outcomes only to realize that what happened is so much better than what we planned for. Theologian Willie James Jennings puts it this way, "The deepest reality of life in the spirit depicted in the book of Acts is that the disciples of Jesus rarely, if ever, go where they want to go or to whom they want to go." Indeed, the spirit always seems to be pressing the disciples to go to those whom they would in fact strongly prefer never to share space or a meal, and definitely not life together.
And yet it is precisely this prodding to be boundary crossing, border transgressing that marks the presence of the spirit of God. The spirit rarely sends us where we would expect. Third, the spirit is most often found in community. Our lesson from Acts, read so beautifully by Denver, opens with "When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place." It is the spirit who creates community out of their mere proximity. One of the other lectionary selections for today comes from Paul's second lesson to the church in Corinth. In it, Paul writes of the Spirit giving particular spiritual gifts to individuals. But he observes that those gifts are given in service of the community.
Among the many spiritual gifts he mentions, Paul writes that the Spirit blesses some with the gifts of tongues and blesses others with the interpretation of tongues. Those who tap into the great unknown needs translators and those translators need a mystery to interpret. These people need each other. And it is only when they come together that they become a vessel fully capable of catching the spirit. Four, the spirit is often found in community, but what is more, it's through a particular kind of community, one in which unity comes from diversity. The story of Pentecost puts it this way. People from every known country gathered in Jerusalem and could understand the followers of Jesus in their own native language.
The Holy Spirit was able to speak the message, the good news of God to each person in a way that was most intimate to them. And it's not just the diversity of language that is present here. As anyone who speaks more than one language or someone who has studied another language can tell you, languages hold so much more than the words that are said. Languages carry the full weight of their respective cultures, histories, psychologies, and spiritualities. To speak on language as opposed to another is to orient oneself differently in the world, to see differently, hear differently, process and punctuate reality differently.
And again, we see this affirmation of unity from diversity when Peter preaches that God will pour out God's flesh on all people and God's spirit on all flesh. Peter names a range of genders, a range of classes, a range of ages. The Holy Spirit brings about a kind of coherence and harmonization that does not depend on conforming to a narrow model of what we are supposed to be. Rather, our distinctiveness is the variety of how we are created. The variety of how we live is actually something that glorifies God. Fifth. The spirit is often expressed in joyful enthusiasm.
On that day of Pentecost, some were amazed at what they witnessed happening to the followers of Jesus. Others were more skeptical, supposing they must be filled with new wine. And Peter directly addresses their suspicion saying, "Indeed, these are not drunk as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning." They were not filled with spirits but with the Holy Spirit. The very word enthusiasm means to have the spirit of God in you. And so those who manifest the spirit come known by their irrational exuberance, their enthusiasm, and their contagious joy. My family has a phenomenon that we call the giggle loop. We're never quite sure when it's going to happen, but one of us starts laughing and then all of us just spill over with giggles, and we can't stop. And as soon as we think we're going to rise above it, another wave of laughter just crashes over us, and the giggle loop continues again and again.
It's not something we can control. It usually takes us by surprise. And it is perpetuated by the infectious laughter of those around us. And it is most certainly holy. Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement once wrote "How necessary it is to cultivate a spirit of joy." I believe we are called to the duty of delight. The delight of which Day writes does not come from ignoring the pain and devastation of the world. In fact, this joy and delight increase one's capacity to confront that pain and devastation and to continue on loving this hurting world in spite of it. Six. The Holy Spirit is also the Spirit of Christ. In Open Mind Open Heart, Thomas Keating writes, "Our awakening to the presence and action of the spirit is the unfolding of Christ's resurrection in us."
In the New Testament, these two terms, Holy Spirit and Spirit of Christ, are often used synonymously. The same spirit that is so evident in the life of Jesus continues to bring Jesus to us. So the spirit works in ways that are consistent with the life and teachings of Jesus. That's why, when people marvel at the presence of the spirit on Pentecost, Peter stands up and preaches a sermon about Jesus so that people might know what kind of spirit that is. It's not just any spirit; it's a Jesus-like spirit. It is the Spirit of Christ because the Holy Spirit is also the Spirit of Christ. It leads us in ways that are consistent with the life and teachings of Jesus.
I've always loved the graduation, is called commencement. It's not just a time to celebrate a completion of steady. Commencement also marks the beginning, ascending into the world. And Pentecost marks the beginning of the church and the sending of the disciples into the world. The spirit comes and commissions the disciples to go out to witness, serve, and love the world. So dear congregation, as we prepare to leave this place and to say goodbye, for goodbye means God be with you, this is my prayer. May we wait expectantly for the spirit with an openness to surprise. May the spirit bond us together in a community that is richer and deeper than mere togetherness. May the strength of our unity come from our diversity. And may we find ourselves overcome with contagious joy that causes others to wonder what is going on with us. And may the spirit that we experience and express truly be the Spirit of Christ alive and at work among us. May it be so.