PENTECOST SUNDAY, 2021/05/23 THEME: LOVING OUR NEIGHBORS AND OURSELVES READING: ACTS 2: 1-21, 42-47. SERMON BY: Rev. Dr. Dorcas Kanana Muketha, Beaverlodge/Wembley/ hythe pastoral charge. Denomination: Methodist Church in Kenya. Let us pray May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing before you our Lord and Savior. Amen. I am happy for the opportunity and grace to share with you the word of God. Amen. You will agree with me that this is a very significant Sunday worship in our Christian life. This is the day that the Holy Spirit promised by Jesus rested upon his disciples in Jerusalem resulting to the conversion of the 3000. As we reflect through our theme, “loving our neighbors and ourselves”, it fronts a number of questions like who is our/my neighbor (the question that was posed by a lawyer to Jesus in Luke 10: 29)? What does loving our neighbor mean? And how can we relate it with loving ourselves? How is loving our neighbors and ourselves connected with the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost? My simple understanding of a neighbor can be a person that we have never met but is in need or a family neighboring to our homestead, people that we sit with every Sunday worship service or those that we work with. The definition may vary widely. Now, it is on the 50th day after Passover, and the disciples are gathered together in one accord in Jerusalem with a lot of anxiety and emptiness I suppose because Jesus had already ascended. This is where operative act of love is in control as they gathered together in one place. It was very interesting to witness them speak in different languages attracting the rest of the world. Do we think about how we speak as Christians? The language we speak matters because their speaking in tongues attracted the attention of the people from outside. Do we attract those that we do not really know with how we speak? Or we push them away? The power of the Holy Spirit enabled the disciples to speak in languages they had not previously learned. Friends, when the Holy Spirit visits us this day, definitely we will be able to reach out to the foreigners without language barrier as it did happen on the day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit is not discriminative and will never mock. Peter was articulate when addressing the crowd clarifying to them that what happened was not caused by drunkenness( It is only nine in the morning) but what was spoken by prophet Joel that: “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. (Note: “All people.”) Your Sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.” (Act 2: 17-18). The Holy Spirit fills all the people regardless of whom they are in terms of gender, race, status (men and women servants), color as well as faith. The act of love is manifested as a result of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit to the disciples. Loving our neighbors and ourselves is impacted by the presence of the Holy Spirit in us. The believers devoted themselves to the apostolic teaching, to the koinonia (fellowship/familyship), to prayer and breaking of the bread. In Act 2: 44-46 we notice that all the believers were meeting together and had everything in common, selling their possessions and sharing goods with the needy people amongst them. Gathering together every day and sharing meals became a tradition in the life of the believers. The sharing was made genuinely and joyfully. How genuine are we when sharing with our neighbors? Do we feel kind of being forced? Do we share genuinely and joyfully without being judgmental? What is happening here is really not a new thing to me as an African Christian probably to you too. From the African contexts, the act of Sharing in love is explicitly regarded as kindness, charity and love of one’s neighbor. The love of one’s neighbor is drawn from an African theologian Mbiti attestation that “I am because you are and since you are therefore I am.” We are meant for the neighborhood as the neighborhood is meant for us. One has to learn how to treat both alien and the familiar people that you come across neighborhood. Am constantly challenged by the way the Global North has been able to express their love through sharing what they have to an extent of selling their assets to help brothers and sisters in the Global South in need. They give donations to the people they have never met and without intentions to meet them. Most of them may not disclose their identity in this act of love to the neighbor. What a special love?. We may not know how to love our neighbors if we do not know how to love ourselves. Loving ourselves is by first loving God and allowing the Holy Spirit in our lives, giving ourselves quality time for reflection and meditation, by accepting who we are and working on the fears of unknown especially this time in history of the world. Loving ourselves should not be self-centered, but we become at ease from within, making it become a driving force to help us reach our neighbors experiencing spiritual, physical, economical (especially those lost their jobs), mental( to those that have lost their loved ones), sociological challenges especially during covid-19 pandemic. The power of the Holy Spirit is right here helping us to overcome the fear of uncertainties around us and enabling us become witnesses to all people starting from within ourselves, to our neighbors, our nations and to the ends of the world. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.