This Sunday, Covenant will observe two events, Pride and Pentecost Sunday. After celebrating Pentecost Sunday in worship, we’ll join thousands from our community at Central Alabama’s 2019 Pridefest. Covenant’s singing group “Glory” will represent Covenant singing “This is Me.”
Both, Pride and Pentecost are stories of publicly coming out. Over the years, I’ve known many LGBTQ folks for whom their first public coming out experience was participating in a Pride Parade or some other Pride event. After years of living in fear and shame, it seems that being around others who were proud to celebrate who they were had a positive effect on them. It empowered them to take the important step of publicly coming out for the first time in their lives to celebrate who God created them to be. For nearly everyone, taking that step at a Pride event, made for an exciting and memorable coming out moment.
Something like that happened to the followers of Jesus at that first Pentecost after the Resurrection. One hundred and twenty of them gathered to worship behind closed doors in an upper room. On this day, the Christian Church was born, the Holy Spirit showed up and showed out. The Holy Spirit empowered these 120 that inspired them to also have a public coming out moment. For example, Peter who had been afraid 52 days before to even be associated with Jesus, now came out and preached boldly a message of hope and love in Christ Jesus. And that day, 3000 folks said yes to walking in relationship with God. It was an exciting and memorable public coming out moment of being led by the Holy Spirit that’s recorded in scripture. It’s the kind of coming out moment God offers each of us every day we wake up.
Join us this Pentecost and Pride Sunday for worship before going to Pridefest. My sermon will be “Coming Out to A Life Filled with The Holy Spirit” based on Romans 8:14-17 and John 14:9a, 15-17, 25-27,” referencing “Acts 2:1-21.”
About Author
