Identity in Community
Pentecost Sunday 2026
This sermon was preached at Camp Blue Diamond for the Sunday of the Church of the Brethren’s 2026 Young Adult Conference. The conference theme was “Identity in Community,” based on Romans 12:4-5. The scriptures for the service were Exodus 31:1-11 and Acts 2:1-13.
I never felt more Brethren than during new student orientation at my Episcopalian seminary. One of our orientation activities asked us to reflect on our ethnicity, and I wrote that mine was Anabaptist. Every so often, one of my colleagues in the Episcopal Church tries to correct me when I describe myself as ethnically Brethren.
“That’s a religious denomination, not an ethnic group!”
And that is an important reminder to those of us who, like me, are deeply entrenched in the Brethren name game. Our ultimate identity is as disciples continuing the work of Jesus, not having the right German name or being related to the right person.
And, at the same time, however we may feel about it the Brethren name game exists for a reason.
I may have gone to an Episcopalian seminary where we prayed Morning and Evening prayer from the Book of Common Prayer and celebrated the Eucharist, or Communion, together every day in order to immerse myself in the Anglican tradition, but the Brethren way of following Jesus is in my bones.
And, it wasn’t that long after I started at my congregations that one of my parishioners asked Fr. Nolan if he was related to the Rev. Paul McBride. It turns out her husband had been raised COB, and my great-uncle was his pastor.
Far from escaping the Brethren name game in the Episcopal Church, I just added a new expansion deck.
But to go back to seminary orientation, I was surprised to realize just how out of place I suddenly felt in the tradition I’d chosen to make my home. Hadn’t I just spent two years studying at Bethany, hanging out with my Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Roman Catholic friends, talking about liturgy and sacraments?
Hadn’t I already worked through the pain of feeling forced out of the denomination that raised me to pursue the call to ordained ministry I had discerned?
Why did I suddenly feel like I should be wearing plain clothes to solemn high Mass?
Working with a spiritual director, I would realize that I had a lot more feelings about how everything went down that I still needed to process.
But even as I let go of who I thought I was going to be and embraced who I was becoming, I’ve still kept connected to the Brethren. It’s still part of who I am and how I understand what it means to follow Jesus.
Many of my fellow converts to the Episcopal Church from other Christian denominations have a rocky at best relationship with the tradition they came from. Even as I fell in love with Anglicanism’s liturgical and sacramental tradition and have continued to grieve over the decisions specific COB institutions have made, I have never regretted growing up Brethren.
It is not good for a human to be alone. Christianity is a team sport, and even if you move to a different squad, what you learned with your old one still shapes the kind of athlete you are.
We heard two passages of scripture this morning. The first, from Exodus, comes at the end of a long passage where God tells Moses how to build the tabernacle, which will be the place of worship for the Hebrew people during their long journey to the promised land.
In it, God names and affirms the gifts they have given to two members of the community so that they can lead the construction and beatification of this sacred space.
Of course, they weren’t the only ones to contribute to building the Tabernacle. It was a community project that everyone had the chance to be part of.
Many of our church buildings have similar stories. Brethren have historically favored simple buildings, questioning using our resources to decorate a worship space instead of caring for God as God reveals Godself in others. The Episcopal parishes I currently serve chose a different path, which emphasizes the material, embodied nature of our worship. When asked why they spent time creating beautiful worship spaces the Anglo-Catholic slum priests of the nineteenth century retorted that the poor deserve beauty too.
Either way, church buildings, especially old ones, are expensive, and many congregations have stories about who provided this communion set or who built that altar.
And what would church life look like without people giving their time and energy to cook food for the potluck or Love Feast?
Would Bezalel and Oholiab have been able to build the tabernacle by themselves?
Could any one of us build our church building by ourselves?
No!
But with everyone’s gifts coming together, we are able to create something greater than the sum of its parts.
Our second reading tells how the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles like tongues of fire and empowered them to preach the Gospel in different languages.
Today is Pentecost, the day when Christians around the world commemorate this event. It’s the reason I’m wearing this stole today. In the Episcopal Church it is a Principal Feast and one of the five Sundays set aside as particularly appropriate for baptism.
If Exodus reminds us that we need each other to continue the work of Jesus on Earth, Acts reminds us that we aren’t all called to continue that work the same way. Just as the apostles proclaimed the Gospel in different languages, we are called and empowered to share Jesus’s love in different ways.
For some, that looks like traditional hymns and a structured order of worship. For others, it looks like a praise team and an intentional openness to allowing the Spirit to switch things up, even in the midst of a service.
For some, it looks like praying familiar words handed down through the generations together. For others, it looks like extemporaneous preaching and prayer, trusting God to give them the right words at the right time.
For some, it looks like sharing the ordinance of Communion seated together around the Love Feast table, after washing feet and eating together. For others, it looks like celebrating the sacrament of the Eucharist gathered together around the altar, and receiving the body and blood of Christ kneeling at an altar rail.
We have spent the past weekend exploring what it means to find our identity in community. We have built a community here. Now, we prepare to go out from this place and rejoin our communities at home.
Each of our communities are different.
We have different ways of worshiping, of speaking about God, and of understanding how we are called to live in, but not of, the world.
But we are all united in Christ.
There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. One body with many members.
In our baptisms, we promised to follow Jesus as our Lord and to be faithful members of the Church. God is sending the Holy Spirit to show us what that means for us in our community.
Are we listening?