[Sermon] The Day Jesus Shakes Your Life

Pastor Hector Garfias-Toledo

May 24, 2026 + The Day of Pentecost

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9HuRvHGoTo

It starts with a question for the children: when you hear the word "church," what do you think of? And it ends with a baptism. In between, Pastor Hector traces the arc of Pentecost from the tongues of fire in Acts 2 to Jesus's living water invitation in John 7:37-39, and invites the whole congregation into a radical reimagining of what the church is for. The Spirit, he suggests, is like carbonation: invisible, present, and released when something — or Someone — shakes us. We are not here merely to attend a service; we are here to recommit to the Spirit's disruptive, life-giving work in the world. On this Pentecost, that recommitment took flesh in the baptism of Yvette, and in the sending of all God's people into the world.

Sermon Transcript

From YouTube's automatic captions, lightly edited by AI for readability.

I would like to invite now our young worshippers to come and join me. And this time we are going to sit here on the floor on this side and on this side of the baptismal font. If there are young worshippers, come to join me. You can sit here on the floor here, just down here, down here, so that I can be closer to you — closer to the baptismal font — because today there is a special day. We are going to have something special today.

How are you today? Good morning. It's good to see you today. What do you feel? How do you feel today? What do you see in the church today?

Red.

Red — where?

Everywhere. Red everywhere.

Oh, it sounds good. Yeah, it's good. Yes. Why? Do you know?

Pentecost.

Pentecost. Can you explain that to us today?

It's hard, Toric. Right. Don't worry. You know, all the leaders of the church have been trying to explain this for thousands of years and they cannot do it. So don't worry. Don't feel bad. We're trying to figure it out together.

So let me ask you a question today. When you hear the word "school," what do you think about?

Teachers.

Teachers. What did you say, Emma? I cannot hear you.

Learning stuff.

Learning stuff. What else?

Recess.

Recess. I always think about that too.

Projects.

Projects. Okay. Now, when you hear the word "home" — when you hear the word "home," what do you think about? What is home?

Oh, this silence tells me something.

You go there when you finish school.

What else? What else do you think when you hear "home"? What comes to your mind? Parents, your bedroom, your toys?

Okay. When you hear the word "zoo," what do you think about?

Animals.

That's right. When you hear the word "park," what do you think?

That's right — all these places where you can play. Right.

Now, when you hear the word "church," what do you think?

God, pastors.

Jesus.

Jesus. What else?

Congregation.

Congregation. Right.

There are many, many things that come to our minds when we think about the word "church." But today, Toric was telling us that today everything is red because we are celebrating Pentecost. And yeah, it's something difficult to explain — what Pentecost is about — because when we talk about Pentecost, we talk about the Holy Spirit. Can you explain that to me?

People have been trying to explain that too. Can we see the Holy Spirit? Are you sure?

Really?

Well, let me start by saying — you know, the word "Pentecost" actually means something that you know. Pentecost is a word in the Greek language that means 50. 50 days after Easter. So we celebrate Pentecost 50 days after we celebrate Easter. What do you celebrate at Easter? What happened on Easter?

When Jesus died and was brought back to life again.

Right. So 50 days has happened since we celebrate Easter. And today we remember that Jesus had promised his followers that he was going to send the Holy Spirit. And they have been waiting and waiting — I'm getting thirsty — and waiting and waiting and waiting for the Holy Spirit.

Are you okay, Afra?

I'm getting thirsty. I'm going to open this just in a moment.

So they have been waiting, and finally, when they came together in Jerusalem — remember at the beginning of the service that we had that banner of fire that was shaking like this in the air? Remember? So the disciples were saying, "We need to come to Jerusalem to worship," and there was this wind, and then there were tongues of fire on the heads of people, and their hair was not burned. That's interesting, right? Can we explain that? No. Because it's like a miracle — things that we do not understand.

I'm really getting thirsty now.

So then the Spirit came, and then the question was: where is the Spirit? How does the Spirit look? Do you have the Spirit in you?

Yes.

Can you show it to me?

No.

Why?

Because it's not seeable.

It's not seeable. Oh.

Well, you know — the Spirit is a gift that God gives us to help us. And as Yema said, we cannot see it normally, because we cannot touch it. Some people say "her," some people say "him" — the Spirit — and we cannot touch it, but we can feel it. How do we feel it? We feel it in the way that we live our lives.

The Spirit is something that you have. And I'm thinking it's almost like this water here. What is in this water? Remember I showed you? Strawberries. And can you see the strawberries here?

It's on the plastic thing around it.

Well, it says here that it has. But do you believe that? What else do you think this water has?

Lemon, water.

What if I tell you it has gas?

Do you believe me? What do I need to do to help you believe that there is gas here?

Are you sure, Freya?

Okay. Okay. I turn it this way. Okay.

That's maybe what was happening on Pentecost. Jesus was telling the church, the disciples, the followers, that they had the Holy Spirit — that they may not be able to see it, but that Jesus was going to, with his word and his teachings, remind them that the Spirit is there. It's like Jesus was shaking all the disciples and saying, "Look, this is what's going to happen. Everything is going to go all around the world — the good news that the Spirit, that God, that the love of God and Jesus, is with us always."

And that is why we use red — because red means joy, and red also means fire. Fire brings light, right? And can help us see, and give us warmth, help us cook, help us to do stuff — to clean, to purify.

So when you see a soda like this, I want to invite you to think of Pentecost as the day that Jesus shook your life like this, so that the Spirit in you can come and go.

Are you afraid, Gilbert, that I'm going to open this soda? This is getting too close to you, right?

But I hope that this is the joy that we have today. So now let's try to explain to the adults what Pentecost is, and maybe we can learn something. And for that I'm going to go closer to you so I can talk to the people in church, and I will sit here with you, and later you help me to stand up. Okay? Yes.

All right. So, people — the Holy Spirit is also telling me what to do now.

People of God, we are gathered in this place to remember that Pentecost is sometimes seen — some people say that Pentecost is the birth of the church. But the truth is, I personally believe that the church existed before, because God gathered people many centuries before Pentecost. When God chose people to follow God and to reflect God's love to the entire world — to be a blessing for all people — God already gathered people. Pentecost was more like, as I said, a transformation, a call, a transformative empowerment of the existing people of God. God gave them a specific mission and a specific purpose.

But I also believe that Pentecost is helping us to think and redirect a question — not so much about when did the church begin, but more about what is the church for in the world.

And Jesus, in the passage that we read today, offers the water to re-center us for a life of abundance, and calls us to be a people who carry Christ's living water into the world. And that living water isn't just for internal refreshment. It's a life-giving force that dismantles the powers — as somebody said, the powers of darkness — because darkness does not fear ideas. It fears the embodiment, the witness, of people who have been set free. Darkness is afraid of the people of God set free to be light and to bring the Spirit into the world.

The Spirit sends us to be the church. We are a sent people — a Spirit-filled, embodied people — whose very existence is a declaration and disruption against everything that dehumanizes, enslaves, isolates, and robs people of the God-given dignity that God has given to all creation.

We are not just attending a service here today. We are not just coming to say, "Oh, I went to church." We are here to recommit ourselves to the struggle and the disruption of the church. We are being equipped and sent to be church every day, everywhere, all the time — a people who are present when everything else is simulated, artificial, and deceiving around us. Who are embodied when everything is tending toward the disembodied, the hollow, the meaningless.

Today we remember that we are called to be the people of Pentecost — people who remember names, people who carry grief with others, and people who speak truth without needing an algorithm to tell them how to do it.

Today we are here to recommit to God and to say, "Thank you, God, for the gift of the Spirit" — and to see how we are going to do that.

As I said earlier, we are going to have a baptism today. Today, Yvette is going to be baptized. And you know what? I think that what God is going to do with Yvette is going to shake her like this today, so that the Spirit that is in her will flow through her baptism every day — as God is doing with each one of you.

And we are going to see a miracle. Have you ever seen a miracle?

Yes.

We are going to see another one today. We are going to see the miracle of God embracing one person and saying, "You are mine. You belong to me. I love you."

Do you want to see that miracle happening? Let's move to this area now.