Preached on Sunday, May 24, 2026, the Day of Pentecost, at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Little Rock.

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. (1 Corinthians 12:7)

I find myself wondering what it must have felt like to be there on that first day of Pentecost. I wonder what it felt like to hear a sound like the rush of a violent wind filling the entire house. I wonder what it felt like to see divided tongues, as of fire, resting on each of the newly christened Apostles. I wonder what it felt like to open one’s mouth and discover that words were coming out in a language one had never learned. And I wonder, most of all, how personal it all must have felt. After all, the Spirit of God did not descend upon a building or a system or an institution in the abstract, but upon persons, upon bodies, upon particular lives. Each one of them received something that day, each one addressed, each one known and met by God through the power of His Holy Spirit. I wonder how personal it all must have felt. 

And yet, if we stay at the “personal” part of Pentecost, we will misunderstand the gift given that day.

The Apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians, offers a much needed caution—both to them and to us. He affirms that “to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit,” but he immediately adds a purpose: “for the common good.” Paul knows how quickly a gift that feels personal can become something that is hoarded. He knows how quickly a spiritual experience can become a private possession. He knows how easily we can begin to measure and to compare, to rank and to guard, to turn what God has given into something that serves the self rather than the Body.

It’s one thing to receive the Spirit as something that meets you personally. It’s another thing to receive the Spirit as Someone Who sends you outward. It’s one thing to experience the nearness of God in a way that feels intimate and direct. It’s another thing to recognize that the very purpose of that Nearness is to bind you to your neighbor. Paul will not allow us to confuse the two. He insists that the Spirit is known not in turning inward on the self, but in turning outward toward the other.

The Spirit of God is not given so that we might become more absorbed in ourselves. The Spirit of God is given so that we might be drawn more deeply into love of God and love of neighbor. The Spirit is not a private consolation prize for the spiritually inclined. The Spirit is the very life of God poured out so that the Church might become, in truth, the Body of Christ for the sake of the world.

That is why Paul speaks of gifts. He speaks of wisdom and knowledge, of faith and healing, of prophecy and discernment, of tongues and interpretation. He names them not just so that we might catalog them, but so that we might recognize them, so that we might see that the Spirit is at work in countless ways through countless people—a “variet[y] of gifts, but the same Spirit,” as Paul puts it. He names these gifts so that we might understand that no one person possesses the whole, and that each depends upon the other, so that we might see that every gift is given with a direction, and that direction is outward.

You can know that the Spirit has blessed you if you have been given gifts—and so it is for each and every one of us. One person is given the gift of making a cheerful home. Another is given the gift of mending engines, or tending to spreadsheets, or telling a story. One has the gift of keeping peace. Another can make a frightened child laugh. One knows how to grow tomatoes. Another knows how to place an IV. Some have the gift of seeing what everyone else has missed. Some can teach clearly. Some can listen quietly. Some can endure the unbearable. Some can encourage the downtrodden. Some can make people feel less alone. These are not merely natural talents, nor accidents of temperament. They are signs of the Spirit’s generosity moving through ordinary human life. That’s how you know that the Spirit has blessed you.

But you can know that the Spirit is at work in you if those gifts are not stored up for yourself, but are sent outward for others, for the common good. You can know that the Spirit is alive in you if what you have received becomes something that is given away. And the reason we know that the Spirit is working is because that is not natural to us. More and more, we are taught to think first of ourselves: our advancement, our comfort, our security, our preferences, our rights, our brand. We have become suspicious of obligations that do not immediately benefit us. We hesitate to sacrifice for neighbors we barely know. We speak constantly of personal fulfillment, but less and less of shared responsibility. Even the idea of a “common good” can sound strange to modern ears, as though the highest purpose of human life were simply to arrange the world according to private desires. But the Holy Spirit always presses outward toward the other, toward fellowship, toward self-giving love. The Spirit does not settle into us as a possession. The Spirit moves through us as a gift, given freely.

We give away our gifts just as generously and as freely as God gives His Spirit to us. God does not ration His Spirit. God does not portion it out with hesitation or stinginess. God pours out His Spirit upon all flesh with abundance and with freedom. And if that same Spirit is truly at work in us, then our lives will begin to take on that same shape. Our gifts will not be clutched or protected or hidden away. They will be offered and offered again, always for the sake of the common good.

The miracle of Pentecost is not only that each person spoke something, but that each person spoke something for the sake of someone else. The miracle of Pentecost is that what was given to one became a gift for another, that the Spirit formed a people whose lives were turned outward in love.

And that is where we find ourselves today. You may not hear rushes of wind or see tongues of fire––but friends, this morning, let’s look again. We are among those to whom the Spirit has been given. We are among those who have received something real, something particular, something personal. And now, we are among those who are sent.

So the question is not simply what you have been given, but where it is being given through you. The question is not simply how the Spirit has met you, but to whom the Spirit is sending you. The question is not simply what gifts you possess, but how those gifts are being given up for the life of the world.

Because each one of us is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. And in that giving, and in that sending, the Church becomes what She is meant to be: a people animated with the very life of God, poured out for others, just as God in Christ through the Spirit has been poured out for us. Amen.