Welcome to Resurrection Parish as we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. 
            Fred Rogers would begin his famous children’s program, “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood,” by singing, “Won’t you be my neighbor?”  Sadly, today, many of us would answer, “No.”  We like being the neighbor who is left alone, or perhaps waves from a distance.
            Facing this reality, we are beginning a new message series entitled, “Next Door: The Art of Neighboring.”  The premise of this series is that God wants you to be a source of his goodness and grace in your neighborhood.  You do not live where you live by accident but for reasons of providence, reasons known to God.
            You may have chosen your home because you thought it was a good investment or a great location. You may have chosen your house because you loved the kitchen.  You probably didn’t buy your home because you were thinking about how to be a blessing to your neighbors. You were probably just hoping they were not crazy. However, the truth is God had other reasons
for putting you there. God sees it as an opportunity to bring his light and love to the people in that community.
            It is appropriate that we are kicking this series off on the Feast of Pentecost, which celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit to the Church. You never know where the Spirit will lead you. There is an air of danger, discomfort, and unpredictability when you follow the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will lead us to places we would not naturally go on our own. The Spirit can even lead us into adventure.  Ironically, the adventure we’re looking at in this series
is right in our own backyard.
            The Christian faith is always a faith that is placed in creation, in history, in time. The Christian faith is meant to get very specific. The whole story of the Bible is filled with very tangible places where God invites others to build his kingdom and make known his love.  We are also called to be in a particular place and there to embody the presence and purpose of God.  We are to make God’s love and blessing known in the specific environments in which we live our lives.
Of course, this is not at all easy. There are all the obstacles and objections brought to us by the culture we live in.  One fact alone underscores the difficulty.  Most of us no longer live in cohesive communities. 
            Three big cultural shifts led to the fragmentation of our communities in the post war baby boom, and we continue to experience the aftershocks.
The first shift was the rise of the suburbs.  With the rise of the suburbs, houses were further apart, and people stopped working where they lived.  The idea of “neighborhood” became attenuated and misunderstood.  Also, the suburban developments were often exclusively residential which meant people would spend much of their day outside the neighborhood.
The second blow to neighborhood unity and connection goes hand and hand with the first:  the rise of the automobile. People don’t really live in their neighborhoods; they live in their cars.
The third blow to neighborhoods was the advent of television. The television isolated people in their homes, so there was no need for them to come out.
Then there are other obstacles and personal objections.  You might be reluctant to establish a connection with a neighbor out of fear. You fear they might become dependent upon you and you like the distance. Or maybe they seem somewhat eccentric and you’re uncomfortable with that.  You might have an objection because of a previous argument or past history.  Or maybe it’s just the weight of having not connected until now. I mean, it is one thing to reach out to people when you first move in but if you’ve lived near someone for years, how do you just go over and introduce yourself now.
You might be asking, “why pay any attention to your neighborhood anyway?”  First, we already talked about the fact that God wants to use us for the transformation of the world by building his kingdom. The transformation of the world happens person by person, family by family, neighborhood by neighborhood. Jesus asks us to love our neighbor and whenever we follow what Jesus says there are always blessings.  Second, we do it because all of us want to live in a nicer, friendlier neighborhood.  Third, this impacts the quality of your life. Your life improves when you’re better connected. We’ll talk about this a little more next week, but as human beings we were not created to live in isolation.
As I mentioned earlier, today is the feast of Pentecost. Acts 2 tells us, “When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were” (Acts 2:1).  Pentecost was already a Jewish Feast in Jesus’ day, celebrating the harvest. Here Jesus’ disciples were together at prayer, mostly motivated by fear.
Despite Jesus’ resurrection, the church might never have grown beyond that little locked room, if not for the gift of the Spirit; “Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them.  And they began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim” (Acts 2:3-4).
After the Holy Spirit the disciples broke out of their holy huddle and started making an impact on their immediate community: “Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together” (Acts 2:5-6). 
In Jerusalem at the time, there were people from all over the world, who spoke many different languages, there to celebrate the feast.  Yet at Pentecost they were suddenly able to understand one another. The Holy Spirit allowed for connections and understanding among people who never would have connected or communicated otherwise.
The Holy Spirit still works in the same way. It is a gift given to us in a Sacramental way in Baptism and Confirmation. It is also a gift given to us whenever or wherever we dispose ourselves to the work and the will of God in our lives.  The Holy Spirit has the power to open up doors that you would never thought would open.
Over the course of this series, we are going to look at some initial steps you can take to impact your neighborhood for good and for God.  None of them will involve going door to door.  The main goal is to begin seeing your neighborhood from God’s perspective and to ask for the Holy Spirit to fall fresh on your neighborhood.
And to start, simply pray for your neighbors and neighborhood. Invite the Holy Spirit into your neighborhood.  Pray for the people you know by name. Pray for the people who you only know by description.  Your prayer can be as simple as:  God, please bless the grumpy old guy that lives around the corner. Father, please bless the loud family across the street. Lord, bless my nosey neighbor next door.
In today’s gospel we are given another account of Easter Sunday, commissioning them to share the good news and anticipating the gift of the Holy Spirit that would allow them and empower them to do it.  “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21).  Each of us are sent, and to grow as disciples it is important to understand the practical implications of that in the context of all that is near to us.  Wherever the spirit leads it always leads you outside your comfort zone because that is always where growth is. God is far more interested in the growth of your character than with your comfort.