Today’s fruit is faithfulness. And honestly, this may be the hardest sermon in the series because talking about faithfulness reveals an uncomfortable truth: we are often loyal to the wrong things.

Paul’s word in Greek is pistis. It carries a rich meaning that encompasses reliability, trustworthiness, steadfastness, fidelity, and loyalty to God and others.

I find it interesting that fidelity and loyalty are both used in the definition because they are not quite the same thing.

Loyalty is the emotional attachment. Fidelity is the practiced commitment. You feel loyalty, but you practice fidelity. And in our world, I see plenty of people claiming loyalty to Jesus while practicing fidelity to power, tribe, ideology, fear, or comfort. That makes me a strange combination of sad, angry, hopeful, and exhausted all at once. Because I want to live a life of integrity.

Jesus says in Gospel of Matthew 15:8: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Which raises a difficult question: What does faithfulness actually look like?

Today is Pentecost: the birth of the church. And notice what appears in Acts of the Apostles 2. The Holy Spirit comes without a belief statement. Without a doctrinal checklist. Without buildings, denominational structures, committees, or organizational flow charts. The Spirit arrives first. The church begins as people set on fire with purpose and sent into the world.

Yet time and again, we reverse the order. We act as though the institution creates the Spirit, rather than the Spirit creating the church. Many of the great church splits in history were over doctrine, structure, authority, or control. Meanwhile, the church at its heart has always been people animated by the Spirit of God.

Always has been. Always will be.

So how do we keep getting this backwards?

Part of the answer is that conformity is hardwired into us. Human beings are deeply shaped by social pressure. We often do things simply because everyone else around us is doing them. I recently watched a social experiment that captured this perfectly.[1]

A woman enters a waiting room. Five other people are already seated there. What she doesn’t know is that the other five are actors.

A beep sounds. All five people stand up. The woman looks confused. They sit back down. Another beep sounds. Again, everyone stands. Now she’s nervous. Looking around. Trying to figure out the rules of this strange little world. By the third beep, she stands too. Nobody explained it. She simply absorbed the behavior of the room.

Then, one by one, the actors are called away until she is left alone in the room. The question becomes: Will she still stand when the beep sounds, even with no one else around?

The beep sounds. She stands.

Then another person enters the waiting room. A real participant, just like her. The beep sounds again. Now she stands… and the newcomer watches her.

He asks, “Why are we standing?”

And she answers, “I don’t know. It’s just what everyone was doing when I came in.”

And little by little, the pattern spreads. New people enter. The beep sounds. Everybody stands. Nobody remembers why anymore.

That’s human nature. And churches can fall into the same trap.

We inherit traditions, assumptions, arguments, and divisions without always remembering why they began in the first place. We repeat behaviors simply because they were handed to us.

But Pentecost interrupts all of that. The Spirit does not create clones. The Spirit creates courageous people. People who can discern. People who can listen. People who can ask, “Why are we doing this?”

People who remember that faithfulness is not mindless conformity, but openness to the movement of the living God.

The church is not ultimately a waiting room teaching people when to stand and sit. It is a people filled with the Spirit and sent into the world in love.

What are we faithful to? It’s easy to say “Jesus” with our lips. But do our actions follow? Often, we are content with homeostasis.

One seminary professor once said to a room full of graduating seminarians, “If you really want to impress your new church, paint the nursery.”

Nothing really changes, but everyone feels productive. Churches are often comfortable with cosmetic change. Paint the nursery. Start a new program. Rearrange the committees.

Structural change is harder. Emotional change is hardest of all.

Because emotional change asks us to become different people. There’s a great cartoon that says, “Who wants the world to change?” Everyone raises their hands. Then the second question, “Who wants to change?” No hands go up. Therein lies the difference.

The Bible is an astonishing witness to how difficult emotional change is.

God says to Israel: “I chose you. You will be a blessing to the nations.”

But the people want a king.[2] They want to stand when the beep sounds because everyone else is standing too.

Moses leads Israel out of Egypt, but freedom is hard. The people keep longing for “the fleshpots of Egypt.” At least slavery came with routine. Predictability. Three squares a day. Freedom requires transformation. New emotional patterns. New ways of imagining life together.

And then the prophets arrive to remind the people of God’s heart. And what happens? We persecute the prophets. But the vision keeps returning.

The prophet Book of Joel declares, “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old shall dream dreams, and your young shall see visions. Even upon slaves, in those days, I will pour out my Spirit.”

This is what Peter quotes in his Pentecost sermon. Let’s linger here for a moment. How faithful are we to that vision? Sons and daughters. Old and young. Even slaves. Even the unwanted. Even the overlooked. Even the people society dismisses as lesser.

Church, we have sons and daughters preaching here regularly. We believe in the ordination of women. Many Christians still struggle with that in the year of our Lord 2026.

We are intergenerational. The old dream dreams. The young see visions. Our young people create the Jesus Vibes videos every week. Creative. Funny. Thoughtful. Faithful. Many churches have target demographics and slick, age-related focus.

And “even upon slaves” means we are called to listen to those society marginalizes. That is why we hold our ONA, A2A, and WISE covenants seriously. Not because we are perfect. But because we are trying to remain faithful and open to growth. While many churches retreat into fear and boundary-policing, you are striving to stand with and for the outcast and oppressed.

Last year, this church gave over $70,000 to local mission partners. We are about to build a Habitat house. That is faithfulness. Not just saying “Lord, Lord.” Actually helping people.

Feeding the hungry. Sheltering the vulnerable. Welcoming the stranger within our gates. It takes all of us.

I’m deeply thankful that you are a church that allows me to preach my conscience. I try to say difficult things in ways people can hear them. I also wonder sometimes how much of the punch I pull to keep membership stable and giving steady.

I’d like to think I wouldn’t stand when the beep sounds. But when people enter an emotional system, they adapt to it. I am no exception. I’m not a hero. Often churches want that. The pastor as the hero. The one who can fix everything. That’s a temptation, totally.

If Pentecost teaches us anything, it is this: The hero is God. The gift of the Holy Spirit is evidence of God’s faithfulness. Not our perfect fidelity to God. God’s fidelity to us. That is the faith I try to root myself in.

Because our loyalty wavers. I love the church. Yet another part of my brain echoes St. Augustine’s quote, “The church is a whore. But she is my mother.” Our courage flickers. We sell out. Our actions do not always match our words. We divide into endless denominations. I have my own failings. I try to remain faithful, yet as the hymn says, “Prone to wonder, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.” Yet God remains faithful in Christ Jesus. That is what keeps me going. I hope it keeps you going too.

Church, faithfulness is not perfection. Faithfulness is returning again and again to the Spirit of God when every other voice tells us to conform.

It is refusing to stand simply because the room stood first. It is learning to ask, “Why are we doing this? Who does this serve? Does this look like Jesus?”

And when we fail, when our loyalty drifts toward comfort, tribe, fear, or power, the good news of Pentecost is this, God remains faithful.

The Spirit still comes. Still speaks. Still calls ordinary people into courageous love. Still gathers sons and daughters, young and old, saints and skeptics, the weary and the hopeful, into one living body.

That is the church. Not a waiting room. Not a museum. Not a theater where a few people perform while everyone else watches. The church is a people on fire with the Spirit of God. The body of Christ, the covenant for the forgiveness of sins.

And maybe the real miracle of Pentecost is not that people spoke in different languages. Maybe the miracle is that fearful people became courageous people.

So let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for the One who promised is faithful.

Church, do not stand just because the room stands. Stand because the Spirit calls you to. Amen.

Works Cited

[1] “Social Conformity Experiment,” YouTube video, 2:55, posted by “Mind Warehouse,” August 18, 2015, YouTube: https://youtu.be/X6kWygqR0L8?si=468XGvKvQZa5NvEj

[2] Please recall: https://www.uccmedina.org/series/the-prophet-and-the-king/