As she steps out of her tornado-tossed monochromatic house and takes in the Technicolor wonder of the strange and unfamiliar Oz, Dorothy remarks to her faithful dog, "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." And sure enough, she isn't. With the encouragement of Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, the Lullaby League and the Lollipop Guild, Dorothy and Toto set off on the Yellow Brick Road in hopes that it will eventually lead, not only to the Emerald City, but back home - home to Kansas.

Today, I would like to invite you to follow with me a road that is similar to Dorothy's. Like the Yellow Brick Road, our road crosses foreign territory; on it we will meet strange and wonderful people, partners for the journey; in order to navigate this road we will have give up comfortable assumptions and old ways of thinking; and in a real sense, we will follow this road with the hope that, like the Yellow Brick Road, it will lead us home.

The road that I would like us to follow today starts at another time when the wind blew hard enough to rearrange the world. On the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit, the divine wind of God, blew the early church into a new and unfamiliar place. When the disciples stepped out of their house into the road, they, like Dorothy, were confronted with a land as strange and unfamiliar as OZ. Before them was arrayed a whole host of persons as unlikely as Munchkins. However, the denizens of that Pentecost road were not talking tin men and cowardly lions, but Parthians and Medes, Elamites and Cappadocians, and a wide range of other foreigners whose names you hope you don't have to read if you are liturgist on Sunday. As the disciples sized up their situation - they, a motley band of former fishermen, tax collectors and other assorted tradespersons, standing before a vast crowd of foreigners straining to hear the good news that the disciples were uttering - they must have remarked to one another, "I've a feeling we're not in Galilee anymore!" And sure enough, they weren't.

It's not that the disciples didn't want to share the gospel - they did. But nothing had ever prepared them for a world like this! They couldn't imagine how they would ever be able to find the language and the thought-patterns to communicate to such a vast multi-cultural, multi-ethnic world. As the disciples stepped out into this Oz, they couldn't imagine how those chasms of language and culture could ever be spanned. And yet, enlivened and inspired by the Holy Spirit, they did - miraculously. Each person standing in that Pentecost road heard the gospel in his or her own native tongue. And so, on the Day of Pentecost, the church started its journey from being a monochromatic gathering to a Technicolor movement; from existing as a group of insiders sitting inside a house to a traveling mission that would follow the roads to every corner of the Roman Empire.

The road that had its starting point outside of that Spirit-blown house in Jerusalem eventually wound its way to the city of Corinth in Greece. Imagine if you will what the Apostle Paul must have experienced as he followed the road that led from Corinth's harbor up to the city itself. This road would have passed through a teeming marketplace where Paul would have been bombarded by a riotous combination of sights, sounds, and smells. Everywhere he turned he would have seen goods from every corner of the Roman Empire and beyond: bright silk scarves and pungent spices from India, polished jewels from Egypt, briny olives from Spain, marble statues from Italy. He would have heard bargaining, shouting, trading in more languages than he could count or even recognize. People of every color, size, shape and dress pressing in around him. (You know.........that almost sounds.....like Delmar Boulevard ...but I am getting ahead of myself.) Like Columnist Mike Royko said of Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago, there were streets in Corinth where you could hear "stick 'em up" in 28 different languages.

The road that had its origins in Jerusalem on Pentecost led directly to the Corinth of Paul's ministry. Both settings presented the church with the seemingly insurmountable challenge of sharing the gospel with people who were not like those already in the church. Barriers of language, culture, socio-economic class had to be overcome if the early church was ever going to fulfill the Great Commission. On the Day of Pentecost, the disciples were able to overcome those barriers through the miraculous movement of the Holy Spirit. Paul, whose calling was to build up congregations over time, had to discover a different strategy. In the church of Corinth, Paul was confronted with every kind of diversity imaginable - culture, class, language, gender. Paul had to wrestle with all kinds of questions: How can the church succeed with a Gentile sitting next to a Jew? How can the church witness effectively when the sweet perfumes of the well-to-do family mingle with the acrid sweat of the day-laborer and the slave? How can the church thrive when the silk clothing of the wealthy rub up against the rags of a street boy? As he considered this diversity both within and outside the church, Paul discovered that the answer to this unbridled diversity lay within him: To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law, so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak.

It was so important to Paul that the good news of Jesus Christ be shared with persons of every race, class, and culture that he would do whatever it took to help people hear the gospel and worship God. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means, save some. It was a different approach than the one used by the disciples on Pentecost, but the same Spirit that blew so forcefully in Jerusalem was still blowing far down the Pentecost road in Corinth - overcoming barriers and divisions and drawing persons of diverse backgrounds into the one body.

As I have already intimated, the Pentecost road that had its beginning outside the house in Jerusalem, and then wound its way through the middle of Corinth a decade later, now runs down Delmar Boulevard, and South Grand, and Highway 40 and wherever the church of Jesus Christ finds itself in the 21^st Century. It is amazing how much the Jerusalem and Corinth of the 1^st Century sound like our cities today - so much so, that some commentators have started calling our present society "pre-Christian". Our cities have become wonderful and strange conglomerations of ethnicities and cultures and religions - and we hardly recognize them!

But the Oz in which we find ourselves today is not only given its shape by new ethnicities and religions, but by new worldviews as well. Over and over I meet citizens of this new world who, with deep honesty and integrity, tell me that they are spiritual, but not religious, and they can't imagine how the church as they perceive it might walk with them on their spiritual journey. Universal truth claims, OUR universal truth claims about Jesus Christ, are met, not with mere skepticism (I never thought I yearn for the days of skepticism!), but with outright dismissal. We are ignored by large parts of the culture before we even open our mouths. As we step out of this house into the road every Sunday morning, I suspect that many of us feel like the disciples did when they left the familiar confines of their house and moved out into the unruly, they-don't-play-by-our-rules world, and like Paul did as he made his way through the cultural hodgepodge of Corinth, and like Dorothy did in Oz: We've got more than a feeling that we are not in Kansas any more and we just want to go home.

But "going home", retreating back to the comfortable and the familiar is not an option for us - not for those who know that the Holy Spirit has blown us to this time and this place in order to be the living witness to God's love in Jesus Christ. We don't get to choose the world in which we must go and make disciples - but we do have a choice how to respond to that world. So how do we do it? How do we evangelize, worship, engage in mission when we are called to follow the Pentecost Road, when Delmar Boulevard, at least figuratively, is our address? How do we do this when the citizens of this new world don't simply drop in to find out what's going on? Peter in Jerusalem and Paul in Corinth, give us clues: we will more and more rely on the Holy Spirit and we will adopt new patterns, new languages, new ways of telling God's timeless story.

The stories of Peter and Paul remind us that this road is navigated, not by our own cleverness and resources, not by imitating what others have done or are doing, but by the power of the Holy Spirit and the willingness to listen and learn. Today on Pentecost, we are reminded that we are not in this place by accident, but by the amazing breath of the Holy Spirit. And just as the Spirit gave miraculous gifts to share the Gospel two thousand years ago, that same Spirit gives us miraculous gifts today - gifts of leadership, gifts of teaching, gifts of compassion, and helping, and prophecy, and wisdom. God has given us every gift we need to be church in this time.

On this Pentecost we are also invited to listen and learn from the residents of this new world so that we might witness to and with them. Just as Paul did in Corinth, we follow the Pentecost Road by becoming conversant with the citizens of this new and wonderful world. Dorothy only began to understand Oz, and only began to make her way to the Emerald City as she took the risk to talk with scarecrows and apple trees.

Being a Pentecost church is never easy or comfortable. An awful lot of what we thought essential to worship and the life of the church will have to be questioned and some of it will be laid aside. Sometimes it feels that when we change our worship, when change our patterns of community that we lose something. And we do, and loss is hard. But as hard as this is, there is great blessing, not only for the world, but also for us. Did you catch the blessing at the end of Paul's Technicolor evangelism strategy? I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means, save some. I do it all for the sake of gospel, that I may share in its blessings. Paul discovered that as he identified with and adopted new cultural norms, as he stretched himself to include an ever-widening circle of people, as he became all things to all people, he not only shared the Gospel with others, but he shared in the Gospel's blessings! The story that had meant so much to him that he would do whatever it took to share it with others meant that much more to him as he adapted it and shared it.

We also see this blessing unfolding on the Day of Pentecost. As the citizens of that Oz listened to the disciples proclaim their good news, they actually heard what was being said, and they could acknowledge that God's story of salvation was also about them. And so they joyfully exclaimed, "in our own languages, we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." As they said that, I can see the worry and anxiety of the disciples melt away, for although that was a foreign land into which they had been thrust, although all bets were off and nothing could be assumed, they knew they were home - home in the God whose deeds of power had called them, redeemed them and sustained them.

Like Dorothy all of us want to feel the comfort and security of home. And for us in the church, our home is not in a building or a service, but in the eternal embrace of Almighty God who sends us out into the world and is with us, even to the close of the age. Dorothy was right: There is no place like home. And thanks be to God, our home can be discovered and rediscovered wherever and however we share the good news, and wherever and whenever God's children can celebrate God's deeds of power.