May 27, 2012
Pentecost
First
United Church – Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
I can remember clearly the first time I ever
heard a sermon that I cared to listen to. I was seventeen years old and
attending a large regional youth event. Now I had sat through many many sermons
by that point. I had tried to listen to some, but had never found anything
worth hearing.
The first sermon I ever truly heard was on the
passage we just heard from Acts 2. And the reason I listened to it is this: the
preacher spoke my language.
I’ve long-since lost the man’s name, but I can
still see him clearly in my mind’s eye. He went through this passage sentence-by-sentence,
line-by-line. He talked about the Greek. He talked about the grammar. He
analyzed it historically and from a literary perspective. He ripped it apart
and put it back together again.
And I ate it up.
I had never in my life realized that you could
do this with a Biblical text. And for my
17-year-old-analytic-information-craving-brain it was paradise. That one sermon
opened up a new world to me. I experienced the Bible, the art of proclamation,
and the idea of Church in a whole new way….simply because someone finally spoke
to me in my own language.
Sometimes the medium is the message.[1]
Now I don’t know if it’s irony or just good ol’
holy mischief but in this very passage from Acts, the medium is the message,
too.
Frequently, I think we allow ourselves get
bogged down in the details of this text – what exactly did those flaming
tongues look like? How, really, do you expect me to believe that these people
started speaking in languages they didn’t know?
It has been my experience that when we allow
ourselves to get hung up on these kinds of details, we get so stuck in
searching for fact versus fiction that we miss the larger truths the text is
trying to share with us. So, let’s go looking for the truths, shall we?
As the story opens, the disciples are gathered
in Jerusalem for the Jewish festival of Shavuot. You’ve probably not heard of
Shavuot and the NRSV translates it as “Pentecost.” The celebration is called by
various names – Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks, or Pentecost (which means
fiftieth day). It is the fiftieth day after Passover in the Jewish calendar and
the holiday is a commemoration of when God gave the Israelites the Law from Mt.
Sinai.
It’s worth noting that Shavuot and the
Christian holiday of Pentecost really had nothing to do with each other in the
beginning. My best guess is that as they were writing down the stories in those
early days of the Church they chose this connection with Shavuot because they
wanted to clearly make a tie between God giving the Law and God giving the Holy
Spirit. Christians in later centuries misused this tie, stating that the gift
of the Holy Spirit was better than and superseded the Law, but I prefer to see
the two events as two sides of the same coin – our Stillspeaking God choosing
to reveal herself to different people in different times in different ways that
they found meaningful.
I think God’s PR person has always been quite
aware that the medium is often the message.
So – back to Shavuot. This was one of the three
great pilgrim holy days. That means that Jews from all over the Disapora
gathered in Jerusalem – the holiest city – to celebrate Shavuot each year. These were Jews who lived in far-away
lands and always had. Most likely their ancestors had been forced to move away
from Israel centuries earlier during one exile or another.
And as they are visiting Jerusalem this
particular year, something quite unusual happens. As they’re going about their
business – maybe eating breakfast with friends or gathering water for the day
or brushing their teeth or whatever – they hear a commotion down the street.
They hear a rush of violent wind and then they hear a group of 12 people
speaking in all kinds of languages. And, one by one, they realize that they
hear their own language. Someone in Jerusalem – someone they don’t know! – is
speaking their language.
They run to the house where the commotion is
happening and there they see the disciples, speaking in their own languages.
Some of the actual residents of Jerusalem came running, too. And they say,
“What the heck? Aren’t these men Galileans (translation: backwater folks)?
Where did they learn to my language?” Some of them added, “They’re probably
just drunk,” and all of them were amazed.
Now I want to pause in the action here and make
note of a key point: when the Holy Spirit came, the Spirit causes the Galileans
– who were the in-group, the majority here – to speak other languages. The Holy
Spirit did not simply allow those from the Diaspora – who were the out-group,
the minority – to understand the in-group’s words. Instead, the Spirit actively
forced the in-group to speak the language of the out-group.
The Holy Spirit forced those in the majority to
speak the language of the minority.
The medium is the message.
And then Peter – never one at a loss for words
– addresses the haters and says, “They’re not drunk! Instead they are
fulfilling a great prophecy!” And I have to assume that Peter is talking mostly
to those who are the natives of Jerusalem – those in the in-group. I assume
this because the text says nothing of Peter’s words being translated into
another language.
He says, in essence, “This is really happening.
God is really speaking to people from all over the world in their own
languages. It’s really too bad if you’re feeling threatened, because this is
really happening. And here’s why: It’s happening because the Reign of God is
here in our midst. And in this New Age everyone has a role to play. Your sons
and daughters have stories to tell – and we all need to listen. Children have
things to see – and we need to look with them. Older adults have dreams yet to
be lived – and we need to dream along with them. Even the slaves – the men and
the women – have received God’s gift of his Spirit – and they have things to
say.”
When faced with the great diversity of God’s
creation – people of all ages, nationalities, genders, races, religious, sexual
orientations, levels of education, economic standing, and more – when faced
with this great diversity, those of us in the in-group have some choices to
make.
When we learn that White babies are now a
minority group in the U.S. some White folks will become fearful and long for
the “good ol’ days” when White people were a majority in this nation. Others of
us will celebrate a new era in this land of great diversity and move forward
joyfully into a world where people of all races are more fully valued and
appreciated.
Pentecost is – at its very heart – a story
about God’s great love of diversity.
And in that way, it is not really “the birthday
of the Church” as I was taught in my Sunday School classes as a child. Sure, it
marks an important turning point in the lives of those who were following
Christ shortly after his death. But it’s not a singular event.
Rather, Pentecost is just one event in a long,
long line of renewal movements in the Jewish and Christians faiths. Just as the
giving of the Ten Commandments at Sinai rejuvenated the people and led them
into a renewed relationship with God, Pentecost rejuvenated those early
followers of Christ.
And if there’s any group that really gets this
renewal that can happen when we truly embrace God’s great love of diversity,
it’s the Pentecostals themselves. Now you’ll have to check with Sam Troxal
after worship to see if I’ve told you any lies about Pentecostalism, but I’m
going to do my best to highlight a few things about this renewed and renewing
group of Christians.
First of all, Pentecostalism is big. I mean
huge. It’s incredibly difficult to count the number of Pentecostal Christians
because they exist in hundreds of denominations and thousands of individual, unaffiliated
churches. Plus, there are deep divisions within Pentecostalism just as there
are within any religious group. Just ask Sam for a brief lecture on the
difference between Oneness Pentecostals and the others. But, by any count,
there are a lot of Pentecostals out there. And not just in Indiana.
It’s estimated that there are somewhere between
65 million and 217 million Pentecostals in the world. To give you some
perspective, there are just over a billion Roman Catholics, about 16 million
Southern Baptists, and a million and change each in the UCC and ABC.[2]
And, unlike the Roman Catholics who have roots
going way way back, Pentecostals are fairly new on the religious stage. There
was no one place or meeting where Pentecostalism officially began. Instead, it
is a movement that popped up in various places throughout the late 19th
and early 20th century.
Now I know that some of us self-righteous
liberal Protestants might like to think of Pentecostals as closed-minded, but
affirming God’s call in the lives of women and people of all races and ages is
something Pentecostals have been doing longer and better than mainline
Protestants. Women have broadly held leadership in Pentecostal churches since
their inception. Black and Whites have worshiped hand in hand for over a century.
Since the beginning, Pentecostals have celebrated and affirmed God’s good gift
of diversity.
And how could they not celebrate God’s gift of
diversity when they claim this very passage as the reason for their existence?
Pentecostalism is a challenge to those of us in
mainline Protestant churches. Pentecostalism asks us to take seriously God’s
call to not just tolerate diversity but to run after it full-speed.
Pentecostalism asks us to actively seek out opportunities for engagement with
people who are different than us. Pentecostalism shows us what can happen when
we open ourselves to the possibility of renewal through the breath of the Holy
Spirit.
Can we move with them? Can we straight-laced,
buttoned-up, formerly-downtown-church, mainline Protestants allow ourselves to
feel the breeze of the Holy Spirit moving in our midst? Because I promise you
the Spirit moves today just as she did in the Early Church and just as she does
in Pentecostal congregations around the world.
It is clear to me that God values diversity.
And it is clear to me that we, as a congregation, value diversity. And we are
light years ahead of others in our quest to openly welcome and affirm people of
all ages, genders, races, and backgrounds as leaders in our congregation.
And yet, when I look around our sanctuary on
Sunday mornings, I see a group of mostly-White people. Now, true – true – we
live in a mostly-White town. According to the 2010 Census, Bloomington is 83%
White.[3]
And yet – I have to wonder – are we pushing
ourselves as much as we could to openly celebrate God’s good gift of racial
diversity? What would it take to move our congregation to a place where only
83% of the people in the pews are White instead of 99.5%? And do we even care
enough to make that a priority?
I can’t answer these questions by myself.
That’s not my role. But I do want to invite you into the conversation because I
think today’s text urges us to have it.
Those Galileans – those majority folks in the
Early Church – they’re calling to us from the page.
And they’re not speaking my language.
They’re speaking the languages of all those
minority groups out there who aren’t used to hearing their words spoken in
public.
They’re not asking those folks in the
out-groups to come on in, sit down, and start doing things their way. They’re
opening themselves to the very real possibility that the Holy Spirit is calling
them to do something more challenging, more terrifying, more real than that.
The Spirit blows and they are moved.
The medium is the message.
Can we hear it?
[1] Ever wonder
where that phrase comes from? Turns out it was coined by Marshall McLuhan
in his book Understanding
Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964.
[2] These stats
are from Wikipedia – from various articles and all of them had sources listed.
[3] https://bloomington.in.gov/media/media/application/pdf/6636.pdf
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