May 20, 2018 Pentecost
Acts 2:1-21 Romans 8:22-27 John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15
When I was teaching essay writing I used a book called Sin Boldly. It was written by a professor who wrote it in desperation because his students couldn’t use proper grammar, and because he couldn’t find a good book on how to apply grammar to essay writing. I loved this book because not only did it explain how to use grammar effectively, but it had a lot of great antidotal stories about his time in the classroom and his philosophy of teaching.
In one chapter he explained why he felt writing well was important. You see a lot of kids that he taught were from lower-class families, on scholarships, and he found that their preparation in high school was not that great. They had never been taught how to write well. And, especially in the early 80s, he also had to contend with a remnant 1960s attitude that education was how people in power brainwashed and kept people down. But he contended that language, and speaking and writing well in particular, were the basic tools of all revolution and change. If you could learn how to express your outrage well, and you could get other people to agree with it; the fact that something needed to be done, and how it could be done; then you could accomplish great change in the world. The only way to do this is through language. You can try to start a revolution, but if you don’t have the thoughts and feelings of people behind you, you’re simply going to be a voice howling in the wilderness.
Many people think that this Pentecost story about people speaking in tongues is about people speaking in gibberish. We can see very clearly from the scriptures that the event on Pentecost of speaking in tongues was not speaking in gibberish. The crowd was amazed that these Galileans, who probably only spoke a distinctive dialect of Aramaic, were fluently speaking languages from all the known world. If the disciples had only been speaking in gibberish the movement that Jesus had started would have simply remained a small, but weird, community of an interesting Jewish sect. But the Holy Spirit sent a wind to clear the disciples mind and then poured into them the knowledge of languages.
Now I have a confession to make about me and foreign languages. Foreign languages are not one of my gifts and graces. I barely got by with a passing grade in Spanish, which is the closest language to English on the planet, and then I struggled mightily for 16 years with Japanese, which is the farthest language to English on the planet. But in my studies of those two languages, especially Japanese, I did learn that language is a psychological map of a culture. How a culture uses words, the images it associates with words, and the importance that it attaches to words, gets you deeper into the culture then if you’re just experiencing it like a tourist.
For instance, in Korea to call a man a pig, in a certain context, is actually a compliment. Why? If we call a person a pig that means they’re greedy, self-centered, and uncaring – this comes from the fact that we think pigs are unclean animals. But to the Koreans a pig was an expensive animal that you only had if you were wealthy and prosperous. And pigs are considered to be very lucky and content animals. If you’re born in the year of the pig, that’s an indication that you will be a good businessman, hence the pig as a complementary animal.
Pentecost is about the moment the church was born. It is about what the church of Jesus Christ is supposed to be. It is about the Holy Spirit bringing people together as one in spite of their differences: different cultures, different languages, different traditions, different beliefs, different interpretations, different theologies. Pentecost is about proclaiming salvation for all people, like Peter did in his speech when he was explaining to the surrounding crowd that: No this group isn’t drunk, they are filled with the Holy Spirit. And they can be filled with the Holy Spirit because their beings and lives have been open to the Grace of God by the knowledge and experience of the love of Jesus Christ.
Right then and there God gave the disciples the valuable tool of language that they needed to bridge differences and to start the revolution by proclaiming the good news: The good news that God loves everyone. God loves each and everyone of you even though you’re not perfect. God gets that you are not perfect because Christ lived with us and experienced that imperfection. So God understands and forgives our imperfections. And, if we are willing to dedicate our life to connecting with him, by loving our neighbors and treating them with the dignity and respect that a sacred soul should be treated with, then God’s love will be revealed to us; our purpose in this life that is connected to his kingdom will be revealed to us; and we are assured of eternal life with him starting right now.
However, as much as I would like it to happen, I don’t think that the Holy Spirit is going to descend on me and give me the gift of a foreign language. On the other hand that’s probably not the gift that I need, or maybe that any of us need, right here and now, for our church in this time and place.
You see back then the disciples needed to go out into the world. Jesus had told them to go out and make disciples of all nations, so it would follow that the big gift the needed was the gift of language. Evangelism begins with us making personal relationships with people, and sharing with them our story of how Christ influences us and makes us better people. But evangelism goes farther when you show people that understand and care about their lives.
Evangelism is healthcare kits. Evangelism is reading stories to children. Evangelism is helping veterans to heal with a horse care ministry. Evangelism is helping people out in nursing homes. Evangelism is sorting through stuff that is going to be use for Habitat for Humanity.
Evangelism is meeting people where they are. I think that’s another reason why the Holy Spirit gave people this gift of foreign languages. They weren’t supposed to stay in Israel – they were supposed to go to those countries, learn about their cultures, understand them and show those cultures how the love of God through Jesus Christ could strengthen and improve those cultures. We need to remember that at first Christianity wasn’t so much a take over of a culture as it was an assimilation. It was only later, during the Crusades and the colonization of the world by the Europeans, that Christianity became the religion of conquerors rather than the religion of simple people who were trying to bring love and peace.
These days I think we need a little more of that assimilation of the Spirit rather then the spirit of conquering in our evangelism fields. It has been proven that the most effective form of evangelism is when people get onto the ground, live within a culture, and do good that is needed inside that culture in the name of Christ. You can do evangelism within your own community or you can walk into the foreign culture of a homeless shelter and do your work there. Remember: any place that is not your comfort zone is a foreign land.
What gift has God given you and where is Christ calling you to go? For the disciples it was easy. The people who learned Greek went to Greece. Supposedly the disciple Thomas learned an Indian dialect and went to India. Most of us won’t go that far. But we can all open our hearts to the Holy Spirit, notice the tools that we have been given, go into unknown territory, and use our tools to teach others about Christ in the world. And when we do, everyday will be Pentecost for us.
pastorpeg 