May 31, 2009 - Pentecost Sunday

The Holy Spirit Empowers Us to Speak so Others Can Understand
Acts 2:1-21
Day of Pentecost/Confirmation – May 31, 2009

A few years ago, some cell phone company had a commercial that always made me laugh. An obviously frustrated mother, cell phone bill in hand, calls her tween-aged daughter into the room. “Who have you been texting 50 times a day?” Beth Ann says, “IDK, my BFF Jill?” The whole conversation goes back & forth like that, with Mom speaking in plain English & Beth Ann using the same abbreviations she would use if she was sending a text message over her phone. So, “IDK. My BFF Jill” means, “I don't know, my best friend forever Jill.”

Now Mom clearly understands what Beth Ann is saying, even though she kind of stutters and fumbles around when she tries to talk that way. And for the rest of us watching, they put up subtitles on the screen whenever Beth Ann is talking, to translate all of these abbreviations. If you don't use your phone to send text messages, it's like she's speaking a different language!

It's a classic example of how often we speak past each other. We have a tendency to use code language with each other. Different groups have different codes that they use to make communication quicker & easier. We see it in the phone commercial with texting. In my house, I experience it whenever I watch sports with Andy. I get a lot of the lingo – I know what ERA and RBI stand for, but the terms don't mean a lot to me. Sports fans have their own language.

The church has its own language too, a kind of Christian-ese. Over the years, a kind of code has developed, filled with short-hand words and phrases. We use special names for things. We call the entryway a narthex. Some churches call the basement the undercroft. We toss around words like synod or Rally Day and sing songs with titles like Kyrie or Sanctus or Agnus Dei. We talk about the centrality of Word and Sacrament and of Justification by Grace through Faith for the sake of Jesus Christ.

If you've been around the church a long time, you might know what all of those things mean. Then again, you might not. And if people who are a part of the church aren't always sure, imagine what it would be like as an outsider, someone just exploring this whole Christianity thing. It'd be nice if we'd hand out a glossary of Christian terms, or put subtitles underneath our words, because when we talk in Christian-ese, we might as well be speaking in a different language!

The first believers faced a similar situation on that Pentecost, except in their case, they literally spoke a different language! Before he ascended into heaven, Jesus told them that they were to be witnesses to all they had seen in him. In the story from Acts today, we see their first opportunity to do just that. Great crowds of Jewish people from all over the world had come to Jerusalem to observe Pentecost, which was a Jewish festival before it was a Christian one. Pentecost means “fifty”, and Pentecost happened 50 days after the Passover. It was a celebration of God's giving of the law on Mt. Sinai as well as of the wheat harvest. And so here are all of these foreign Jews, in town from places like what we now call Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia. They came from Libya & Egypt & Crete. They were all there in Jerusalem for Pentecost, and they haven't heard yet about what God had done in Jesus. It's a great opportunity to share the good news, to spread it way beyond the walls of Jerusalem.

But there was just one little problem. They didn't speak each others languages. Not only was there a language barrier, but they also came from different cultures, with different customs. So the disciples have this great audience, a wonderful chance to get the word out, but how can they? They didn't have the Rosetta Stone computer program that's supposed to make it so easy & quick to learn a new language. There were no translators standing by to interpret what they said.

But “...suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting... All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability” (vs 2, 4). Before they even knew what was happening, the Holy Spirit came and filled the entire house, and filled the believers too! What a commotion! The rush of a violent wind, like a hurricane or a tornado is how I imagine it, and tongues as of fire resting on each of them, filling them up, overflowing from them in words and languages they had never known before. That Holy Spirit's pretty clever – because not only do they start speaking in tongues, but the whole thing causes such a stir that all of those other Jews visiting Jerusalem came a-runnin' to see what was going on. The Holy Spirit gave them the languages and words to speak and gave them an audience to hear it too! No matter what barriers of language and culture stood between them, the Holy Spirit was working that day to bring them down. She opened up new channels of communication, empowering the disciples to speak in words that everyone could understand. The people who gathered heard the disciples speaking their language, telling of God's deeds of power in a way that made sense to them. Like the makers of that cell phone commercial, the Holy Spirit provided the subtitles so that everyone could follow along, so that everyone was included.

Everyone was included because the good news of Jesus is that God's love is for everyone. No exceptions. Everyone is included. And God wants everyone to know it! That is our mission, to tell everyone what God has done. Everyone. To do that, we need to move beyond the boundaries that we humans set up between groups of people. It's not just about literally learning another language, although as our communities change, we may be called to reach out beyond English to those who speak another tongue. It's about learning to speak new cultural languages, so that we can reach beyond those who look and think and act just like us. It may mean learning to speak teenager or immigrant or single mom or addict in recovery or homeless family, because Christ's call to be a witness is a call to step outside of our comfort zones, to go beyond the places where we feel knowledgeable and secure, to use new tools and resources to share the old, old story of Jesus & his love in new ways that will connect with the people God wants us to reach.

That cell phone company followed up that 1st ad with another one. It's a great example of learning a new culture, a new language. Mom's still upset with how much her kids are texting, but this time, she turns to her own mother and says, “You're old enough to know better. Who are you texting all day?” Grandma looks up from her cell phone long enough to say, “IDK, my BFF, Rose?” Grandma has taken on this new technology and made it her own. She's learned a new language, and because of that, she's connecting with people in ways she never thought possible.

That's what the Holy Spirit enables us to do. That's the witness of this Pentecost story. God's mission to the world is too important to leave it just up to us and the way we've always done things. And so God sends the Holy Spirit to us, moving us beyond our boundaries, teaching us to communicate in new ways, leading us to speak in ways that help us to make connections we never thought possible, and all so that all may hear of God's love in their own languages and turn to God for salvation.

Amen.