The Holy Spirit Breaks Through Barriers
Pentecost – May 27, 2012
Years and years ago, back when I was maybe 14 or 15, Will Smith – then known as “The Fresh Prince” came out with maybe his first real hit with his buddy DJ Jazzy Jeff. It was a catchy, kind of silly rap song, called “Parents Just Don't Understand.” If you don't know the song, you still might guess from the title that the whole song was a lament about how parents just don't get it. It starts off with a tale about the humiliation of going school clothes shopping with his parents, only to have his mom, who was paying for all the clothes, pick out the most dated, embarrassing clothes a teenager could imagine, despite all of his protests about how he'll be the laughing-stock of the school. And of course, she doesn't listen, and the first day of school finds everyone laughing and pointing and whispering at his fashion-sense, or lack thereof – and even trying to explain to his mom about his day for hours when he gets home doesn't sway her. “So to all you other kids all across the land, there's no need to argue, parents just don't understand,” he says at the end of the verse.
It's the age-old problem between parents and their children – the generation gap that makes real communication feel nearly impossible. But barriers to communication don't just exist between parents and their children. It's all over our relationships; these barriers permeate our culture. It's part of our politics and the news media, part of the division between Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, the Fox News crowd and MSNBC watchers. We may speak the same language, but so often we just talk past one another. We don't communicate, not really, and we don't even really try to see the other point of view. And it's not just parents and children, or politicians or the media – it seems to happen whenever we come up against someone different than us – whether it's a cultural difference or socio-economic or whatever it may be. It happens with colleagues and co-workers and friends. And when we encounter these differences and dare to have a conversation, so often it seems like we don't really want to learn from each other. We want to convince the other person we are right. We want the other person to come over to our side, to make the effort to understand us. We're much like Will Smith in his younger years, throwing up our hands in futility – there's no need to argue, they will never understand... and so we don't put in the effort to speak the other person's language.
If the disciples had been left on their own after Jesus returned to God the Father, I think we might have seen the same kind of scenario playing out with them as they tried to tell others what God had done for them and for the whole world in Jesus. All of us humans tend to cluster with those who are like us, with those who we “get” and who “get” us easily, the people who it's not too hard to like or work with or spend time with. And throughout Jesus' time on earth, this tendency was revealed in the disciples. They tried to keep Jesus from talking to foreign women. They tried to keep him from going to the sick and desperate. They tried to block little children from pestering Jesus (as they saw it). And though Jesus crossed those human barriers and boundaries over and over again, it seems pretty likely to me that even after he died and rose again, it still hadn't sunk in for the disciples. It's not hard to imagine that they would have defaulted to their own ways, sticking with their own kind, never really trying to reach past all of the differences that exist between different ethnic and religious and social groups to share this good news of Jesus with everyone who needed to know – maybe even thinking that God's amazing love was just for their own people, their own religion.
But on this day that we read about in Acts, this celebration of the Pentecost festival, 50 days after Passover, which remembered and rejoiced in God giving the law to the Israelites on Mt. Sinai, we see that these human barriers are not part of God's plan. It's not at all what God had in mind – and so even as the disciples are clustered together, praying and waiting to see what would happen next (Jesus had said that power from the Holy Spirit would come on them, and they would be his witnesses, after all – but that doesn't mean they had any idea what that would look like) – on this day, the power of the Holy Spirit descends – sound like a violent wind, tongues as of fire. No tame, predictable, manageable Spirit this – no peaceful dove coming down gently as we so often imagine her. No, this Spirit comes with a rush, landing on their heads, filling them up so that they spill over, and all of a sudden, they speak about God's deeds of power – not in their own language, but in the many and varied languages of the Jews living in and visiting Jerusalem from all over the world, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Do you see what is happening here? The Holy Spirit comes and breaks through all of the barriers human beings have set up. She moves past human boundaries and roadblocks to open the way for real, meaningful communication and relationship and welcome, revealing as she sweeps through that God doesn't just tolerate all of these differences, but welcomes and celebrates them. In this Pentecost interruption, the Spirit shows the world that the good news is for everyone, right where they are, no matter who they are. God the Holy Spirit takes charge and speaks through the disciples to all of the people gathered there in a language they can understand, so that they might hear about God's mighty deeds of power, might know that God's love is even for them. And we will see in the book of Acts how God's love extending like a ripple effect, starting at the center with the Jewish people but always growing, moving outward, embracing those society thinks are not worthy – lepers and the handicapped, sinners and tax collectors, women and children, Samaritans, and even Gentiles.
This same Spirit is at work in our world, constantly breaking through barriers, coming to people we think are outside of or beneath God's love – all the folks we may see as different, other. God's love is NOT restricted to the people we find it easy to love. One of Norah's favorite books, a VeggieTales one, ends, “God's love is for everyone! Isn't that great?! So please join us now as we celebrate,” and Pentecost is a powerful, unmistakeable reminder of the power of that love to break through all of our differences, all of our preconceived notions, so that all may hear of God's deeds of power, in our own language. May the Spirit descend on us in her unpredictable crazy ways and fill us up! May we come to know and celebrate that God's love really is for everyone - and then send us to share the good news, even when we don't always understand.
Amen.
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